Tips on Buying Cars: Was this illegal?, national customer service, dodge truck

Question
I just found your website and I have something that happened to my wife and
I this past June, 2007 when we bought our new 2007 Dodge truck from Lithia
Chrysler. I was just emailing my friend to ask her opinion about what
happened and I'll include part of the email. I just wondered if this type of
thing is what your website is for. It seems you are dedicated to consumers
being able to fight back. Lithia is a huge car dealer network. I called their
national customer service number but they were much less that encouraging.
Maybe you can email me back? Let me know? The incident goes as follows:

This last week I found out the dealer I bought my Dodge truck from last
June screwed me out of $7000. Told me one thing then the finance dept. did
something
else. I don't think it's
right. I traded my 2006 Mustang and my 1996 Ford truck in on a 2007 Dodge
truck.
I told them I was upside down in the Mustang (had negative equity) and had
the Ford truck financed too for a small amount.
I had to sell the Ford truck before I was going to buy the new Dodge. So they
said why not bring it by. Maybe they could get me out of it. They looked
at the Ford truck, took it and appraised it, and came back and said "It's
gone. Consider it gone. Not a subject for discussion." I was kind of surprised
so I questioned that and they said "It's taken care of. You don't even
have to worry about it anymore. It's a done deal. It's gone." Then
they said "Now let's take a look at the Mustang and see where we are."
The Ford truck was never mentioned again. But we DID talk about the
Mustang at length, what
I owed, how it was going to affect the new purchase. All that. I negotiated the
new truck price, we added in the Mustang loan balance and we cut a deal.

We signed the papers and we took the new truck
home. We had it 8 months. But the other day I was talking to my accountant
about tax
stuff and write-offs and everything and we touched on the truck. I got to
talking
to him about that and I mentioned how the finance guys sometimes change
prices around
and juggle figures to make the loan fly at the bank. I asked him to tell me
exactly
where I was with the truck, did the deal look ok. How far was I actually in
negative equity? He looked at the sales agreement (I always carry my
paperwork in the vehicle) and
found $7000 added in that he couldn't see what it was for. I didn't know
either. But I had an idea. A day or so later I was car shopping (looking to trade
the Dodge truck for something smaller and with better mileage) and got to
talking to a guy at Woodhouse Chrysler in Blair, Ne.
I told him about the deal on the truck, how it all went down and he said what
they
did at Lithia Chrylser in Omaha, Ne. was they took the $7000 that was owed
on my Ford truck and,
instead of paying it off and making it gone out of their own pockets, (which
we figured was to a wholesaler and/or maybe they had enough money to play
with in the cost of  the new truck so they could just basically get rid of the
Ford truck and keep it out of this new truck deal), however they were going to
do it, they
rolled that back over onto my new truck loan. So I ended up not only being
$7000 in negative equity in the 2006 Mustang they also put the expense of
paying the Ford truck loan ON TOP of the other negative equity figure.
Instead of being $7000 upside down in the new truck we were $14000 upside
down. And they never ever said a word about it or told us what they were
going to do. Not a word.

Now does that sound right? Even on the sales agreement the Ford truck isn't
even listed. But the Mustang is. They left the truck off so they could slide it
past us I'll bet. It wasn't listed so we weren't tipped off. And I think
that's wrong if not illegal. And they won't do anything about it. What is your
opinion and what might I be able to do?  

Answer
Well I think I follow what your saying but without seeing the paper work it would be hard to know. I am not sure that what was done would be considered illegal any longer per say. Maybe if it was caught at the time. So if I understand what happened they sold you the dodge for xxx then allowed the amount agreed for the mustang of xxx and then added the payoff back for the mustang and the truck but never gave you a trade allowance for the truck. I would like to dive into this a bit further you can Email me  brad@buyingacar101.com.

Thanks
Brad