Business ProfileforAuto Now

Purchased a vehicle on Saturday afternoon June 3rd. We could not contact the bank for an accurate pay off amount for our trade in because the banks were closed for the day. AutoNow told us to give them our best guess on what we thought the pay off would be close to. We guessed maybe around $3500. They told us to get them the actual pay off amount as soon as we could but they would just put in $3500 for the day so that we could go ahead and take possession of the truck we were buying. We got them the actual pay off amount from the bank that following week, on June 6th or 7th. They thanked us and told us they would get the trade in paid off. Yesterday on June 15th they called us and said that we owe them $400 because the actual pay off amount was closer to $3900 than $3500. I reminded them of the conversation we had when we signed papers for the truck and how they said they would pay the vehicle off but would put in our rough estimate for the time being so that we could close the deal. They told us that because we signed the documents that had $3500 on them that they will not be paying a penny more for our trade and they would not be paying off the vehicle like they had promised. They then told us it was our fault for guessing the wrong amount on what the pay off could have been close to. I reminded them that they did pull our credit and should have reviewed those documents to get a better number for the pay off for the car because it did list the amount we had financed on the credit report. They said they could only take a customers word for pay off amounts and again it was our fault for guessing the wrong amount. I would never buy another vehicle from these crooks if my life depended on it. Buyers beware!

Under normal circumstances it is at the mercy of the buyer to provide payoff for trade-in's.  Banks have strict security processes in place on customer's information being given out. Therefore, an account number and or social is needed. To miss represent ourselves as the customer to obtain payoff is bank fraud. In some cases, we have an agreement with banks to provide us with payoffs pending customer consent. Furthermore, getting a bank approval a customer gets approved for a certain amount financed and the payoff reflects the total amount financed on the purchased car. Example; if purchase price is $10,000  minus trade in value $5000 plus payoff $3000 equals amount financed of $8000, reflecting the approval amount of $8000. In a case like this using $3000 as payoff and it changing to $3900 will make the amount financed $8900, making it $900 over approval amount. There for having to come out of pocket $900. Luckily, in this case after some explanation, the customer and we are on good terms and have settled their account.