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Call Salvages Car Buyer's Deposit

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By RICHARD MULLINS

rmullins@tampatrib.com

Published: October 19, 2008

In April, Lowell Weaver of Oviedo drove across the state, steered his 2000 Range Rover into the Bob Wilson Dodge dealership in Tampa and traded for a new Dodge Nitro.

A good deal, he thought. Funny, then, when his bank kept asking for loan payments on the Range Rover he no longer owned.

The dealership should have paid off the Range Rover loan with his trade-in. But the bills keep coming: $320 for the Nitro, plus $350 for the Range Rover - every month for the past six months. He kept calling the dealership and heard promises to fix things, but things were never fixed.

Turns out Weaver is among a furious pack of customers tangled in the April bankruptcy of Bob Wilson Dodge - just one of several Florida dealerships suddenly closed.

Many of those desperate customers call me here in the newsroom, and they have some awful stories.

There's Don Maifeld of Lake Placid, who put a $5,000 deposit down on a Dodge Challenger. After the bankruptcy, no car appeared. "I've sent them lots of e-mails, but never hear back," Maifeld said. "I want answers or my money back."

Other customers got jammed up when Bill Heard Chevrolet in Plant City shut down.
Randy Jackson of Tampa gave the dealership $2,000 toward a new $16,000 HHR sport wagon. When news of the shutdown spread, he thought the money was gone forever. No one at Bill Heard answered the phone. Then he got lucky.

When we ran Jackson's story in the paper, a salesman at Bill Heard I know called me, asked for Jackson's number and cut him a check for $2,000. Jackson zipped over to Plant City, grabbed the check and cashed it within an hour. "The sales guy said to keep that quiet," Jackson said.

This is the difficult, brutal process of a company sliding toward bankruptcy. It creates few winners and a lot of losers. If this were a Pepsi distributor, perhaps the worst blowback for customers would be empty vending machines. But these are car purchases stuck in limbo.

If there's a glimmer of good news, it's this: Customers get priority in the bankruptcy process and can get back deposits, loans and even keys to cars left in the maintenance bays. But it's not easy.

"They've got to have someone go to the court and say 'Here are my rights, please enforce my rights,'" said Charles Tatelbaum, a bankruptcy lawyer with the Fort Lauderdale firm of Adorno & Yoss.

Car Lot Can't Tell You A Lot

How can you avoid problems like these when you shop for a car? You could look for financial warning signs on the lot, but there probably won't be any.

The Bob Wilson dealership started to falter in early 2008. The owners had just spent millions on an elaborate expansion to sell more brands. Then the car market tanked.

Cash ran short. Then Chrysler executives showed up, said Russell Blain, a lawyer for the dealership who is handling the bankruptcy. There's a lot of legal back and forth involved, but basically the arm of Chrysler that provides auto loans froze a bunch of the dealer's accounts and records. Everything shut down where it stood, including customer purchase orders, cash deposits, and dealer payments to banks to pay off trade-ins.

"This is taking longer than we'd hope," Blain said. "We know we've had problems with some customers." Blain said most customers should be able to get answers by calling the dealership, or him.

How To Avoid Pitfalls

Although many dealerships offer great rates on loans, if you want to protect yourself to the hilt, here's some advice to consider:

•Don't sell your car to the dealership as a trade-in. Sell it yourself.

•Don't take financing through the dealership. Get a loan at your bank or credit union and shop with financing in hand.

In the meantime, if you have problems with Bob Wilson Dodge, Blain said to call him at (813) 229-0144. Otherwise, if you have nightmare consumer stories about car dealers, department stores, restaurants or anything else, you can send me an e-mail. We'll try to find some answers. Hey, Randy Jackson got his $2,000 back.

Richard Mullins can be reached at (813) 259-7919.

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