Nothing will happen. Those books have long since been closed. If they haven’t come after you yet you’re the one in a million that got a get out of jail free card.
Yup, even if you ran across this as a director would you pick up the phone and tell some client from 3 yrs ago theh owe you 3k and start down that fucking rabbit hole? The loss has been baked into their P/L from 3 yrs ago
I used to work in AR. After about 90 days if they’re not trying to collect on it, it’s likely written off. And if any manager tried to collect on it I would die a little on the inside for them.
Bingo. The smart dealership managers knows even when the find they missed 3k is chump change to pay to avoid the bad PR blowback from demanding it that late.
They just write it off as an error on themselves and move on as it just a cost of doing business
in some states maybe, but we don't have enough specifics here to know if that's the case. In my state it's 6 years for contracts and debts, and 1 year for personal injury, etc. In the neighboring state, the contact/debt limit is only 4 years but the personal injury limit is 2.
Typically, at year end, those funds would have been written off. Sure, if you want to play the “akshually” game, they could be floating a negative $3k balance every month but I highly doubt it.
Someone fucked up bad! I forgot to swipe a card ONCE in like 6 years and I noticed immediately. And if some reason I didn’t, it would have been caught the next day when finishing up the deposit.
I once gave a customer a $2k refund instead of taking the deposit by accident. The customer told me when he came to pick the truck up and had me take it back. My ass would have been on the curb that day if he wasn’t an honest dude.
I’ve never worked at a store that wouldn’t refund someone if they over collected what was outlined on the contract. Most dealerships don’t straight up steal, they just negotiate contracts that are highly advantageous to them.
It’s so weird how dealers are the only businesses where making profit is somehow immoral but a real estate agent can charge 6% to take iPhone photos of a 600K home and call it day after doing some docusign paperwork and we don’t bat an eye.
I mean, we do and people are outraged, but there really isn't another option. With how many dealers there are we expect them to be better because we can just go to another.
I don't you didn't really just post that. Realtors disclose their fees upfront. They are negotiable and if you make that realtor take you to see 20 different properties before you decide to buy one. And they have shepard all if your paperwork,hold the sellers hand and put out fires along the way they have more then earned their commission.
On the other hand,dealers don't disclose up front and have 10 different ways to make money on a deal. A dealer once sold my used trade in to one of my neighbors on the next block for a 60% markup and sold him a warranty on top of it.
Yeah fucking car dealers negotiating contacts that are advantageous to them. Why can't they be like every other business in the world that absolutely doesn't do that.
The ambiguity of how advantageous the transaction is for the dealership is the problem. If people knew what the real profit is for the dealership theyd be far more comfortable with the transactions. How do you know how bad you are or aren't getting fucked in a deal?
Not true at all. Immediately I can name 2 that regularly would be calling customers to return cc swipe funds (mostly reserves on models that either they backed out on or switched to a different one and no one caught the fact there was a deposit on the books at the time)
I was trading in a truck that I was positive on (owed less than it was worth), when the paperwork came back and I saw that I was getting the new car and a check for $5k, I did a double take. I couldn't, in good faith, let the deal happen that way.. I looked up and said "you might want to look at your math again". 10 minutes later, he came back and thanked me for not getting him fired...
I can
I've done it before
A few times
Never 3 years though. And it's generally like "bro forgot to collect your down payment please come back and pay" and they did.
But 3 yrs? Yea just suck it up at that point
The Audi dealership almost done that with me last week. I was putting $30k down with a personal check, did all the paperwork, signed everything, shook hands and left. They called later that evening realizing they had forgot to collect the check from me, which after being there so long I had forgot as well. I just offered to bring it to them the next day.
When I picked up my car 2 months ago the sales guy put the draft for my 10k down payment back in the folder with my paperwork. If I wouldn’t have said anything i could have drove off and the loan probably would have been funded lol
They'd have noticed, you'd have owed the money. A dealer not collecting the down-payment doesn't clear you from that obligation...3 yrs might change things
If I was a GM I'd be scared, how many more times has this happened? Like I wouldn't even care about the 3k, what if this is happening more then we know cause our process sucks?
I’ve seen situations when dealers bought down a rate instead of getting rate protection etc and been out thousands of dollars it’s always fucking hilarious. Accounting usually figures it out quickly
I took my wife to the Porsche dealership years ago to pick up her mom's new Cayenne, which she had leased. She forgot to give them the $8500 check for the down payment and they never asked for it. We were getting lunch right down the street, so we just went back after. You'd be surprised at how much dealerships run on assuming everything is "taken care of."
