AboutRay Paulsen Expertise confused buying new or used...buy with confidence from dealer or private...consumer fears...paying to much...getting a lemon...accident car...fair value for trade...negotiation process...etc...you simply want a fair deal...
Experience over 30 years in automotive industry, management, retail, wholesale, appraisals, auctions, vintage
Question Hello Mr. Paulsen. I understand that your area of expertise is cars, however maybe you can help me out. My father and I bought a truck 4 months back, from a local dealer here in Texas. A semi. There was no ad for it, we just walked it and he showed it to us. The truck only had 414000 miles on it. It was a 2000 Freightliner. That is very low mileage as this trucks normally last more than a million miles. We didnt have much money so we wanted a strong engine with low mileage and then as we work, we would fix the rest, the engine rebuild is well over $10,000 so if we didnt have to worry about that for a while, well be ok. Well the odometer showed 414000 miles and we even got a paper from the Freightliner dealer couple miles down the road, that guaranteed this reading. But i noticed that the freightliner dealer and the dealer we bought at, they were friends. Anyways we paid $21,000 for that truck. The inside was completely tore out, as far as upholstery and stuff, tires bad everything was bad. All kinds of things were bad inside, cosmetic things. The dealer didnt even take out the empty coke bottles inside. But we knew we had a strong engine that wont quit for a while. Well about a month ago, the gauges stopped working including the odometer(electronic). We were in Kansas at the time and took it to a local freightliner dealer, they replaced the gauges, but now it read 870,990 miles on it. We tought it was a mistake but the dealer in Kansas said no, that is the actual mileage and they gave us the paper that they hook up to the engine to get the true mileage, it was true. (this was the same paper that the local freightliner dealer gave us). Well now we are stuck with a really old truck and the engine is worn out too. We bought it with almost everything broken because the engine had low mileage but it doesnt. My question is, what venues do we have legally, did the dealer commit fraud? Can we go to court? is it even worth it? or are we just screwed? I appreciate your time sir. Thank you
Answer Hi Billy
If you got a bill of sale from the dealer that state the odometer has a reading of 414K and you can prove that is has in fact 870K, that is fraud and in my area the consumer would be intitled to a full refund.
