Mark Thomas Ford Inc.

**READ BEFORE DOING BUSINESS** Part 1 This will be a little long but I want to explain my Situation from the beginning. To start I called Mark Thomas Ford in search of a used vehicle and I explain to th little long but I want to explain my Situation from the beginning. To start I called Mark Thomas Ford in search of a used vehicle and I explain to them that I needed to be under $300 payment and I didn’t want to put any money down because I just purchased a $40,000 escape from another Ford dealership and I was able to walk out of there with no money down so I didn’t expect to have to put money down on a vehicle that was less than $10,000. I actually sent a online request for a Mazda3 (2012) online on their website and I was later contacted by Josh in sale at Mark Thomas Ford Who had explained to me that he should be able to get me into the vehicle for less than the $300 month with no money down. I made a trip down that Saturday to look at the car with my fiancé, because the car was actually going to be for her, upon arrival she saw a couple of other vehicles that she was interested in as well so we walked around the lot and checked some out. After getting an idea of the different vehicles we wanted to look into we made our way into the office and met Josh. Josh was very adamant about selling the Mazda and basically didn’t want to show us any other vehicle expect for the Mazda, when we mentioned a different car on the lot he kept brushing them off and solely focused on the Mazda. He would say some things along the lines of “oh that one has more miles, or that one is $12,000”. We didn’t really care about the extra couple thousand we just wanted to find the right car for her but felt like we were getting pressured into the Mazda from the jump. So my Fiancé decided she would take it for a test drive, Josh riding with her - which I also found very strange as I had just purchased an Explorer about a year ago and when test driving it they handed me the keys to a brand new Explorer and asked that I brought it back by the time they closed, around 8 hours later. But she took it for a drive and got back and I asked how it drove and asked Josh if there were any lights on in the car prior like the “check engine” “battery” etc, he assured me there were not. So he instantly said alright I’m going to go ahead in and send it in to the bank. Meaning he was going to request the loan approval and not offer to show us anything else. She liked the vehicle so I told her if that’s what she wanted than that’s fine it was her choice if she didn’t want to look somewhere else. When we went into the office to start giving information to run credit checks etc, we explained that we wanted to first try and get the car in her new and if needed I would co-sign for her or if we had to we could put it in my name and then have her co sign for it. We both filled out the paperwork and the first thing he did was ran it under my name with her as a co-signer. That was frustrating because we all know how credit inquiries effect our credit scores, and it takes a while to build that back. I have been working hard building my credit for the last 3-4 years and went from a 400 to 700 which is not great I know, but still a work in progress. Anyway, Josh kept coming back and forth trying different banks and ultimately told us he thought we would need a down payment. I told him I wasn’t interested in putting any money down so he tried a couple more banks, and by this time we had been there roughly 4-5 hours so I told him we were leaving to go grab some lunch - I had worked a 12 hour shift and came straight there so no sleep and no food was no bueno for me. I Told him if he was able to make something happen by the time we finished our lunch then to give me a call and we’d swing back in. He called right as we were finishing up and told us he “thought” he had it worked out and if we could to come back in. So we finished up and went back. Upon arrival he told us there were a couple customers ahead and was complaining about one customer who had ordered a new truck online around 8 months ago and still didn’t have it, he was bad mouthing the customer to us which was another red flag for me really but we waited it out anyway. It took another 2.5 hours for them to tell us it was too late in the day by this point and the banks were all closed that they would get it all finished up on Monday and give us a call. We got a call Monday from Josh saying “Great news, the loan was approved through SevenSeventeen Credit Union and no money down was needed” So I though that’s great let’s get it done, we drove down a little later that day to finish the paperwork. We went into the finance office and literally signed all of the paperwork, added a bumper to bumper warranty and all - at the end Josh walked back into the room and says “oh bad news guys, this loan was approved with a $500 downpayment” and immediately was furious. Why would they even submit the loan request with a downpayment when I explained to them multiple times that I wasn’t going to put any money down? So I said well that’s not going to work for me, they manipulated us into coming back down there and just pressured the xxxx out of us to give them whatever I could that day and pay the rest the following week. After some time I ended up giving them the only $200 I had in my pocket and promised to pay the other $300 the following week. They ripped up all of the paperwork we had already signed, which we know now was the loan approved with no money down, and had to start from the beginning again. And 4 hours wasted. At the end of the day we walked out of there with the Mazda. Unfortunately this is just the beginning of the nightmare, because on day TWO of owning this vehicle the “check engine” light comes on. I was furious. I called Josh and told him, and explained that I would not be paying the $300 until the car was fixed. He told me they would take care of it and to bring it in on Friday so the service department could take a look at it. This was also the day I was suppose to pay the other $300 of the downpayment o was manipulated and pressured into paying. Once I took the car into the service garage and dropped it off he asked me to step into the office. As soon as we walked in he told me to take a seat and he’d go “check on the car” that we just walked away from seconds prior. A couple minutes later a different finance guy approaches me and says “check or card?” To which I responded “check or card what?” He said for the other $300 you owe. I told him I was not paying that $300 and what he should do is go into the safe and give me back the $200 I was manipulated into paying for putting me through this hassle only days after purchasing the car. He told me “oh that’s not going to happen” so I told him neither is the $300. Josh comes back a few minutes later and says “We got the check engine light off, they think they know what’s wrong it’s either the O2 sensor or bad gas so just take it home if the check engine light comes back on then bring it back in and we’ll take a look at it” i was in shock that he actually thought I was going to take that car out of there and wait for the light to come back on and come back and waste even more of my time. He then asked for the $300 from the “promise to pay” I told him the same thing I told the finance guy, when my car is fixed we can talk about the $300. He said “well the check engine light is off now” and I said “yeah that’s probably what you did before we came down to look at it and that’s why you manipulated us into only looking at that vehicle. The manager or “problem solver” as he called himself THOMAS then came and talked to me, I told him this whole story and eventually we came to an agreement that we would talk about the $300 when the car was fixed. I dropped the car off on August 3rd to have the 02 sensor replaced and picked it up this morning. Last week (4 days after leaving with the agreement with Thomas) Mark Thomas Ford tried charging not only my bank account but my credit card that was on file for the $300 without my permission. I would never do business with these scam artists again. As soon as my title comes in the mail I’ll be taking my car to a Kia or Dodge dealership to trade it in I don’t care if I have to take a negative equity hit on it. It will be worth it not having to be in business with these crooks any longer. More