It's time we demand that buying a car not be such a risk-filled endeavor

Victoria Cherniak is a smart cookie. She’s a lawyer with a specialty in the pitfalls of buying autos.

But even she has left a car lot wondering what went wrong. She bought a car, she said, went home, read the paperwork again and saw she’d been had.

She has plenty of company.

Last year, auto sales ranked fourth on the state attorney general’s list of consumer complaints, with 1,134 contacts from people who believed they had been defrauded.

They said odometers had been rolled back, or interest rates had been jacked up, or cars didn’t even make it home.

Cherniak, an economic justice attorney with Columbia Legal Services, thinks those numbers are low. She and a panel of lawyers and experts from the state Attorney General’s office, the Department of Licensing, the National Consumer Law Center and Goodwill Industries gathered last week in Tacoma for “How to Avoid a Clunker: Pitfalls and Policy of Auto Fraud in Washington.”

They came with horror stories:

 • A single mom bought a used car for its safety features. It broke down right away. She spent thousands repairing it until the steering column separated from the frame. It had been in a serious collision, and records of the collision and rebuild had been illegally scrubbed from its title.

 • A man bought a service contract, then brought it with him to cover engine repairs. The dealer disassembled the engine, inspected a valve and ruled the repairs were not covered. He refused to pay for the repairs, or to reassemble the engine.

Those stories, and the thousand-plus others like them, are why Pierce County Asset Building Coalition is launching an effort to educate people about how to protect buyers’ interests on the car lot.

“Auto fraud hurts working people in their ability to keep jobs, build good credit, and have money for other goals. It’s even a public safety problem,” said Barb Gorzinski, the coalition’s program manager.

Buying a car is not a single, simple transaction, said Mary Lobdell of the AG’s Consumer Protection Division.

The dealer can negotiate an array of sub-agreements on the trade-in, selling price, interest, add-ons and extra fees.

For example, a dealer might give a great deal on a trade-in, then raise the loan rate a few percentage points, Lobdell said.

The salesperson’s compelling personality, the impermeable language of contracts, the pitch for undercoating, can work against an unprepared buyer.

If a dealer is unscrupulous, the result can put the buyer – and all the other drivers around her – in peril.

“Consumer Reports found that of the totaled cars involved in fatal accidents, 20 percent were rebuilt and put back on the road, and 30 percent of those rebuilt cars had the totaled disclosure removed from the car’s title,” Cherniak said.

There’s economic harm to consumers, too, she said. Dealers who referred buyers to creditors got $473,501,253 in kickbacks from those lenders in 2007.

Tacoma’s Goodwill Industries evens the odds for low-income, working car buyers who take a course on finances and go through credit repair. Wheels to Work rehabs donated cars, arranges credit for them, and sells them to participants. (Call 253-573-6760 to reach James Watts, who runs the program.)

But one good program won’t fix the problem.

Lawyers are reluctant to take complex fraud cases, and the state can’t investigate all the complaints it gets. The auto sales industry musters masterful lobbying efforts, said Nick Straley and Bruce Neas of Columbia Legal Services.

The public should do the same.

Send old-fashioned paper letters to state legislators, visit them in their offices, Neas said.

Tell them you want what people in other states have: a lemon law for used cars; the right to return a vehicle within a set period; minimum safety standards for used cars; and a requirement for dealers to inspect cars and disclose defects.

If you have a story of a car deal gone horribly wrong, tell your legislators. Remind them that the majority of people they represent don’t sell cars. They buy them, and they deserve adequate legal protection.

Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677

kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com

Buying a used car: How to protect yourself

 • Get the car inspected by a mechanic and a body shop.

 • At the lot, do not give a dealer your driver’s license or your only key to your car. Only give copies.

 • Do not sign an “as is” sticker without asking specific questions about the car, especially its safety systems. Use that information as a bargaining tool.

 • Never sign a blank document, especially one dealing with financing.

 • If a dealer offers to lower the monthly payment, check the length of the loan.

 • Before you shop, log onto the Center for Responsible Lending’s Web site, www.responsiblelending.org, and browse the articles on auto loans.

 • Log onto www.consumerlaw.org/issues/auto/content/report-fuelingfairpractices0309.pdf and read John Van Alst’s report for the National Consumer Law Center for a detailed look at lending tactics.