Dealers Still Falsely Imprison Customers?! Ep. 7.299

welcome once again to lato's law here's steve lato several people tipped me off to a story in jalopnik which i kind of knew about because i got interviewed for it but tom mcparland wrote it posted it and i didn't catch before two people including gala and gene sent it to me said hey steve there's a story here i think you'll be interested in what's always funny is when people send me stories and they go hey have you seen this yet and they don't realize that i'm in the story but these people caught it these people caught it and then i got an email last night for another friend of mine who said steve you got mentioned in a story on jalopnik and i wrote him back and said yeah and he goes did you catch they misspelled your name i said i didn't even catch that i'm sorry but people can be forgiven for switching the h and the t we don't see the ht letter combination a lot in the english language as much we see th so apparently some car dealers think it's okay to detain customers against their will and tom mcparlin wrote atomic parliament is the guy i mentioned him before he specializes in finding and helping people buy cars so he find a car for you and he'll negotiate the sale for you and get he does the dirty work for you when buying a new car if you want him to so tom mcparland's a great guy i've known him for a long time you would think that by 2021 car doors would have wised up and fixed the broken mess that is car shopping many stores have adapted but some are still relying on classic steelership tricks one of the most egregious is preventing someone from leaving the showroom this is actually something i remember this being discussed in law school so this is something that's been going around for a long time maybe not as often as it used to but it still happens the fact that still happens is scary so imagine going to a local big box store for this you know specific item only to learn when you get there that the price isn't as good as you thought on your way out the manager sends some goons to block the exit and demands that you take that deal right now you go that's crazy car dealerships eh not so crazy so a jalopnik reader who is a maryland consumer protection stranger daniel whitney jr and i do not know mr whitney but he sounds like he's doing the lord's work told uh tom about two recent cases his firm handled in which dealerships resorted to false imprisonment in an attempt to force a customer to take a deal that's clearly not the buyer's best interest and you know there's a thing about this it's it's a it's a spectrum right it's a scale and i've heard of stories before where they'll try really hard to keep you from leaving but usually by just using mental pressure right oh you don't want to leave oh no no you know and and they'll and they'll you know gather around somebody and and they won't block you so much as they'll just kind of get in your way or they'll really really browbeat you or they'll really really try to sit there and argue with you and cajole you uh and and so the question is how far out of their way will they go to stop you from leaving because most states have got a tort called false imprisonment and false arrest is where i come up and i go you're under arrest but if i lock you in a room or lock you in a building or keep you from leaving a place against your will that can be false imprisonment and that's not good so those cases arose when a dealership was attempting to force a customer to take a deal that's clearly not in the buyer's best interest and by the way it doesn't matter you have the right to turn down a deal you don't have to buy a car you don't have to buy a car so on mr whitney's blog post he described one of the cases as this after signing a contract for a new car our client realized she'd been charged more than she'd agreed to pay the resulting dispute led to the car dealer manager trying to force her to sign paperwork that she did not want to sign and was not necessary given that the sale had been completed she refused and despite the threats the manager went back to her car to try and leave however when she returned to her car she found herself blocked in by another car that the manager had an employee parked directly in front of her it was only after calling the police that the dealership allowed her to leave so she actually said i'm going to leave walks out to a car and finds it's been blocked in by a dealership car the customer then contacted mr whitney's firm and they were able to settle the case with a dealership for a hundred thousand dollars he also told tom about another case in which a woman took her car in for service and showed interest in a new car deal only to have the dealer hide the keys to her trade-in for hours until she was forced to call the police that hide the keys trick is actually something in the business known as the hide the keys trick not joking you talk to an attorney who deals with automobile dealerships like oh yeah the old hide the keys trick and it's like a hidden baseball trick in baseball just something that's been around for hundreds of years but you bring in your car for trade you're thinking about buying a car they go hand us the keys and take it around back have it appraised you hand them the keys they take the car around back and they go yeah your trading is only worth a thousand dollars okay i want to leave oh we'll go find your keys the guy just disappears salesman comes out and goes well have you found a car you like no i've decided i'm gonna leave oh okay that guy disappears another salesman walks out and goes uh if you found a car you like yet no i'm trying to leave where's my car all your cars up back we're looking for the keys right now and i've actually had them you know i've heard stores where they said we've lost your keys and there's a famous case and there's a famous case that we talked about a long time ago where you know sales people at dealerships you used to have a real reputation for being kind of goofy and crazy think about all the bad tv ads you see for local car dealerships and there was an occasion where a guy came into a dealership and and he goes i'd like to buy a car but i don't know if you can make a deal with me today you know because i'm a harsh negotiator and the guy goes that you trade right there and he takes the keys yeah he goes okay here's the deal because i guarantee him to get your deal today in fact i'm so confident takes the keys and throws him on the roof of the dealership goes that's how confident i am that you're going to buy a car today the guy goes what if i don't want to buy a car guys no you're going to buy a car today because that's how good of a deal i'm going to make you and he continues offering him bad deals finally the guy goes look i want to leave you can't leave your keys are on the roof so stories like that the old hide the