Vandergriff Honda

I purchased a 1998 Honda Accord in 2000. It was 2 years old with approx 36,000 miles on it. The car was in good condition. After about 4 years of purchasing the car,I noticed that the paint ws starting to peel off the top and trunk of the car. It looks more like the clear coat. I have noticed that the paint on the sides are beginning to dull like it will start peeling soon.I have noticed the same problem on many Hondas ,Accords,civics and more.Some worse than others ,but nevertheless there is a very obvious defect in the paint on Hondas. I would like any info ,if any on complaints about the paint on Hondas.I take very good care of my car and I have already put well over 7000.00 in repairs in my car including the transmission and air conditiong being replaced.The paint peeling just took the cake.

When I came back (2 hours later) it took 30 minutes for them to find any paper work on my deal. When the papers were presented to me they had the the $18999 price as the sales price....

I tried to get the sales man to rewrite the paper work, and he had his sales manager come over and try to convince me that $18999 was a great BUY. I said no thanks, Where were my keys for my personal car, I was leaving.
Then the papers were changed and brought back to me with $17999 as the sales price. Still, I was ready to leave....

They kept trying to get me to sign the papers with that price, I would not...

The only way I finally got my keys back was to lie and say I would come back in the morning and pick up the Truck. They of course call the next morning and wanted to know when I would be in, I told them when the guy that said I could buy the truck for $17400 was ready to write me a check for the difference in price I would come get the truck. They called later that day and told me that they would sell to me for the $17400 if I would take $1000 less for my trade!

No real damage occurred, just being lied to and thought of as a fool, really made me want everyone to know about it.

On Teusday, November 4th, 2003, I applied on line with a company by the name of Barnone for a car loan. Barnone, from what I understand, is simply a service that refers sales leads to car dealerships for people with imperfect credit looking to buy a new or used vehicle. That same night, I received a call from Mr. James Session with Vandergriff Honda. He asked me to call him back when I could drive to Arlington to visit their dealership and I told him that I would.

Arlington is about an hour and a half drive from where we live in McKinney, TX. Two days later, on November 6th, I received a message from a man by the name of Wally with Vandergriff Honda. I have a voice mail message that I saved from him in which he misrepresents himself by saying he's with Barnone. I later found out he was actually employed by Vandergriff Honda. He stated that he had good news for me and urged me to come to their dealership that same evening when me and my husband got off work.

I explained to him that I'd already received a call from James Session, and I asked Wally if we'd ask for Mr. Session when we arrived, or for Wally. He said ask for Wally because he was the one who would be 'working our loan for us.' We drove out to Arlington, Texas and he stated to us that we were approved for a loan for a 2003 Jeep Liberty, and that one of the terms of the loan was that they would accept my 1999 Grand Prix as trade in, as is.

We went over the loan terms with the Assistant Sales Manager, Al Lewis, signed all the loan documents and were told we were approved for the loan with no problem. We gave them two checks as down payment: one for $800.00 and one for $200.00. The approval numbers they wrote on these checks are 72072 and 72085. They gave my husband the copies of the loan terms we signed, gave us the keys to the Jeep, and we left our Grand Prix there on the lot as trade in. We drove off with the Jeep.

A few days later, on November 10th, I received a voice mail from a Mr. Thomas Vias in Vandergriff's 'credit department'. When I called Mr. Vias (unsure if this is the correct spelling of his name) back, he asked me about two items on my credit report. He stated that he needed to know what the explanation was for these two items, and I gave him the explanations.

I asked him if there was a problem. He said no, he just needed to know what to tell the bank who was financing the Jeep. I said, Wait a minute, didn't you guys see my credit report before you said I was approved for the loan? You said the bank already approved me for this loan. Is there a problem? He said yes and that there would be no problems.

Then I received a call yesterday from Wally, the sales person. He said the loan terms had changed. He stated to me that I would have to come up with an additional thousand dollars down, and that the bank wouldn't accept my Grand Prix as trade in after all.

He suggested I either keep making payments on the Grand Prix or let it get repossessed by the bank, since I couldn't afford to make payments on both the Grand Prix and the new Jeep. He stated that with these new loan terms, I'd be better off because my payments would be lower than the original terms from the first agreement, and the loan term would be only five years instead of six. I have a voice mail message from Wally that I saved, saying to come down that night or the next night to 'finalize the loan'.

OK, so me and my husband drove to Arlington again last night, all set to finalize this other loan and sign the papers again as we'd done on Thursday, November 6th. We were running a little late because of the distance and the traffic, so right before we arrived at Vandergriff, all set to sign these new terms, I called Wally from my cell phone to make sure he was still there. He said yes, he was still there and asked where I was in relation to the location of the dealership. I told him I was right up the street, about a mile away. He asked if we were driving the Jeep. I said yes. He then stated to me that we weren't approved for the loan after all, that we'd have to leave the Jeep at the dealership and take our Grand Prix back.

Of course, we were extremely upset. How can they say the finance company or bank approved us just two hours before, and now that we were at the dealership with the Jeep again, tell us that we had to leave the Jeep there, that we weren't approved after all? Wally even showed my husband a some loan paperwork that said APPROVED on it. We drove this Jeep for almost a week. We'd just filled up this Jeep with a full tank of gas. We were told three different times that our loan was approved.

We were lied to from the minute we walked into this place. We drove this Jeep for almost a week, and even got insurance on it because we were told in no uncertain terms that it was ours and we were approved for the loan. There has to be something totally illegal about this. Wally finally admitted, after I kept asking him, that the reason why we had to return the Jeep is because the dealership was losing $1,800.00 in the deal. I asked him specifically why, and he wouldn't answer. If they didn't calculate everything correctly on the trade in, price of the vehicle, or loan terms correctly, this is not my problem. This would be their mistake and not mine. We signed a legal document saying we were approved for this loan.

We have suffered a great deal of embarrassment and emotional distress over this incident. We were told the Jeep was approved for us several times by this dealership, we signed paperwork for loan terms and was told we'd get a loan packet in the mail. We drove this vehicle for a week before being told we had to return it. We told all of our family and friends that we had this Jeep, and became quite attached to it. We were mis-led and lied to, and they did not honor the contract. Unfortunately we left our signed copy of the loan contract in the glove-box of the Jeep when we returned it. Please help!! Someone at work told me that the same thing happened to a friend of theirs (different dealership). Story goes, this person spoke with an attorney who told them that if the dealership took the vehicle back, then this person could sue the dealership for three times the amount of the value of the vehicle, plus emotional distress.

The emotional damage and experience of dealing with this dealership was horrible. Stress from trying to get an answer. The economic hardship is that I am with out a car.