Chicago Auto Mart

BUYER BEWARE! I highly do NOT reccommend Chicago Auto Mart, especially if you are coming in from out of state. They do not honor their sales and contract, regardless if you had put down a deposit or not. Mart, especially if you are coming in from out of state. They do not honor their sales and contract, regardless if you had put down a deposit or not. I dealt with Artur and he does not operate with any honesty or integrity, very typical of a used car salesman. I had made an offer on a 2001 Toyota Tacoma (VIN 5TEWN72N71Z780447) on Saturday Sept. 24th, 2011. They did not initially accept my offer, but called me after the weekend and had agreed to my offer. He understood that I was coming in from Pennsylvania and planned to fly in and drive the truck back home. He told me they had a lot of experience with out of state transactions. I asked whether they did free airport pickup (Midway-Airport was 5 miles away) - he said sure thing, we can do that for you. He then drafted a contract up, faxed it to me, I signed it and faxed it back. Once he received it, he called me back and I provided my credit card details for the $2000 deposit. He then asked when I would be available to pick up the car, I told him in about two weeks. He said no problem, we can hold the car for you, "Call me back once you have confirmed the airfare and date". I immediately began looking for flights and booked them for Oct. 15th to pick up the car. During this whole process, the AD was still listed on Cars.com and also on their own website. I called in to ask if they were going to take it down, he said they were busy with it and would get on top of it. I thought to myself, "Ok, no problem, the car is safe since I had a deposit on it". Once I had my flights confirmed, I called Artur to let him know the exact date and time I would be coming. This is when things turned for the worse. He stated to me "Oh, we don't have the title for the truck yet. I will try to find out when it should be arriving and call you back tonight." I did not panic at this point yet, but never received a phone call back that day. So I waited until the next day and figured I would give them extra time. Nearing the end of the next business day and no call yet, I decided to call him to get some kind of update. He immediately tells me "You're out of state, so we can't sell you this car without the title". I was shocked to hear that! From our very first conversation, he knew I was coming in from PA and never once mentioned we would have any complications. He was very quick to take my deposit. We continued arguing over the details, and he tells me: "The bottom line is we will not do this transaction. I had a bad day and you are making things worse." At this point I was angry and upset, but held it together. I figured it would not be worth my time to fight over this anymore as I no longer wanted to do business with this dealership. I told him "Fine, refund my full deposit and reimburse me for my airfair." His exact words were: "I cannot do that, you should have purchased trip insurance, I know I do that with all of my flights." I could not believe I was being treated this way. Never once was I offered any kind of compensation or an apology for the inconvenience. Instead, he flipped the blame on me and basically said it was my fault for not doing my due diligence in being a savvy buyer. I told him I would make sure to write negative reviews and contact the BBB to help protect other future potential customers. He told me "Go ahead if you have so much time". So after all that, I now have $2000 withdrawn from my account pending a dispute, 2 non-refundable one-way airfare tickets to Chicago, and a mission to make sure anyone looking for online reviews is aware of how Chicago Auto Mart and Artur does business. More