How One Man Defeated A Dealership
How To Kick A Scammy Car Dealer In The Nuts
While we spend a lot of time on this site talking about the importance of writing a good complaint letter, of finding the executive contact info, and cc’ing letters to appropriate regulatory bodies, sometimes the best way to win is to stop playing Mr. Nice Guy and start playing hardball. In the book “Unscrewed: The Consumer’s Guide To Getting What You Paid For”, the author’s first story is about how he himself got screwed, and then unscrewed, on the first car that he bought. Here goes:
“I replied, “What do you mean? You advertised the special. The sale representative should have told me about it! It’s just not fair.” “That’s our policy. I’m sorry.” “It’s a bad policy,” I said, for lack of any other words, and hung up the phone. I was livid. I’d just been screwed out of $1200… Something had to be done.”
That day, Burley typed up a notice and printed out tens of copies. He went to the dealership manager’s office, who continued to try to stonewall him and refer to their “internal policy”. Burley opened the envelope and placed the flyers in front of the manager. “What do you intend to do with those?” he asked.. “Mr. Smith,” I said coolly, even though my hands were sweaty and shaking, “at this point, it doesn’t really matter to me whether I get my money back or not. I am going to exercise my First Amendment right to stand on that public sidewalk in front of your dealership. I’ll hand one of these flyers to anybody walking onto your lot. I’ll be carrying a picket sign with the same message.”
The notice said: “AKAMAI MOTORS LIES TO ITS CUSTOMERS! They advertised a car at one price and then sold it to me for $1,200 more. For details, please call Ron Burley at [redacted].” I continued, “I’ll bet that, in just a handful of Saturdays, I can convince a couple of dozen people to shop elsewhere. It could end up that, by not paying me what’s due time, you lose ten times that much in future business. It won’t put any cash in my pocket, but I’ll feel a lot better about things. What do you think?” Mr Smith returned to let Burley know that bookkeeping was cutting his check at that very moment and he could pick it up on his way out. NICE!
Burley could’ve filed complaint letters and made calls up the management food chain, he could’ve cc’d letters to the Attorney General and the FTC, and maybe even eventually been forced to take the dealership to small claims court, where he would’ve won, as it is actually the law that merchants have to honor their advertised price. Instead, he chose a direct course of action that in broke the problem down to terms that any simple business could understand.
