Victim of title washing, dealer wants more money on trade-in

[tonyaganni]

What is the name of your state?California

I traded in a 1996 Volvo to a dealership for a 1990 BMW. The Volvo has a clean California title that does not say salvage. The dealership did a title history search when they took it to auction and discovered it had a salvage title in Washington and had the title "washed" when it was brought to California. They are broadly "hinting" that we owe them more money on the trade-in and they say that washing a vehicle title is a felony and ask if we want them to go ahead and turn the title over to the DMV or pay them additional money.

We did not know the car had a previous salvage title. Do we have any liability or owe the dealership any additional money for any reason? Thanks.

 

[teflon_jones]

If the dealership already agreed to a trade-in amount in writing, then that's what you get for the car. They should have done the title search before giving you the trade-in figure. If the title is valid, then there's nothing they can do in this situation. It sounds like they're just trying to get more money out of you!

 

[tonyaganni]

Thank you...

...that is what I thought. I appreciate your help.

 

[Shelby6718]

California "brands" titles (salvage,etc) and "brands" from other states carryover to California titles. If, as you say, it did not carryover it was appartently a error on the part of the state when it was brought into Calif. However, you may want to read the fine print in your contract. Many vehicle contracts stipulate that if anything not disclosed at the time of trade-in/purchase shows up after the fact the deal is null and void.It may or may not apply in this case. You may also want to run a carfax and see for yourself exactly what is going on. If the Calif. title was "clean" and you had no knowledge of it ever having a salvage title, tell them to contact DMV and "go at it". However, it you(or a member of your family) brought the car in from Washington state, transferred the "salvage" title and lucked out when it came back clean, that's a whole different matter.

 

[tonyaganni]

Yes, I've seen "branded" titles (samples of them, anyway)...

...on California titles before. The title to my car was not branded at all. We bought the car in a private sale in 2001 in Sacramento and they were not a family member, friend or anyone we knew before. We're happy to cooperate with a DMV investigation as I can't believe a practice like this can occur. I think it's the DMV who really screwed up by giving a clean title incorrectly at some point. Our son was less than one year old when he was riding in the car and I now have no confidence in it's safety.

After learning what the dealership found, we did run a Carfax and see the same facts that they do.

I can't find anything in our contract that states anything about the value of the trade besides a statement about how much value they assigned to it (which wasn't much). California has no cooling off period so if they want more money from the trade-in, they can have their car back and I'll take the Volvo back. I'm confident that they sold their BMW for enough money that they don't want to undo the deal. I suspect they will finally turn the title over to the DMV and we'll see if they do something about it.

I hope the DMV does follow up but don't have a lot of confidence in their ability to find the people who "scrubbed" the title. If they were totally on the ball, they wouldn't have let it happen in the first place.

 

[teflon_jones]

If you didn't know it had a salvage title before, then you have nothing to worry about. Enjoy your new car.

 

[Matt2005]

What was the final outcome?

tonyaganni - what ended up happening in your situation? I have found myself to be in the same situation, after a salvage title came back on my trade in car. The calls from the dealer demanding more money 3 weeks after the sale have become very stressful. Thanks!

Matt2005