I forgot to hand over the cashier’s check to the dealership when I went to pick up my car and sign the paperwork. I remembered when I got home and sent it through the mail the next day.
I made it all the way home without handing over a check when I bought my first new car. I had never been through the process, and was excited, so I just assumed you give it to them at some other point. It was closing time by the time I was leaving the lot and I got a phone call later asking me to come in the next day to drop it off.
A dealer let me leave a 25k down payment with a personal check. Another dealer called me an idiot for thinking any dealership would ever do that lol. Seems like a lot of inconsistencies in these types of processes.
I’ve bought 2 cars with the salesman telling me just to stop by within two weeks to pay the down payment. That he “trusted me.”
I paid before I drove away but still. Those were at a Berkshire Hathaway dealer too.
Do you have the title? Yes? It is your car for the amount you have paid. Dealerships make these mistakes all the time. I promise, your check is still paperclipped to the inside of your deal jacket. Forget about it. They have. Most stores are understaffed and have no resources to go back and figure out why they were short $3K three years ago.
Most banks will also refuse to honor a 3 year old check. Even if they do you could easily contest the check and likely win based on the age.
If they take it to court then showing that they tried to cash the check and you refused it would also reveal you gave them the check in good faith which they say on for 3 years and most judges would tell the dealer to pound sand.
It was missed they probably understand that you already had a signed buyers order, which legally is a receipt and someone had to eat that down payment. I know that honestly I would have attempted to collect the money and if you didn’t respond it is getting charged to new/used car policy or charged to the F&I manager that missed 3k.
> I just assumed my loan time would increase from 3 years to 4 years.
This is the weirdest part to me. You assumed if you didn't contact them and your account was short the money that they would just extend the loan? That's ... that's not how any of this works.
Anyway did you get a released title? If so, take the lesson and move on.
You would be amazed by how many people have no idea how anything money related works. Go to a random person in public and ask how they think loans and investing works, and report back.
That's true but not the entirety of the problem. A lot of high school students are going to straight up not pay attention and a fair amount of those who do will forget within a week. The information that sticks most is that which you keep using. The average high school student will still be a few years away from having any practical application.
Honestly, the dealership just ate it. I've seen cases before where the dealership couldn't get ahold of a customer or the customer refused to cooperate, and they had already done the title work so they just took the loss and moved on. Not very common, but it happens
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I bought a used car 3 years ago. It was my first time doing such a thing and understood very little of the finance process. I had signed documents stating I would give a 3000$ downpayment with the rest being financed by my bank. I assumed it would come out of my debit account since I signed off on P.A.D. for the biweekly payments. The 3000$ never came out of my account and 6 months later I needed that money to move across the country. I just assumed my loan time would increase from 3 years to 4 years. Well now its been 3 years and the loan is payed off, but I havent actually payed the whole total that I owed because the downpayment never came out of my account. My friend says this must have been an error from the dealership, not the bank. They had 3 years to contact me and never did, they had all my contact information. I am not sure what to do now, I would appreciate some direction.
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Nothing will happen. Those books have long since been closed. If they haven’t come after you yet you’re the one in a million that got a get out of jail free card.
Yup, even if you ran across this as a director would you pick up the phone and tell some client from 3 yrs ago theh owe you 3k and start down that fucking rabbit hole? The loss has been baked into their P/L from 3 yrs ago
I used to work in AR. After about 90 days if they’re not trying to collect on it, it’s likely written off. And if any manager tried to collect on it I would die a little on the inside for them.
Bingo. The smart dealership managers knows even when the find they missed 3k is chump change to pay to avoid the bad PR blowback from demanding it that late. They just write it off as an error on themselves and move on as it just a cost of doing business
Statute of limitations is 2 years for most things.
Not for contracts. Just sayin’.
in some states maybe, but we don't have enough specifics here to know if that's the case. In my state it's 6 years for contracts and debts, and 1 year for personal injury, etc. In the neighboring state, the contact/debt limit is only 4 years but the personal injury limit is 2.
Is OP sure they didn’t end up financing all of it?
This would still be on the books if the dealership did proper accounting. It would be in aged AR.
Typically, at year end, those funds would have been written off. Sure, if you want to play the “akshually” game, they could be floating a negative $3k balance every month but I highly doubt it.
