[Responsibility2nd]

(Read Bill Heard's statement provided to NewsChannel 5.)

Oughta be good for at least 100 replies.

Soooo. Whaddya YOU think? Should the dealer have taken back the truck? Is this a criminal case? Civil case?

[bboop]

Criminal! They both signed the deal. If the dealer is doing this many times, they should be put out of business.

[Richard Kimball]

Criminal case. The dealership no longer owned the truck. They stole it.

[lumber1]

Once the deal was signed... the dealer loses. period.

[BipolarBob]

I made a mistake and didn't like the deal they offered me because it was TOOO much so I go up to the dealership and just take the vehicle I want. Fair is fair. If a bill of sale don't mean nuthin' why pay them anything.

[skaterboy]

the bad pub alone is gonna kill this clown as it should..sue the hell out of him..if he has signed papers and they took the truck.. is that not grand theft auto?

[VOA]

Ah, you hear about this sort of thing all the time with Toyota, Nissan and Mazda dealers!

(What my Buy America Even If It's Wrong friend would say; otherwise he's
a really great guy)

[cmsgop]

It's a Civil Case, I have a business, If I make a mistake like that I live with it. This Guy has a great case IMHO, All I can say for the Dealership it better not be a Jury Trial.

[capt. norm]

If it had been the other way around (customer on losing end) the dealership would have told him to go to hell.

They sure do squeal like a pig when the tables are turned on them.

If it's as big a dealership as they say, they've already lost at least $10,000 in bad publicity/public relations.

If they want to stay in business they had better play nice with the guy, otherwise they're doomed.

[dighton]

On the face of it, rather damning:

Kathleen Calligan says the Better Business Bureau has received literally hundreds and hundreds of similar complaints about the Bill Heard dealership -- more complaints by far than any other auto dealer in all of Middle Tennessee.

Bill Heard + Better Business Bureau

[Enterprise]

There isn't much he can do but go to civil court since the DA is gutless.

On perhaps a different note, a couple of years ago a Fresno County Sheriff's Sergeant sued a local Ford dealer, and Ford Motor Company over a lemon car. The dealer settled for 100,000 dollars and the Sgt. got a judgment against the Ford Motor Company for 10 Million dollars. Ford appealed the verdict, and it is probably still pending. I would hope that the buyer and his attorney in this case can get records of past dealings and sales, and prove that this is a consistent pattern by the dealer. If so, it should prove successful against the dealer in a lawsuit. We'll see.

[HitmanLV]

A deal is a deal.

[ButThreeLeftsDo]

"I'm a faithful follower of Brother John Birch
And I belong to the Antioch Baptist Church.
And I aint even got a garage, you can call home and ask my wife!"

Same Antioch??

[Turbopilot]

Seems to me he needs to sue the dealership in civil court to enforce his contract of sale and get the truck back. Assuming he wins that suit, which he should, the court will have established that he did, in fact, own the truck, at which point he should insist that the dealership employees and management who ordered the "repossession" be criminally charged with the truck's theft, and then go back to civil court and sue them for the intentional tort of trespass to chattel, with the various punitive damages such a suit can entail. It won't run the dealership out of business, but he'll be ablet to buy a new truck a few times over, and the thugs who tried to steal it back will think twice before they do it again.

As long as the deal wasn't grossly unreasonable (like selling him the car for $1), I don't see how the sale wouldn't be enforceable. I don't see how a trade-in plus $8,100 cash would seem blatantly unreasonable for a used Chevy.

[ThomasThomas]

Just to throw something else into the mix. Post dated checks are not legal.

[LongElegantLegs]

Dude, where's my car?

[4yearlurker]

Sounds like the salesman made a mistake and wrote the contract for 10 grand less than what the dealership wanted. If the customer gave the dealership a post dated check that was the loophole they were looking for. If a cashiers check was involved then the car dealership has to accept the deal.

[4yearlurker]

Maybe the 8,100,00 was the down payment. Now that I read the story again there could have been an error in the writing of the contract and the customer is trying to take advantage of that. Still,the BBB says hundreds of complaints. Personally I HATE the crap you have to go through when you buy a new/used car from a dealership.

[SouthTexas]

Sounds like a scam to me.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

We had a case where a decimal was put in the wrong spot and an item that normally went for $24.98 a pack was sold for $0.2498. We corrected our error two days later and swallowed the loss. It wasn't the customers fault.

To do otherwise is very bad publicity and very bad customer relations.

[infidel29]

"They inadvertently sold the vehicle at a lower cost than what they should have," Paris says.

I don't know how many items I "inadvertently" bought at a higher cost than I should have and was never given "Oops..." as a viable escape.

I see the key in the wording, they sold the vehicle at a "lower cost" instead of a "lower price". The "cost" means the dealer didn't make a profit on it.