Buying a Car and Consumer Fraud
Many consumers confide that buying a vehicle is one of the worst experiences of their life. Frequently, they come into my office and they are embarrassed and ashamed of the situation in which they have found themselves.
When one understands how a car dealership sells cars, there is a complete understanding of the circumstances leading to a vehicle purchased and there should be no reason to be embarrassed. Quite frankly, people do not understand the extensive processes at work when buying a car. Actually, the appropriate statement would be most people do not understand the processes at work used by a dealership to force the sale of vehicles. This process has been honed for many years, for which the dealership employees at all levels have been trained. All levels of dealership employees, including salesmen, sales managers, finance and insurance managers, general managers and other owner representatives have been extensively trained in the process of selling cars.
The process starts in the advertisement. Nowadays the internet, in my opinion, has overtaken the use of newspaper advertisements. This is step one, to get interest in a vehicle, whether it be through the internet or through newspaper advertisement or TV. The next step is to get the person into the dealership when they can use their training and skills to ‘convince’ a potential purchaser to purchase a vehicle. There are many tools that they use to gain a consumer’s confidence and trust the dealership representatives in the sales process. However, this is completely phony and consumers need to understand that they cannot trust these representatives in any way, shape or form. These representatives are using this trust as a coercion factor to get them to purchase vehicles.