Used Car Fraud: The Rollback

When a new vehicle is sold, it becomes a used vehicle. And if the dealer cannot obtain financing for the person who bought the vehicle originally, then the vehicle “rolls back” and is considered to be a used car. However, there are many dealers that try hard to represent this as a “new” vehicle. It is not, and everything about this vehicle is different than other cars. For instance, it’s the only vehicle on the dealer’s lot that must display both a MSRP label and a Buyer’s Guide form (the form that indicates whether a used vehicle has warranty). Moreover, if the vehicle costs less than $40,000 miles then the dealer must offer you the option to cancel the contract. It’s really a liability for the dealership because of the gray area these vehicles fall into. If you bought one of these vehicles, then there’s a high likelihood that there was auto fraud somewhere along the line (just like the person before you was, most likely).

Big dealerships have to sell a lot of cars to maintain their profit margin, so they will get very creative. However, small dealers still need to get customers through the door and in order to compete they might turn to “aggressive” marketing. Plus, the retail auto industry is fairy homogeneous and the people move around fairly frequently (as in the case of the inside contact that inspired this post). The point is this – there is a reason that vehicle disputes and complaints is the reigning number one consumer complaint! That’s because consumers are getting ripped off by dealers.