It’s fair to say that used car salesmen have a negative reputation. The cliche is that they’re out to trick consumers and sell them useless products at inflated prices.
This is certainly not true for every salesman, and there’s a reason people say to be wary about stereotypes. Stereotypes rarely apply to everyone. However, the following are a few tricks some salesman try to use that show they do deserve that reputation:
Listening to your conversations
You and your partner go to look at cars, and the salesman leaves you in the office to talk about the number. Secretly, he or she listens to your conversation to see if you’ll reveal what you’re willing to spend.
Pushing a lemon on you
In some cases, salesmen know that they’re trying to move a lemon, whether it’s new or used. They just want it off the lot. They may try to hide this information from you by misrepresenting the title or failing to disclose the history of the vehicle. They hope you won’t see enough red flags until you hand over the cash and it becomes your problem.
Changing critical details
In the worst cases, these individuals may consider things like tampering with an odometer to “raise” the value of a car. This is especially true if the car is close to a major milestone, like 50,000 miles or 100,000 miles. They know you’re much more likely to buy at 43,000 or 92,0000, so they roll it back just a bit.
Again, not all used car salesmen do these things, but you can see why they have the reputation that they have. If this has happened to you, then you must know what legal rights you have to obtain some measure of justice.