What Happened to Consumer Protection

After being in the auto dealer business for so many years you observe business practices that are not best practices.  I know there are honest dealers that hire the wrong people but they are all driven by the profit motive and will over look certain practices as long as they do not get penalized.  Gene Reed was driven only by the profit and would push his managers and hire people that would push the limit.

After he hired a manager at Gene Reed Toyota in 2013, the new manager was receiving bank charges for reposessions of vehicles that had equipment on the original purchase contract that were not on the vehicle.  What this meant was that certain sales or finance managers were representing to the lending bank that the vehicle being sold had a greater vehicle value than the vehicle actually delivered to the customer.  This was done by misrepresenting the vehicle with higher valued accessories such as special wheels, stereo equipment or any other high value accessories.  This would give the vehicle a higher value to loan ratio.  By doing this the lender would take the risk loaning to a customer that might not be able to afford the loan.  The customer was unsuspecting and once they could not make the payments, the customers credit was harmed and the dealership would only pay when the misrepresented equipment was caught by the lender.  No telling how many customers sacrificed financially for the misrepresentations once they wanted to payoff the loan or trade their vehicle for another purchase.

Upon finding out about this he just blamed it on the managers that he had hired.  Occasionally the dealership would get into a lawsuit and he would rely on the insurance company to pay the damages.  He new some of these manager were risky but he also new they could drive the sales and profits.  Anyone was a scapegoat because he would make a few examples and fire someone and go back to ignoring business practices.  Profits, insurance, lawyers and PR firms that could get media coverage for public donations.

What about those customers that never recovered from the financial ruin.