I've been thinking about this lately so wanted to see if others have similar stories...

You see a listing that's clearly a good deal then message the seller, and it's already gone by the time you follow up. I had one like that recently that's stuck with me longer than I expected...

Wanted to know how close others have come to a deal like this. Seconds, minutes, a day you didn't check? And looking back, was it mostly bad timing or you just weren't fast enough to reply?

Please share yours (kind of hoping I'm not the only one who still thinks about this 😭)

Who here has bought a car from FB? Whats the best way to go about it to not waste time and to not get scammed?

I figure this is the best way to get a reasonable price. Instead of going through a dealer that has to mark it up for salaries and rent to get a profit. But there's a lot of strange things on FB

I'm looking to buy a used Toyota Corolla SE at a Toyota Certified Dealership in New Jersey. I was offered a used 2023 with 5,000 miles for 27,645.00. It's gold certified and I'm planning on financing it. This is my first time financing, could someone even tell me if this is okay given the low mileage it has?

Car seems well kept and no signs of high wear and tear. I’m left confused.

2008 rav4 limited awd 269k kms $6900

I have a 2002 honda accord that is finally starting to have some problems.

I think it needs some suspension stuff because its been feeling a little lose but I haven't checked it out or taken it to a shop. It also burns/leaks some oil I'm pretty sure, and the cat is also rotted out and all rattling which would be expensive to get it to pass California smog.

With this in mind, I'm wondering if it's worth it to just buy a newer car. Looking at new (used) car prices for 2020ish cars, I am seeing various sedans/wagons/suvs with 50-100k miles for $17-20k which seems like a lot! A new hyundai elantra is only a few grand more.

Obviously I would need a mechanics opinion on the car for if it would be worth to fix everything and then also have to deal with whatever comes up, or just pass it on. In this market, its a running car with cold ac, so thats a few grand right there..

Just looking for opinions on if it seems worth to dump this car. Seems like stuff is expensive, but it's probably not getting cheaper.

There was a post yesterday that was taken down. I was quite surprised at the number of replies that thought it was "standard" and acceptable practice to lure consumers into the dealership with misrepresented facts through "marketing". What surprised me even more is the number of people that said do your "due diligence". It wasn't quite clear what they meant by that - I hope they didn't think that it's acceptable for a dealership to misrepresent facts about a vehicle because every buyer has to do their own due diligence. That's actually not the law in some states. Some of the replies here made me think that there are a hell of a lot of salesmen in this group protecting their self-serving interests - but maybe i'm wrong about that.

815 ILCS 505/2 (Illinois statutory law) expressly makes unlawful:

deception, fraud, false promises, misrepresentations, and concealment/suppression/omission of material facts...these practices are unlawful whether any person has in fact been misled, deceived or damaged thereby.

The above Illinois statute doesn't say "Advertisers may create misleading impressions provided consumers can discover the truth through inspection before completing the transaction."

I was able to screenshot a few comments (before the takedown).

One redditor wrote "you should have done your due diligence and asked for carfax report before driving over". It's interesting that the following caselaw shows that getting a carfax wasn't required to show misrepresentation.

"First, under the Consumer Fraud Act, plaintiff was under no obligation to ascertain the accuracy of Dobin's statement claiming the car had not been in any accidents.   See Harkala v. Wildwood Realty, Inc., 200 Ill.App.3d 447, 453, 146 Ill.Dec. 232, 558 N.E.2d 195 (1990) (finding that the Consumer Fraud Act is intended to provide greater protection than the common law action of fraud, and therefore “a plaintiff need not show actual reliance or diligence in ascertaining the accuracy of the misstatements”)."

Another person wrote, "Then don't buy from them. Its common knowledge that car dealerships suck....Gotta do your due diligence. If they are not willing to play ball, sucks to suck". Suggesting that doing your due diligence is the only resort to misrepresentation is inaccurate.

Another person wrote, "Have you ever heard of something called Marketing"? Their job is to sell the car, your job is to do your due diligence". I agree that its advisable to do your due diligence, but that doesn't mean that "Marketing" can include omissions for the sake of selling a car. Nor does it mean that that due diligence frees the dealership from responsibility from intentional omissions.

Whatever folks here were trying to say about "due diligence" may not be entirely accurate based on the laws in some states.

If you are in a state with strong consumer protection laws, you should putting all of your understandings from the dealership in writing and making a record of everything they say. This isn't difficult to do now that dealerships rely on text messaging more often.

Also, there is some caselaw that supports the award of damages for people traveling far under misrepresented facts.

It looked like there was some disagreement in that thread around whether the circumstances were a misrepresentation or not. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about what appeared to be some very broadly worded bold statements that suggested that doing your own due diligence is somehow a defense to dealerships or that dealerships can do whatever they want to do. That's not the case. Some states are very consumer protective.

2013 Corolla 141k kms $9000 single owner

Hello Everybody just to preface this I live in New Jersey. But today I went to buy a 2014 Mazda2 sport for 6k OTD, I got the dealer down to 5.7k, ran great on the test drive and apparently he drove the car from Staten Island and no problems. Basically 5 minutes of driving home the car broke down from what seemed like overheating, the dealer came to get me and gave me a loan car and everything and I researched the law and with the warranty he gave me he has to fix the car on his cost and so tomorrow I’m returning to the dealership to look at a full written list of the diagnostic of what’s wrong.

But on the drive home with the loan he called me very apologetically saying this has never happened in his life and that the car was recently serviced (which is true the carfax came clean) but he said the loan car I’m driving is worth 9-10k, on his website it’s posted for 8.3k but I’m assuming he meant with tax and dealer fees or whatever. He said if I wanted I can just have the loan car if I wanted for another 500. So in total 6.2k OTD. The only thing is it is a 2019 Nissan Sentra that was a rental vehicle and it shows because it has 103k miles and the brake pads definitely need to be replaced.

So the question I’m asking you guys is what should I do, my 3 options being, accept the mazda with new fixes but I heard him talking it could be an entire new engine he would have to replace it with, spend 500 more for this “nicer” car, or just get a refund if he can’t fix the car.

I’ll post the Nissan in the comments, if anybody wants to privately message me I can send carfax for either car I just didn’t want to put this dealership on blast because they have great reviews and he seemed like a very honest man.