Bellevue Mitsubishi, Bel-Red Rd., Bellevue, WA - intense buyer's remorse resulting from poor sales tactics

# 23 for April 15, 2003

Complaints.com received the following on April 14, 2003:

From: Mike Morris [Email User]

RE: Bellevue Mitsubishi, Bel-Red Rd., Bellevue, WA - intense buyer's remorse resulting from poor sales tactics

April 14, 2003 By: Mike G. Morris Subject: Mitsubishi buying experience proves deceitful – Intense Buyer’s remorse results from poor sales tactics. On April 7, 2003 I visited Bellevue Mitsubishi’s lot on Bel-Red road in Bellevue, brought in by the advertising of incentives I had seen several times on television. The referenced lot is part of Bellevue Mitsubishi located at 614 116th Ave NE in Bellevue, WA. I arrived at about 6:30pm and left at 10:30pm in a new car. The following is a recap of my severely negative buying experience and overall complaint to Mitsubishi. First, I’ll start by mentioning that the product purchased has so far met or exceeded my expectations. In the approximately 500 miles I have traveled in my new 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse GT, I have been impressed with almost all aspects of the car. It is a joy to drive, and has better-than-expected fit and finish. The overshadowing negativity stems from the buying experience, specifically the interaction with the Salesman (Eric) and Sales Manager (Chris) at this lot. The sales tactics within this dealership are intensely high-pressure at best. What resulted was what these gentlemen insist was a stellar deal – of which they of course made no money. On the surface the deal consisted of my paying M.S.R.P for the vehicle and getting the proverbial shaft on my trade-in. The catch is that it didn’t look this way at the time. The manager very craftily made the deal to look as if I was paying under M.S.R.P and receiving a reasonable trade-in value. This was done with a sneaky shift of $2000 in the numbers which was conveniently almost half of my negative equity amount. In essence, he made 45 look like 25, and prefaced the paperwork with a disclaimer that the numbers wouldn’t look right, because he had to change them around in order to obtain financing. In my confusion, I believed and signed. So here’s the numbers for you math fans, and where I didn’t catch the trick: Balance owed on my trade: $12000.00 Sticker Price of Vehicle: $23,042.00 Down Payment amount Received by Dealer: $2132.00 Interest Rate: 0.0% for the entire 60 month term of the loan During early negotiations on the car, I was offered $7500.00 for my trade, which would leave $4500.00 in negative equity that would have to be added to the loan. Assuming the sticker price of the car remained the same, we ‘dickered’ on the trade-in allowance in order to convince me to purchase the car. Finally, after about two hours, the manager showed me a payment of $450.00/mo. Based on a $9500.00 trade-in value. I was told by the manager (Chris) the Mitsubishi will not finance negative equity, so he had to add the negative equity onto the sticker price of the car in order to obtain the zero percent financing incentive. The price of the car showed as approximately $25,000.00, which I was told included the negative equity of my trade. The quick math in my head justified this as my negative equity was $2500.00 (12,000.00 owed - $9500.00 trade in). Since the purchase price supposedly included the negative equity, I was led to believe the actual price of the car would be about $22,500.00 plus the negative equity, would then equal the approximate $25,000.00 price. Then of course tax and license would be added. Here’s the trick. In the end I paid regular sticker price for the car, and only received the $7500.00 trade-in (as offered before several hours of supposed negotiations). I was tricked into believing the $25000.00 sticker price included ALL of the negative equity, when in fact the dealership would only give me $9500.00 for the trade if the price of the car NOT INCLUDING ALL NEGATIVE EQUITY was $25,000.00. So… $23,000 sticker plus $2000 negative equity = $25,000.00 price of car $12,000 owed - $9500 trade-in value = $2500 negative equity. Total negative equity = $4500.00 Thus in the end, I was still hammered with $4500.00 of negative equity, despite how the Manager smoothly made it look like a mere $2500.00. So the negative equity illusion of $2500.00 was added onto a price that already included $2000.00 of negative equity. Tricky Tricky! I was told that the $2000 inflated sticker price included my negative equity, but much to my surprise later, I found it included only a portion of it, the rest was added later. Unfortunately, after a long work day, several hours of negotiations, several times trying to say ‘no’ and leave the dealership, we made what I thought was good deal. I still may have been given a decent deal – I don’t know, but I do know the deal was misrepresented and the numbers were moved around to take advantage of my confusion. The manager even said he had to change some numbers to make it look good for financing, so it would be different than what we verbally agreed upon. Of course the payment quoted was based on his final intentions so I was none the wiser. Should I have caught this in financing? Yes. But as I mentioned above, my awareness to this type of fraud was compromised by the extremely high pressure, the fact that it was 10:30pm, and the fact that I had worked all day, then come in and negotiated with them for several hours. I just eventually relied on the trust built by the manager’s word and handshake. I guess I learned the hard way about trusting a dealership to be forthright with explanation of pricing. ~Mike Morris