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January 19, 2010, 2:03 pmDealer Sues Woman to Cancel ‘Good Deal’By CARLA BARANAUCKASYou’ve heard consumer reporters say it over and over again: “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”And now a Chrysler dealership in Hopkins, Minn., is using that concept to sue a customer over a deal it says she should have known was an error.In October, Tammie Townsend of Golden Valley, Minn., bought the 2007 Chrysler Pacifica that she had been leasing for two years. She signed the papers to convert the lease to a sale, agreeing to pay $11,639, or about $6,000 less than the car’s Blue Book value, James Eli Shiffer wrote in The Minneapolis Star Tribune on Saturday.And there’s the rub. Walser Chrysler says that the price was “an administrative error,” The Star Tribune reported. The dealership contacted Ms. Townsend two weeks after the purchase to say that it wanted an additional $7,000 or she needed to return the car. “She was told several times what the [correct] price was,” said Doug Sprinthall, vehicle operations director for Walser Automotive Group. “We made a clerical error.” In fact, Mr. Sprinthall said, the dealership would have reimbursed Ms. Townsend if it had accidentally overcharged her.But Ms. Townsend, whose husband recently lost his job, doesn’t see it that way. “You can’t sell someone something and then come back and say: ‘Whoops, I made a mistake. You have to pay more,’ ” said Ms. Townsend, 40, a hairstylist who lives in Golden Valley.Ms. Townsend said in a telephone interview on Monday that since the article about her situation appeared in The Star Tribune, she had been inundated with phone calls from people — “even people I don’t know,” she said — supporting her.The dealership has been getting phone calls, too, and those calls have also been backing Ms. Townsend, Mr. Sprinthall said on Tuesday.But he said some of those callers had misconceptions, thinking that the deal had been a straight sale. But it was a lease-buyback arrangement, he said. So there are essentially two contacts — the original contract for the lease, which set a purchase price for the car, and the contract for the actual purchase.“We’re attempting to negotiate this out with Tammie right now,” Mr. Sprinthall said, although Ms. Townsend said in an e-mail message on Tuesday that she had not heard anything about that from her lawyer.“We don’t make a habit of suing customers,” he said. “I think we’ll work it out, and we’ll move on.”

Administrative and Clerical errors are just that, not the responsibility of the consumer. Now if the person was getting paid 200,000 for a job that only told her she was getting paid $20,000 and she failed to report it to them, she would be liable. But in this case, the dealer has to suck it up, accept the loss and fire whoever wrote up the paperwork for incompentancy. Actually fire the manager who approved it. Morons.

If there's a contract for the lease with a purchase price, and a second purchase contract with a much lower purchase price, which takes precedence? Does the signing of the second contract void the first? I'm with her, but I fear that she'll be held liable somehow. Like if an ATM spit an extra $7,000 out at you or if somehow $7,000 appeared in your bank account due to a clerical error. You'd be liable for the funds. I wonder what her bank's stance is on this? I assume she purchased this through a bank loan, so they would have had to sign off on some paperwork as well. That would make the van their property, and they may be a little more hard-nosed about it.

The leasing companies' residuals (the buy out amount) have often been overly optimistic. Who would buy their leased vehicle for $17,000 when the fmv of that vehicle turned out to be thousands less at lease end. In 1999 I bought out a leased Corolla for significantly less than the buyout number in the lease. Wells Fargo Bank still got more than they would have by sending it to auction where it was headed had I not bought it.I suspect that Pacifica was not that much underpriced at $11,639.

The second contract should take precedence; it is just as if she were trading in a car with a lien. The new contract would void the original contract, same with vehicle refinancing (her situation). The original lease agreement would have had the buy out amount amount on the contract, the salesman made a mistake when he wrote that number. Not only did the sales person not catch their mistake but then the F&I manager would have missed it also when they sent the new contract through.But now if you or I were to buy a new car tomorrow it would be ok for the dealer to charge us 6000-7000 over MSRP if we agreed to the terms and SIGNED THE CONTRACT!I hope she ends on top in this situation, and finally the dealers will know how it feels to grab ankles.

I.A.N.A.L. but this doesn't sound like it holds water and she has a very good lawsuit against them for this crud.

This deal went through a lot of people to get approved. The dealer should just take the hit and do some hiring of competent staff!

A quick search of Edmunds/AutoTrader for a used 2007 Chrysler Pacifica with under 30,000 miles, located any miles from zip code 55343, revealed two Pacificas in the US with a selling price under $12,000: one with a salvage title, and the other with CarFax-reported but unspecified accident damage. The average dealer asking price of all the 2007 Pacificas listed (10+ pages) is around $17k. Costly penmanship lesson, I'd say. If some salesgoof wrote an illegible '7' that looked like a '1', and F&I guy & management approved it as an $11k sale instead of $17k sale, and it got written and signed, it's on them.The stealership can make that $7k up next week on a couple of truck customers by giving them half what their trade is actually worth.

They were probably so giddy at the prospect of hosing this buyer with the contract residual buyout number that they neglected to verify the amount.

Quote, originally posted by jake75 »They were probably so giddy at the prospect of hosing this buyer with the contract residual buyout number that they neglected to verify the amount.+1

Quote, originally posted by keithvibe »I.A.N.A.L.Ummmm...you're what? TMI?I agree that they should just man up and let her have it at the amount she signed for on the purchase agreement. They should take the loss and make the idiot that approved it pay the difference. That'll learn them.