'Yo-yoing' practice by car dealers irks customers

Barbara Webster thought she had bought a new Sorento at Suntrup Kia in the Mehlville area in February. She traded in her old one, signed a credit agreement and drove away.

Now she has no car at all, although she says she made the payments. Suntrup not only took her new car back, but the dealer kept her down payment and didn't return her trade-in.

"I'm very upset. They've taken my car," she said, "plus my money."

This is an example of "yo-yoing," said Rob Swearingen, an attorney at Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, who is representing Webster. It's a fairly common practice, especially in the used car business, he added.


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Do your research - if you do a Google search on the dealer you've chosen and anything comes up, I'd definitely question that.

who furnished his stock with hot cars he fenced for his brother.

I mostly financed a couple of used cars here in town so I could pay them off early and establish credit so I could buy a house at some point, which I did. The house was the only thing I couldn't buy outright, nurses don't get paid enough for that. I bought a lot less house than I qualified for and kept the mortgage payments lower than rent.

Trust me, I read that part of the agreement. However, when the contract falls through, the person should be reimbursed the trade in allowance even if the trade in has been sold (usually the case). There is no way an entire down payment should be held for mileage unless the car has been all over the road in the weeks before it was pulled back.

This stuff really needs to be addressed. It's robbery, period.

They never did anything like this. They may have let the customer drive off with the new car under a "borrowed car agreement", but that was only if they were finishing up financing the next day (and with someone they knew were going to be financed as well). Then if this is only for a day or two, their trade-in would still be at the dealership anyway, so if things did fall through the customer could just take their old vehicle back.

I've heard of this practice happening from news stories like this one, but I never saw this happen in person.

This is a despicable practice that should be illegal.

On the other hand, what is this 66-year-old woman, who apparently has bad enough credit that she can't get a regular loan, doing trading in one car on which she still owes $16K (worth only 11K in trade-in) and buying a new, almost $25,000 car? And then adding in the balance of her old loan to the total at 18% interest? Is she nuts? Probably so. People like this need advisers. The car shark dealer is not the person to be advising. A loan should never have been extended to her. Yikes.

The whole thing is pathetic to me.

Since we don't know for sure, I'm not willing to judge her.

We have good credit and decent income, but have never spent that much on a new car. (Our last car was a 2006 Prius, which ended up at $20K with the $3600 energy rebate; we plan to keep it another 5 or 6 years at least. Our previous car was a Toyota Camry that we drove for over 13 years.)

If I were her, I would have sold the car for the $11K (or more--she probably got underpaid by the dealer), paid off the $5K she still owed on it, and bought a used car flat-out for $6K. No loans, no loan sharks.

I'm honestly trying not to be judgmental, but truly, this is not the kind of thing you do when your finances are shaky.

If her credit ended up being denied she should get her down payment back, or better yet they should not be allowed to let someone drive off with a car until financing is secured.

She got robbed by those asshats because they could get away with it. The practice needs to be made illegal.

Read my posts. I condemned the car dealer in each one and said the practice should be illegal. At the same time, people need to be educated not to fall into that kind of deal.
Let's be reasonable here: these dealers would not be able to practice this way if people weren't eager to buy and borrow above what they should.

And her poor judgment still doesn't excuse what the car dealer did to her.

the newspaper is never going to give the whole story, grain of salt is necessary here. Blame the dealer NOT the consumer.

If the old one was still running well, one assumes the dealer would have sold it themselves instead of shipping it off to auction.

I just ran a Kelley Blue Book valuation of the lowest model of 2007 Chevy Equinox with standard fixtures, and then put in a bunch of stuff on condition (repairs, dings, needs new brakes, etc.) that put its condition at "fair" (as opposed to excellent, very good, or good): the trade-in value came in at $8,075. She got more than $3,000 more than that.

Something's fishy. Maybe the good price was the "hook" to get her in to this exorbitant loan situation.

they just charge more for the new car.

And the dealer HAD TO HAVE KNOWN from her credit report she was a huge risk. They scammed her trade, her down payment, and she probably didn't even get a new car but a demo with 'road test mileage'. And to agree to a 20% interest rate is insanity.


Most dealers are scum. I'd say 99% and if the first words out of the sales weasel's mouth is 'are you ready to buy today', run away.

Even if it takes you hours.

Ask them to get you a cup of coffee, sit there as long as you need to until you understand what you're signing.

If they get impatient and start pressuring you to sign - walk away.

I consider myself fairly intelligent, but I get myself in trouble every time I buy a car. The first time, when I was 18, I give myself a pass for being young and not knowing better, but now, I have no excuse. I always really believe I know exactly what I am getting into, but every time, I somehow allow myself to get screwed.

I have a business idea for somebody...car buying consultant...I would be willing to pay a fee to a person to come to the car dealership with me and handle the negotiation and closing. I hate it and I am uncomfortable doing it...I just know that I am not the only one that would be happy to find help! The transaction is a lot like a real estate deal, and most people wouldn't walk into that without expert help.

Car would be released until funding was approved.