texasmorrell
Jan 9 2005, 12:31 PM
I had a really bad experience in Miami when I bought a truck from a used truck lot down there. I will not bore everyone with details but in a nut shell here it is. I went to buy the truck from this place because they agree to finance to people with poor credit. I know bad mistake. I was sent pictures of the truck and all details and agreed to purchase if the truck met my approval after test drive. I flew to Miami from TX and drove the truck, it was fine and I checked it over thoroughly. I had my bank in TX wire the dealership $5000 as down payment. After this is when the whole thing went to hell. After they got my money the salesman comes to me and says there is a problem with the financing. He says they cant get all of my credit reports to finish the loan. This after I was supposdly already approved before I left TX. After two days go by and no progress has been made they tell me I can either take possession of the truck and go back to TX and they will send me all the sales and finance documents when they get everything straight. Or I can get a refund of my down payment in 90 days. Of course there was no way in hell I was leaving there without my money or the truck so I signed some blank sales and finance contracts and took the truck. About two weeks later and a million phone calls I finally get a package from the dealer that conatains all the documents I need to title and license the truck. To my horror those scum bags not only raised the interest rate by 10% over what we had agreed but charged me nearly double for the truck what we had agreed. I knew I had been scammed and I called the Florida Attorney General and State Police and was told I had fallen victim to a common scam in their neck of the woods involving out of state buyers. These scum like out of state buyers because most people cant afford to travel from the other side of the country to defend themselves in court so most of their business is with out of state buyers. I was told that the only thing I can do is try to sue them in Florida and prove fraud or just drive the truck until the wheels fall off and not pay for it. Then I would in some way get my $5000 back. The state police said I absolutley did the right thing taking the truck and not waiting to get back my money because that would never have happened. He also said I should check the truck for a tracking device. He said that is how they easily locate and repo the trucks from the people they scam so they can sell them again and keep the down payment money. I found the tracking device to my shock and amazement and mailed it back to them with a smart ass letter. Now the bastards have sued me in Florida court and gotten a judgement against me and even included fraud on my part in their complaint. Of course they will not tell me what fraud I committed. They got a default judgement BTW because I was unable to show up in the Florida court. I am now trying to figure out how to sue them in TX state court under the TX DTPA using the long arm statutes. I just dont know if it is worth it though. It has been nearly a year and I have put 100K miles on the truck and more than got back my $5000 out of it but I have a charge off and a judgement on my credit to deal with. Maybe I should just deal with it using the CBs and forget about court. Any suggestions?