Suspected dealer misinformation - recourse?

[neildibiase]

Hi all,

Curious about how you would advise me to proceed in this situation. I ordered a '22 Telluride on 1/22/22 from a local dealer that I found through these forums. Dealer took a $500 nonrefundable deposit and also gave me a price for my trade-in (and said it would hold until vehicle delivery). Estimate was 4-6 months for delivery. After check-in monthly with no updates, was told yesterday that this will definitely be a '23 and I'm looking at another 3-5 month wait, minimum (9-11 months total), and they would "evaluate" our trade-in at that time. I was resigned with this outcome based on anecdotal evidence here.

But last night my curiosity got the best of me and I started to really look at the data available. I was surprised to find reports here of others who ordered similarly spec'ed (same trim) Tellurides from the same dealer after us, but had already received delivery.

Now I'm wondering if we were intentionally skipped, or our order was never recorded. Is there any recourse here? I don't have anything official from the dealer confirming the order, other than a text message chain with our salesperson. Thanks!

 

[3Rivers]

1. Talk to a lawyer if you want serious advice.

2. There's probably little or nothing you can do about the lack of new vehicle delivery to this point. On the other hand, you may have a good argument that you purchased an option (for $500) to trade/sell your current car to them at a fixed price, said option to expire only upon delivery of the Telluride.

 

[retiredyoung2022]

Not licensed to practice law in Ohio so this isn't legal advice, just my opinion.

I agree with 3Rivers. You might not have any recourse if the deposit was refundable...but because it wasn't, and the trade was a condition of the purchase, it might be worth pursuing.

 

[SC300ES]

My .02 cents:

• You probably shouldn’t have put a nonrefundable deposit. I’m sure if you insist, they can return it to you. Then, you would have to start over somewhere else. Other than getting your deposit back, what kind of recourse are you looking for?
• There is no way to determined why others got their cars before yours. Maybe the dealer got an allocation that matched their “ordered” vehicle. Some dealers don’t really order but wait for a matching allocation. You should ask what their process is.
• There are people who have waited longer here. There are also people who got hit with ADMs on delivery day, so unless you have it in writing outlining your deal, you don’t have anything until you sign/finalize everything on pickup day. Leaving any kind of deposit doesn't make a contract. If that was the case people who left deposits with multiple dealers would have had to buy multiple vehicles.
• You can’t expect them to hold on to a vehicle appraisal for 9-11 months. A lot can happen in that time period. I think the used price are going down lately.

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[ronniebell]

I'm sorry to hear about this bad experience. Another option, not so severe though, is to write up a well-written poor rating review on Google of that dealership. People DO read Google reviews and dealerships do not like poor reviews. It's negative advertising for them.