Day by day: Seminar warns of fraudulent dealership practices

Joanne Haffly

guest columnist

The automobile: it’s the American dream. Millions of dollars are spent seducing the consumer that he really needs the latest and greatest model to impress women, protect his family and save the environment.

These advertisements, along with public perception, give the idea that owning a vehicle is a luxury.

But today, we live in mainly outlying and suburban areas where access to public transportation is spotty and non-existent for many.

Recently, Pierce County Transit had to reduce and reschedule its bus routes to offset budget cuts. I put my home address into the trip planner function and found the transit system considered the trip “not possible.”

But it is. It just means I have to walk several miles each way to the bus stop to get access to a bus that goes directly into downtown Tacoma.

If I needed to drop my 6-year-old daughter off at daycare or school, I would need to take multiple transfers. That doesn’t include stops at the grocery store, to pick up prescriptions, or to go to the library to help the kids study a school project.

Hours and hours of my day would be spent just trying to get back and forth to work. There would be little time to attend school at night, like I do, or to go to a variety of grocery stores to get the best values on advertised specials.

Quite frankly, the lack of a dependable vehicle is a barrier to escaping poverty. Last week I attended a seminar on auto fraud sponsored by Tacoma Goodwill, Columbia Legal Services, the Attorney General’s office and the Tacoma-Pierce County Bar Association’s Volunteer Legal Services.

What I discovered appalled me.

The seminar was about disreputable car dealerships, “Buy Here, Pay Here,” who prey on the vulnerable. I was horrified at some of the ploys used toward the less savvy.

The poor don’t usually have a good financial credit history, so when they need a loan, they typically rely on the dealership to seek it for them.

Mary Lobdell, assistant Attorney General from the Consumer Protection Division, spoke about the deceptive practices that are perpetrated against low-income buyers.

Lobdell said some of the more popular deceptive methods used include getting kickbacks from finance companies to raise the interest rate an additional 4 to 6 percent without notifying the consumers. The dealers sell vehicles which have been rebuilt after major accidents and are unsafe to drive.

Many complaints have been made about vehicles breaking down soon after they’re purchased, leaving the buyer without a working car and still responsible for exaggerated payments.

The Columbia Legal Services attorneys spoke about working on car policy reform to establish legislation to minimize the unethical behaviors of car dealers and to lobby for consumer protection laws against those abuses. Some of their efforts include requiring documents to be translated, requiring inspection and disclosures and to increase dealer bond amounts.

I didn’t realize how enraged I would be over the abuses perpetrated against the poor. Capitalism is a strong base to our society, but only when mankind chooses to do right. When a car dealership intentionally sells an unsafe vehicle to a struggling family, knowing the car has been rebuilt and the title scrubbed, they have sold their soul for the mighty dollar.

But good people are stepping up to stop this abuse from continuing.

The Center for Responsible Lending, www.responsiblelending.org, is educating the public on the common car-buying pitfalls.

TPCBA Volunteer Legal Services held a Continuing Legal Education class to train attorneys on how to litigate these types of cases and to protect their clients from the abuses of corrupt car dealerships.

If you feel you have been defrauded by a car dealership, call the Attorney General’s office at 1-800-551-4636.

Joanne Haffly’s Day by Day column appears monthly on the Neighbors page. She can be reached by e-mail at jmhaffly@yahoo.com.