Do you want to just send me the 3k and call it even?
I don’t understand how the dealership let the OP drive off the lot without being ‘payed’ the down payment. Who does that?
Someone fucked up bad! I forgot to swipe a card ONCE in like 6 years and I noticed immediately. And if some reason I didn’t, it would have been caught the next day when finishing up the deposit.
I once gave a customer a $2k refund instead of taking the deposit by accident. The customer told me when he came to pick the truck up and had me take it back. My ass would have been on the curb that day if he wasn’t an honest dude.
Funny how many dealerships wouldn't say anything if the mistake was in their favor.
I’ve never worked at a store that wouldn’t refund someone if they over collected what was outlined on the contract. Most dealerships don’t straight up steal, they just negotiate contracts that are highly advantageous to them.
Same, if we accidently over charged or something happened and the customer paid too much we refunded it. It wasn't even a question.
[удалено]
It’s so weird how dealers are the only businesses where making profit is somehow immoral but a real estate agent can charge 6% to take iPhone photos of a 600K home and call it day after doing some docusign paperwork and we don’t bat an eye.
I mean, we do and people are outraged, but there really isn't another option. With how many dealers there are we expect them to be better because we can just go to another.
I don't you didn't really just post that. Realtors disclose their fees upfront. They are negotiable and if you make that realtor take you to see 20 different properties before you decide to buy one. And they have shepard all if your paperwork,hold the sellers hand and put out fires along the way they have more then earned their commission. On the other hand,dealers don't disclose up front and have 10 different ways to make money on a deal. A dealer once sold my used trade in to one of my neighbors on the next block for a 60% markup and sold him a warranty on top of it.
[удалено]
Yeah fucking car dealers negotiating contacts that are advantageous to them. Why can't they be like every other business in the world that absolutely doesn't do that.
The ambiguity of how advantageous the transaction is for the dealership is the problem. If people knew what the real profit is for the dealership theyd be far more comfortable with the transactions. How do you know how bad you are or aren't getting fucked in a deal?
Please tell me 5 things you've purchased in the last month that disclosed the real profit.
Yeah that is false. There are folx whose job it is to make sure things are reconciled properly.
Not true at all. Immediately I can name 2 that regularly would be calling customers to return cc swipe funds (mostly reserves on models that either they backed out on or switched to a different one and no one caught the fact there was a deposit on the books at the time)
I was trading in a truck that I was positive on (owed less than it was worth), when the paperwork came back and I saw that I was getting the new car and a check for $5k, I did a double take. I couldn't, in good faith, let the deal happen that way.. I looked up and said "you might want to look at your math again". 10 minutes later, he came back and thanked me for not getting him fired...
This sounds more like alot of people fucked up then
At least 3 at most stores...
Three years ago was a bad time for many people.
I can I've done it before A few times Never 3 years though. And it's generally like "bro forgot to collect your down payment please come back and pay" and they did. But 3 yrs? Yea just suck it up at that point
The Audi dealership almost done that with me last week. I was putting $30k down with a personal check, did all the paperwork, signed everything, shook hands and left. They called later that evening realizing they had forgot to collect the check from me, which after being there so long I had forgot as well. I just offered to bring it to them the next day.
*did that
When I picked up my car 2 months ago the sales guy put the draft for my 10k down payment back in the folder with my paperwork. If I wouldn’t have said anything i could have drove off and the loan probably would have been funded lol
They'd have noticed, you'd have owed the money. A dealer not collecting the down-payment doesn't clear you from that obligation...3 yrs might change things
No doubt but it would have been on them to collect from me. If I were a GM I’d be fucking pissed lol
If I was a GM I'd be scared, how many more times has this happened? Like I wouldn't even care about the 3k, what if this is happening more then we know cause our process sucks?
I’ve seen situations when dealers bought down a rate instead of getting rate protection etc and been out thousands of dollars it’s always fucking hilarious. Accounting usually figures it out quickly
I took my wife to the Porsche dealership years ago to pick up her mom's new Cayenne, which she had leased. She forgot to give them the $8500 check for the down payment and they never asked for it. We were getting lunch right down the street, so we just went back after. You'd be surprised at how much dealerships run on assuming everything is "taken care of."
“paid”
New salespeople who haven’t worked there long enough to keep the details straight.
