I've heard many times that Rosenthal car dealers should be avoided at all cost and this is one of them!!!
------------------------------------------------------------- #1 of 33 Dealership Fraud w/Rosenthal Nissan, Vienna, VA by mellie1 Jun 22, 2003 (10:16 pm) I bought a 2003 Nissan Altima on May 6. One week later the bank (the dealership is using) contacts me to say they're not approving the loan. I rush to dealership and they say "not to worry and that it sometimes happens and we'll go on your behalf to get it through".
Two+ weeks later I get a call (this is now 3-1/2 weeks from when I bought the car)and I get a call from salesman asking me to call him back. I do (3 times) but he doesn't return my call so I again go to the dealership to see what's up. I get there and ask why the salesman would be calling me and they said it was probably just to check out how I liked the car. While I'm there I ask how did the financing turn out and without checking they said "well, if you've had the car this long everything should be fine". I said I wanted to know for sure. A bit later I'm told that their finance people are calling around to check with banks for financing for me. I ask, "isn't this a bit late after I already bought the car 3+ weeks ago?" Anyway, after a while another finance person comes to talk to me and tells me that the first finance person "mishandled my loan" and that I should never have gotten the rate that I was given. I told the finance person that it seemed a bit late to now be telling me this. He went on to tell me that if I didn't come up with an additional down payment of $2900 in 2 days (that would make it Friday, May 30) that I would then have to return the new car. I said it wasn't fair that I should only be given
2 days to come up with an additional down payment of almost $3,000 but the attitude was "take it or leave it."I'm now in a panic because I can't see how it is that one can sign a contract and think they've already bought the car and then be told down the road that I now have to come up with additional money down?
I do a search for attorneys and find one that says he's seen something similar happen to a friend of his and that he wants to help me out. So, this is now the Friday that I'm supposed to have either come up with the extra money or return the car.
That Friday my newfound attorney tells me that not to worry that I'm not returning the car that day or the next day (Saturday 5/31) and by then he's talking to the dealership telling them that he's now representing me and that we at least want them (the dealership) to "eat" the $2900 since they waited almost a month before telling me this and that as good faith they should do this.
Well, the dealership remains adamant that I do not have a choice and that they still want their additional $2900.
This back and forth discussions is taking place between the attorney and the dealership now for a couple weeks. On June 11, I get a call from the Finance Mgr to call him at Rosenthal Nissan. I do not return his call because I don't want to undermine whatever my attorney has in the works plus I thought that the dealership people were to go through my attorney so I tell my attorney the next day that this Finance Mgr. wanted me to call him. The attorney says he'll call this guy and tell him that he's representing me and when he calls him (the Finance Mgr) he appears ignorant that he didn't know I had an attorye. (How he could not know is beyond me because we had already been dealing with the finance person who reports to this Finance Mgr. now for a couple weeks).
Finally, as we're not getting anywhere with this whole thing I tell my attorney on Tuesday, June 17th that I want "out of this whole thing" and that I just want to return my new car to them and get my old car and my money back. The attorney calls and talks to the Finance Mgr. that evening (Tuesday) and tells him what I want and the Finance Mgr. says that's fine and that I can return my car on Friday, June 20th and get my money and my old car back.
The next day I walk out to go to work and my car is GONE! Yep, gone! I call my attorney and he calls the dealership and they deny that they had the car repo'd. He even talks to the Finance Mgr. who also tells my attorney that he's had nothing to do with my car's disappearance. The attorney asks the Finance Mgr. if it's possible that he may have already started the process of repo'ing my car before they had talked the previous night and the Mgr. says "no" that he hadn't put in for any kind of repo'ing of my car. He says he'll check with who they outsource to and supposedly he does and tells my attorney that no one did any repo'ing from there either.
As the day progresses I've now called my insurance company and they advise me to file a police report as they said that since it's now
4:00 PM I have to assume it's stolen since the dealership has continued to deny any involvement. I go to the Herndon Police Dept. and they check their log book and sure enough it shows that Rosenthal Nissan did indeed repo my car! I call my attorney back and he's incredulous that Rosenthal Nissan has been lying about their involvement in my car being repo'd when there's direct proof from the Police Department. Even after I give this bit of news to my attorney and he's now called Rosenthal to tell them what I've found out, the very Finance Mgr. who had on the day before just made the agreement that I had until Friday to return the car and who also said he had not had any involvement with the car being repo'd I now learn through the Police Dept. that he is the one who authorized the repo and yet here he is calling my attorney a liar and hangs up on him!Later that day (this is still Wednesday, June 18) the General Manager has now learned what has happened and tells my attorney he feels badly about it and that he wants to make it up to me. The attorney relays this to me and I told him "no way, they had their chance." The attorney relays this back to the GM and the GM also tells my attorney that even had a repo been necessary that it was still their (the dealerships) responsibility to have given me notice that my car would be repo'd but my atttorney tells him that never happened. Here I couldn't even go to work that day because my badge was in the repo'd car and I had been wasting the whole day trying to track down what had happened to my car.
Later Wednesday evening the attorney tells me that the GM wants to somehow make it up to me but I tell my attorney that at this point in time I just want my downpayment and my old car back. The attorney again relays this to the GM and the GM says I can come in the next day and sign the papers and get my money and my car back.
My attorney sends his associate to meet me the next morning (Thursday, June 19) at the dealership. We get there but conveniently there's no higher up management there and that it's the GM's day off. As I had expected, we're given the ol' delay tactic and kept waiting in an office. This flunkie, Paul Hamilton, says he'll go and see if he can find the car that was repo'd so I can get my stuff out of it. At first he can't locate it but after some time he do