keys trick in addition to speaking with mr whitney elsa contact and former jalopnik contributor and consumer protection attorney steve lato he said that he had never handled a false imprisonment case but he'd heard dealers with doing the hide the keys trick on a number of occasions i asked both attorneys what customers should do if they find themselves in a situation where a dealer is preventing them from leaving both said that dealers will often immediately change their approach once the police are called they will trust me another possible approach is to take out your cell phone and start recording the conversation mr whitney says that as long as the other person is aware you are recording you avoid issues with local laws and that's true so you're not going to hide the phone on your body it's a one consent state you could but you don't need to pull the phone out turn on the recorder and go i'm just recording this conversation now why can't i have my keys back and you'd be surprised what people won't say when they know it's being recorded for posterity as we say he also says that once dealers let you leave you may still have a legal issue he advises that you email the dealership with instructions to preserve all interior and exterior audio and video recordings on the date the incident happened in anticipation of litigation and that way the stuff disappears you can say well you have to preserve it now tom writes i'm sure some car shoppers would like to extract a nice settlement from a dealership i think the best way to manage these situations is to avoid them all together and that's you're preaching the choir my friend i've always said that the the easiest cure is to not get injured the vast majority of dealers know better but consumers should get a quote in writing ahead of time and do some research about the dealer via reviews and social media for what that's worth then buyers can focus on the stores that are professional and cooperative but you know it might not be a store policy it might just be one or two bad sales people but you never know um but i've heard of all kinds of crazy stories and i remember a relative of mine shall we say who went car shopping and he was toying with the idea just toying with the idea of buying a car and he went into a dealership and a salesman to recognize him comes trotting out and it's oh you're car shopping today and the guy goes yeah i am guy goes going to trade this one in he goes well if i buy a car i am give me the keys keys jumps in the car takes drum back comes running back out let's go look at cars now and my friend goes where's my car the guy is oh it's back it's out back where we're you know we haven't appraised all that stuff and he asked several times about where his car was and the guy kept blowing him off the point where he goes he goes i actually thought to myself i may never see my car again regardless he wound up buying a car he wound up buying a car but he said that and the guy was an attorney by the way he said that the way the transaction worked he's convinced that part of it was that the second they could make his car disappear the more likely in his mind he was going to think i need another car because my car is gone and i'm going to put the link to tom's article on jalopnik in the description below the video so you can go read his article but i'm going to urge you to read the comments below i have not read them yet but i assure you you're going to see a lot of comments in there similar to comments you're going to see under this video where people are going to have horror stories about when they went to trade in cars or went to car shopping and i've also heard these already on previous videos of mine where people will say things like i i brought my car in uh i was you know thinking about buying a car and next thing i heard they'd sold my trade in somehow you know or my trade-in had disappeared it was gone and they can get ahead of themselves and the same way they can sell a corvette that they don't own or a bronco that's not for sale they can also sell a car that someone hasn't traded in yet and and really really weird stories like that and it's it's almost like the car dealership is that is that thing and i've used this before but a car dealership like that thing in star trek that's floating through space just swallowing up everything in front of it a car dealership is just this thing that's just buying and selling cars buying and selling cars and it's almost like like you can't stop the machine once your car's on the lot it might just get sold even though it's still your car so that's a little bit of a different thing but here we have a situation where a car dealership gets you on the lot they think they've set the hook but they haven't they haven't set the hook so it's like what do we do now this person's going to leave and they haven't bought the car yet well stop them you know and i've had some weird experiences car shopping it's one of the reasons that i complained so much about it and i remember car shopping when i was younger before i was an attorney and i remember once i'm going into a car dealership and and looking at a car i really like the car and i thought the price was close but it wasn't close enough and it wasn't that far off it was just i think it was like 500 bucks and i'm thinking to myself you know something this is weird i wonder if this guy's going to let this deal fall apart over 500 bucks and so i said you know something i go you know you're there i'm here we're 500 bucks apart you're you're not going to move neither am i i'm going to leave and i stand up and start walking out and the guy goes well are you gonna come back or something like that and i go ah if i change my mind and the guy actually said to me he goes steve he goes if i had a dollar for every single person who left who said they're gonna come back but doesn't because i'd be a rich man and i thought well that's kind of a kind of an interesting and and very intimate confession to make as a car sales person because you must see people leaving all the time who never come back and i can tell you why it's because you're a jerk the guy was so oh good times car shopping apparently some car dealers think it's okay to detain customers against their will tom mcparland wrote it he mentions me for what that's worth jalopnik.com i used to write for them and uh gala and gene sent to me thanks a lot questions comments put them below let's talk to you later bye-bye thank you for watching latest law when we approve of ourselves rather than always seeking approval from others we find happiness

Channel: Steve Lehto

Views: 112,819

Rating: 4.9572368 out of 5

Keywords: lemon law, michigan lemon law, lemon law attorney, lemon law lawyer, http://www.lehtoslaw.com, steve lehto

Id: bBoesX6SFH8

Length: 12min 30sec (750 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 13 2021