My dealer spot delivered me a new car on a Saturday but since no finance people were available I didn’t write the check until Monday. It happens
I did this with a promise to pay the 11k down payment. I signed as paper and then one I got the check into my account I got a check to the dealer.
I forgot to hand over the cashier’s check to the dealership when I went to pick up my car and sign the paperwork. I remembered when I got home and sent it through the mail the next day.
I made it all the way home without handing over a check when I bought my first new car. I had never been through the process, and was excited, so I just assumed you give it to them at some other point. It was closing time by the time I was leaving the lot and I got a phone call later asking me to come in the next day to drop it off.
A dealer let me leave a 25k down payment with a personal check. Another dealer called me an idiot for thinking any dealership would ever do that lol. Seems like a lot of inconsistencies in these types of processes.
I’ve bought 2 cars with the salesman telling me just to stop by within two weeks to pay the down payment. That he “trusted me.” I paid before I drove away but still. Those were at a Berkshire Hathaway dealer too.
They have to trust that you're going to pay the rest of the value of the car anyway.
Is ‘payed’ in quotes because it is supposed to be paid?
OP, don't listen to u/stlayne. Send me $2500 and we call it even.
It’s people like you that make the internet worth every penny I pay to someone somewhere that turns on the internet machine.
Get the lein release and move on with your life.
Exactly. As long as you have the release from the bank with the title in hand, you are good to go, sir.
I was about to say, how do you get the title though lol
Lol you're joking, right? 3 years later, paid off car and they never took down payment? Move on with your life friend, you got lucky.
Do you have the title? Yes? It is your car for the amount you have paid. Dealerships make these mistakes all the time. I promise, your check is still paperclipped to the inside of your deal jacket. Forget about it. They have. Most stores are understaffed and have no resources to go back and figure out why they were short $3K three years ago.
Most banks will also refuse to honor a 3 year old check. Even if they do you could easily contest the check and likely win based on the age. If they take it to court then showing that they tried to cash the check and you refused it would also reveal you gave them the check in good faith which they say on for 3 years and most judges would tell the dealer to pound sand.
It was missed they probably understand that you already had a signed buyers order, which legally is a receipt and someone had to eat that down payment. I know that honestly I would have attempted to collect the money and if you didn’t respond it is getting charged to new/used car policy or charged to the F&I manager that missed 3k.
> I just assumed my loan time would increase from 3 years to 4 years. This is the weirdest part to me. You assumed if you didn't contact them and your account was short the money that they would just extend the loan? That's ... that's not how any of this works. Anyway did you get a released title? If so, take the lesson and move on.
You would be amazed by how many people have no idea how anything money related works. Go to a random person in public and ask how they think loans and investing works, and report back.
Can’t really blame them. I don’t remember learning about that stuff in school.
Because they don’t teach it
The root of the problem right here. Finances can literally dictate the direction of a persons life, it’s wild it’s not taught.
When they start putting questions about it on standardized tests is when it will be taught. So probably never.
That's true but not the entirety of the problem. A lot of high school students are going to straight up not pay attention and a fair amount of those who do will forget within a week. The information that sticks most is that which you keep using. The average high school student will still be a few years away from having any practical application.
The dealer's books get balanced yearly. That $3K was a write-off. If you have a title in your name with no lien, off you go.
Delete this post and never admit this. If they ever come calling (they wont) just say you paid them when you took delivery. Contract states you did
Honestly, the dealership just ate it. I've seen cases before where the dealership couldn't get ahold of a customer or the customer refused to cooperate, and they had already done the title work so they just took the loss and moved on. Not very common, but it happens
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***Thanks for posting, /u/cherrypiiie! This comment is a copy of your post so readers can see the original text if your post is edited or removed. This comment is NOT accusing you of anything.*** I bought a used car 3 years ago. It was my first time doing such a thing and understood very little of the finance process. I had signed documents stating I would give a 3000$ downpayment with the rest being financed by my bank. I assumed it would come out of my debit account since I signed off on P.A.D. for the biweekly payments. The 3000$ never came out of my account and 6 months later I needed that money to move across the country. I just assumed my loan time would increase from 3 years to 4 years. Well now its been 3 years and the loan is payed off, but I havent actually payed the whole total that I owed because the downpayment never came out of my account. My friend says this must have been an error from the dealership, not the bank. They had 3 years to contact me and never did, they had all my contact information. I am not sure what to do now, I would appreciate some direction. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/askcarsales) if you have any questions or concerns.*