Kevin Buys Car From eBay
Kevin from Iowa submits this Car Dealer Horror Story about how he got screwed buying a used car from a dealer on a sight-unseen basis off of eBay. I “XXXXX’ed” out some of the details…
“I purchased a car off of ebay (I know, there was my first mistake). The description read of it having no scratches or dents and the engine runs perfect with no noises. I went to Illinois to pick it up from XXXX and XXXXX XXXXXXX and right away I notice the car is a little rougher cosmetically than they described. They assured me it was in good shape mechanically, and I checked it and it seemed to be so. Soon after I left I heard a pinging noise from the engine so I took it back. They took it over to a mechanic (who it turned out later was just one of their friends) and he told me it was a pushrod and was caused by me because I am apparently bad at shifting (according to them). When I got it home, I had a few mechanics look at it, and they told me that it had been run without oil and the engine was shot and no matter how bad I could have shifted for the 5 minutes I took it away I could not have done this. Turns out the reason I didn’t hear it when I test drove it is because it didn’t do it till the engine warmed up. When I called them about it, they not only continued lying, but accused me of ruining the car and made fun of me and being from Iowa. One of the very mature comments made when I told them I brought it to my mechanic was this: “So that doesn’t mean anything, does a FXXXing Iowa mechanic even know how to work on anything other than tractors?” Needless to say, I learned my lesson, never buy a car out of state online to avoid a car dealer horror story.”
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Administrators response to Kevins car dealer horror story…
I wouldn’t blame eBay but I would always be very wary of buying any car sight unseen. I sure hope you left TONS of negative feedback on eBay about this place! Here is a car dealer horror story about a guy that bought a bunch of flooring from me a few years ago. He drove out to the West Coast from Kentucky and had also purchased a 3/4 ton van from ebay (and this isn’t eBays fault at all either).
So he came by my place to pick up the flooring and we started loading this stuff…and it was really heavy too with each box of flooring weighing about 50 pounds. I had warned him about the weight in a phone conversation before he bought it too. I told him he would probably need a 1 ton vehicle minimum. To make a long story short…it turns out that at some point someone had taken off the factory emblem on the van he just bought off eBay that said “1/2 ton” and replaced it with a “1 ton” emblem. Of course there is a world of difference between a half ton van and a one ton van but he didn’t know about that. He wrote back later to tell me about what a nightmare it was transporting the stuff back home because he had to buy a trailer and then ended up dropping the flooring somewhere because the van wouldn’t pull it and had to go back later to get it. And that was all because some sleeze bag changed the emblem on the vehicle. Its too bad he couldn’t tell the difference between what the suspensions look like on a half ton van when compared to a one ton. The one ton has more lug nuts, much bigger wheels, and a huge drive shaft and differential. The difference between what one can haul and the other though is like night and day and I’m sure it was probably dangerous trying to drive with the weight he had in it too.