QuestionMy 22 year old son just returned home from service in Iraq with the U.S. Marine Corps and went to a local new car dealership to buy an older model truck to drive while he starts college. He intentionally looked for and bought an older high mileage pickup (1994 Dodge Ram 2500) with 200,000 miles. This was late Christmas Eve (Dec. 24th) around 6p.m. He knew he was buying with “No Warranty - As Is”. As you would guess, 24 hours after the sale, with less than 125 miles, the transmission goes failed. It failed as he was driving it back to dealership, because when he signed the contract, the state inspection sticker was expired and it was late at night and they told him to come back the next business day to get a new inspection sticker.
Both my son and I spoke with the sales managers and asked them to make the deal right; to not rip off a young serviceman just back from war; to either return his money or give him another truck of same value or repair the transmission at no cost to the boy.
Their reply was "on a No Warranty - As Is" how many miles do they allow before it becomes the buyers problem?" I said I couldn't answer the question, but they were a big dealership and this was a veteran just home from the war and it in fact had not gone more than 24 hours / 125 miles before it failed.
We were just wondering if you can offer any additional points to say to the dealership that may get them on our side. I don't know if the fact that they sold a vehicle without a state safety inspection would have any affect or not.
AnswerWell unfortunately big stores like that for the most part dont care about making the deal right, especiallly on a really high mileage vehicle. The only thing I could offer you is this, if that happened here in Oklahoma, I would tell you to contact the Used Parts and Motor Vehicle Commission, they are kind of the police of the car lots here in oklahoma, and they would get down to the bottom of it in a hurry. Unfortunately most states dont have one, and all I can say is see if there is something comparable to that in your state, and complain with them. Realistically....outside of just raising a BUNCH of hell with the dealership, I dont think you have much to stand on. Even if that happened here in oklahoma, I just dont see much you can do, that is just to many miles for anybody to stand behind. Wish I could tell you something better, unfortunately that is just not the world we live in now a day. And these are very desperate times for dealers.
