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10860 South Auto Mall Drive, Sandy, UT 84070 |
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On the week of September 18th 2006 I mistakenly walked into the Stockton to Malone dealership in Sandy UT, knowing that many car dealers have a bad reputation, but hoping that this time would be different. Prior to my visit I had had done my research. I had researched the invoice price of the vehicle I wanted, which was a Honda Odyssey 2007. I showed the salesman that I knew what the invoice price was, and in view of that we negotiated a price for the vehicle that was about $500 above the invoice price. You should also understand that Larry H. Miller is a very large group of dealers with huge buying power, and almost certainly they buy for substantially below the invoice price, as many large dealerships do. So a price (around $500 above invoice) was agreed for the vehicle, but then I decided to go up to the next model an EX-L, on the basis of a verbal agreement that the price of the vehicle would be around the same amount above invoice. I stupidly trusted the financial department to fulfill that. In the screen grab from KBB (www.kbb.com) below, you can see the invoice price for the car, which is $28,598.02. As a side note, KBB does not show that it's for the EX-L model, but if you visit the site, you will see that it is, and the image from www.edmunds.com below confirms it. You can also see the note that I scribbled at the time of the negotiation. It clearly shows '$29,000 agreed with Darin' - Darin was the salesman (who I don't believe is to blame incidentally. He seemed genuinely shocked when I told him how much I had ended up paying, and he agreed in front of the sales manager that we did negotiate a price based on my knowledge of the invoice price).
Here's the www.Edmunds.com price on the same vehicle. It shows the MSRP as $31,095:
The vehicle was prepared and delivered to us (myself and my wife), but we were not asked to sign any contract, which I thought was odd. I later discovered that when dealers do that, it is sometimes a tactic to get you comfortable with the car before you sign the papers, by which time you are emotionally attached to the vehicle and hardly inclined to look over the numerous documents with a fine toothcomb when you come to sign them later on. We returned the following day to sign the
lease and a long series of documents were presented for us to sign.
The VERY LAST document was the actual lease (by that time we were in the
'mode' of signing, and everyone had been so friendly that they had gained
our trust in a similar way to how confidence tricksters do). It was only when I returned home and analyzed the main lease document that I realized that I had apparently been deceived. I couldn't find the agreed upon price anywhere on the lease document. I did some research and it was at that point that I discovered that 'cap cost' is the actual price of the car. Look at the leasing document below to see this for yourself. Remember, the price I negotiated was $29,000, but I was charged $31,242, so there was a difference of $2242! The note that I have scribbled that says '$770 difference' was something else that was not explained to me. The difference between the cost of the car and the overall gross cap cost was $770, and I still don't know what those charges were for (title and registration were listed separately, so it was not those). So the final price of my car
was actually $32,012.45, not $29,000! |
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I immediately returned that evening to speak with the financial guy, Tish, that dealt with us, and when I told him that I now knew that the cap cost was the actual cost of the car he went quiet and said that he would have the sales manager call me the next day (it was late by that time). Needless to say, no one called me, so I went down to the dealer and I calmly explained the situation, giving them the benefit of the doubt that a 'mistake' had been made. I told the sales manager (I think his name was Jim or Bob, I don't remember) that I was extremely unhappy about the higher cost of the vehicle. My comment to him was, "that's a big difference! $2300 is a heck of a lot of money!" Click the button below to hear part of the conversation, and you won't believe the reply I received! (By this visit I was wising up to the fact that I needed to record the conversation to protect myself and expose the dealer.) In case you were wondering, the
recording was made legally, according to the following Utah Statute: |
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| So I had established that they had 'appreciated' the extra
$2300 that they had charged me. I asked where that $2300 had
come from, how had it had 'sneaked' into the lease? They could give me no real reason for it. I pushed
them for a response, and I restated the substantial difference between the
invoice price and the price they charged me, and this is what the
same sales manager said, again captured on the audio recording:
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I later talked to the sales manager on the phone to make one last appeal. This is how the conversation went, and listen to the tone of voice again as he acknowledges the additional amount that they had profited:
Sadly, I now understand that the unscrupulous practice of changing the price on the contract is commonplace among unscrupulous dealers. Look at this warning from http://www.carinfo.com/autoleasing.html Read the highlighted text below - taken from
www.carinfo.com, which describes
one of the ways some car dealers deceive customers in order to boost
their profits substantially and unscrupulously. |
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You should know that in spite of several visits to the dealership
in which I calmly gave them opportunity to redeem themselves AND my
phone calls, 'Stockton to Malone' is now classified as the number
one worst car dealership that I have ever come into contact with.
Larry H Miller should be notified of what's going on at 'Stockton to
Malone'. He should be ashamed of this dealer, and immediately
stop them from their questionable sales practices if he wants to
retain a good reputation. Now, for the sake of example, just imagine if someone from the dealership or the Larry H Miller group had contacted me and said: "We really value your business, and we want you to be happy. Even though our own notes don't show that we agreed on that price, you've told us that you we did agree on a price, you also showed us that a number of other local dealers have offered you that price, so we'll happily honor that price for you. We know that over the next three years you'll want to tell everyone about how we went out of our way to make sure you were completely satisfied." As a business person and entrepreneur, if I owned the dealership it would be far more important to me to make sure a customer is happy even if it meant losing money on one deal, rather than have that unhappy customer tell thousands of people over the next few years (or many hundreds of thousands of people through a website). Very sad, and very short sighted that it had to come to this. PLEASE. I appeal to You. If you have been a victim of 'Stockton to Malone',
http://tax.utah.gov/forms/current/tc-451.pdf
http://www.craigslist.com
http://www.ksl.com
http://www.consumerreports.org
http://www.ripoffreport.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE 9/23/06: http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff71543.htm http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff4572.htm http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff123471.htm http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff101185.htm http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff198398.htm http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff4604.htm http://www.saltlakecity.bbb.org/commonreport.html?bid=2005486
UPDATE 03/30/07:
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