[namecheapTA]

1. Weird fraud I've never seen done, if the actual original interest rate was "agreed upon", and not just a "potentially if you qualify at our source bank".

2. I assume the car was looked at and maybe test driven. I find it hard to believe this was a 'ruse' left for the final moments. I can imagine people getting confused or not hearing or understanding I suppose.. someone wants a discount, salesperson says we have a demo over here we can do a large discount on.. and somehow the miles or reason for discount were not discussed. I wouldn't call this a ruse, and once again not something I've done or seen since it's just a waste of time. Obviously the person will discover the miles at some point, so why have the drama.

3. Illegal to pad a term sheet and then stuff a $1000 'charge'. You'd atleast have to have the customer sign the contract for what they were getting for their $1000. Dealers attempt to add things often, but they can't be secretly padded into the initial payment discussions. It's superficially easy for a customer to snap a photo of a preemptive term sheet and burn a dealership at the DMV dealers office or back out a whole deal months or even years after purchase if this was documented. Again, not something I saw in 10 years.

4. I saw countless people get confused by the "total" on the contract, usually when selling a used car to a less mathematically and logical buyer for some reason. You can sell a Porsche to an accountant and all goes great everytime, but sell a used Corvette to someone that personally requested a 72 month loan and watch drama unfold as he wonders why the total of payments on his $50k car is $70k. Luckily I was good and could always explain reality of sales tax, registration, and interest to these people. But not everyone is so lucky.

Maybe the dealerships I worked at were above average in integrity, because they were high performers and high performers don't have time to fraud induced drama, but honestly if you land on a dumb salesperson that can't explain your confusion to you, you can end up thinking your confusion was their attempt at a scam.

[WalterBright]

1. It was a handshake "come back tomorrow for the paperwork" deal with the manager. The underling who handed me the papers said they would never have agreed to the lower interest rate. I told her to go check with the manager. She did, and came back complaining that she'd have to redo the papers (!).

2. A "new" car doesn't have 5,000 miles on it. They told me it was new. There was no ambiguity there. They pushed the papers at me hoping I wouldn't notice it.

3. Illegal or not, that's what they did on the next day final paperwork. Of course, they said it was just a clerical error and they'd fix it. The original deal was not documented.

4. When you have a column of numbers and a total, the total should match the sum. There's no excuse for this.

These issues were from multiple dealerships, so I figure it is common practice. One was from a friend of mine, who I warned to check the numbers on the final next day paperwork. He laughed at me, saying nobody would do that. The next day he called and thanked me, as he discovered a $1,000 error in the dealer's favor. He said he'd have never checked it if I hadn't warned him.

[namecheapTA]

1. I wouldn't call a miscommunication between a handshake deal with multiple people and departments involved and the next day the exact same as a "term sheet ruse" which implies there are games being played on the actual term sheet in front of you. I would say in many industries there are terms on the final documents that don't always exactly match what earlier communications, and yes it's important to make sure they match up.

2. A new car is new as long as it hasn't had a registered owner. You can even have a new car with an already started warranty sometimes. I still wonder how you made it to the paperwork stage without seeing the car and noticing it wasn't exactly 'new new', but if you landed on a very shady salesperson it could be covered up (simply leaving the dashboard display on a trip meter instead of odometer could do this I suppose)... But once again.. I STILL think it's more of an accidental miscommunication than deception since everyone knows it will eventually be discovered. Dealerships sell many "demos" year round, and I've also never seen this drama in person even though demo sales are common industry wide.

3. Clerical errors do happen when a salesperson gives management a summary, a salesmanager loads a deal into the system, and a "finance manager" (I hate them) finished loading things so that the DMV and banks are happy. It does happen. It isn't a tactic because once again, people rarely miss a $1000 line item, or the payment going up suddenly.. so why have the drama, potential deal blow up, yada yada.. the salesperson doesn't get paid on non vehicle adds ons or fees, and management gets such a small cut of gross profit I just don't believe it's done on purpose since it has a high threshold of drama.

4. I have never seen this, and I can't even imagine how we'd get the computer system to do this. Also, the banks would reject a contract later that doesn't add up and send the deal back. And finally, who is intentially commiting this kind of fraud on a document that will forever exist in your hands and the banks hands. Would there be an easier way to get caught for some crazy fraud than having numbers not add up on a final contract?

[WalterBright]

I understand that clerical errors and miscommunication happen. I make those mistakes myself.

But when they always err in favor of the dealer, I get suspicious.

> I still wonder how you made it to the paperwork stage without seeing the car and noticing it wasn't exactly 'new new'

I foolishly had not checked the odometer. I assumed that if the salesman said it was new, that it was new. Anyhow, on noticing the mileage on the final documents, I pointed it out, said I wanted a new car, and walked out. They watched me go, and when I was backing out of the parking lot, came running out and said they'd make buying it worth my while. And they did.

A car is designed for 200,000 miles. 5,000 is a significant chunk of that, and also the new car warranty is based on absolute mileage, not miles since buying it.

4. The various printed sheets that were not the final documents were printed separately and had no signature block. "I can't even imagine how we'd get the computer system to do this" You can probably do it with Excel. The idea is to focus the customer on the bottom line, and then he likely won't notice the column numbers were different on the final sheet because the total would be the same.

[namecheapTA]

4. You said final paperwork previously.

I'm not going to bother responding to the rest as it's clear there's some misremembering or exaggeration going on here.

In my experience, the things you are describing are very rare, and even more rarely intentional. Why they keep happening to you, idk.

[WalterBright]

Good catch, you're right. It happened with both a non-final sheet and the final one. The final one added in another line item that had not been agreed on.

[frumper]

I've had a statistically unusual amount of clerical errors after a deal is struck at car dealerships going from salesperson to the finance guy. I've politely corrected them each time and only once did I walk away because I "must be mistaken"

[WalterBright]

BTW, my dad once was negotiating for a mortgage with the local bank branch manager. He said the manager gave him a long cock-and-bull story about how mortgages worked. Finally, the manager asked him what brought my dad to town. My dad replied that he'd been hired as head of the finance department at the local college.

My dad said the manager's expression was priceless.

No, I am not confused about things like compound interest, what the sum of all the payments would be, etc. I often tell kids who complain "who needs math" that failing to learn about compound interest is going to cost them plenty.