People are distrustful of car dealerships. About 76% of respondents to a 2024 poll said they don’t trust car dealers to be honest about pricing. So it’s no surprise that the internet is filled with stories of shady behavior by car dealers.
For example, two women said a dealership tried to overcharge them by thousands of dollars. Another dealership shopper claimed that their dealership tried to increase their monthly payments by several hundred dollars. Other customers have revealed that dealerships are falsely listing their prices online as lower than what shoppers will find in person.
Now, an independent car broker is calling out a Kia dealership for their “shady” practices.
What trick did this Kia dealership try to pull on their customer?
TikTok user Katie (@katiethecarladyllc), who frequently posts stories and issues with the car industry, recently revealed a problem that she’s currently working with a customer to resolve.
According to Katie, one of her customers traded in her car two months ago and received another of the same make (Kia). Despite already making two payments, Katie says that the customer is currently dealing with several problems from the dealership.
First, Katie says the dealership is trying to contact the customer directly instead of going through Katie as requested.
“This is a manager [who] kept trying to be shady and go around me to my customer. That’s the first thing,” she states. “When my customer trusts me and has dealt with me for years, not gonna happen.”
Next, she claims that the dealership is trying to get the customer to sign documents different to the ones originally agreed upon. These documents include “extra stuff that’s not needed,” she says. The dealership has not paid off the previous car, Katie claims, despite saying they had, and they are trying to get an additional $2,000 from the customer that was never agreed upon.
This process has taken so long that, according to Katie, “we lost probably $1,200 in equity.”
“This is the whole reason that dealers are just anchoring themselves into a casket, because they keep assuming that consumers are just gonna do what they say out of fear or that they’re stuck,” Katie summarizes. “It’s shady, it’s dishonest, and it’s really [expletive].”
@katiethecarladyllc Dealer insanity part 1 #advocate #carladyclub #independentdealership #service #newcar #lease #kia#autoindustry #broker #carladyclub #katiethecarlady #womenincars #autoindustry ♬ original sound – Katie The Carlady
What happened next?
In an update video, Katie says that the dealership is “still trying to get them to re-sign because they screwed up the paperwork.”
To do this, Katie alleges the dealership is “holding the title ransom unless I make the customer re-sign the documents that they screwed up two months ago.”
As neither Katie nor her customer wants to re-sign the documents, this puts the dealership in a bad situation.
“Here’s what they don’t realize, is that they’re going to own that car,” she states. “That car is gonna get kicked back, that trade, because if you don’t produce title within a certain amount of time in the state of Ohio, they can kick it back, and then they’re gonna not be able to get rid of it.”
“If this wholesale deal unravels, they’re going to be really in a pickle because then they’re going to have a car that isn’t worth what we wholesaled it for, because we’re 3 months later,” she concludes. “Not my problem.”
The Daily Dot reached out to Katie and Kia via email.
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