Seller's Remorse?

Don't buy a truck from Bill Heard Chevrolet in Tennessee (or in any other state, for that matter).

Apparently, a gentleman names Kieselhorst bought a 2003 truck from the dealership, negotiated a price, signed a contract, paid cash plus his trade-in, and drove his new car home.

Just one day after he bought the truck, a salesman from Bill Heard called to say the dealership was having second thoughts about the deal.

He told Kieselhorst that if he wanted to keep his truck, he needed to fork over another $10,000 -- something he refused to do. After all, he says, they had a signed deal.

So the dealership STOLE THE TRUCK. As a matter of fact, after demanding another $11,000 on the second call, they have the truck for sale on the lot.

Let me get this straight: the dealership made the deal, accepted the cash, and then decided that they didn't like the sale price? So they demanded more money. And when they didn't get it, they decided to take the truck back. They claim they were "hoodwinked" by Keiselhorst's wife.

"This is the way this company does business," Calligan [reporter] says. "They really thought they would be able to pull a fast one on their customer."

After we tried to get their side for days, Bill Heard faxed us a statement just before air time, saying that Kieselhorst "should have known" that the deal he got was too good to be true

So far, they haven't returned his money, and the DA won't press charged because it is a "civil matter", because it is a contract dispute. Sorry, but if I have the paperwork and a signed contract, and someone -- anyone -- takes the car, it's THEFT. It's not like they even had the gray area of "financing didn't come through" or something like that. They just wanted more money.

Every talk radio station in the country picked this up -- our local station had call-ins from people who had had the same kind of experience here in Denver (including the threat of a felony lawsuit if they didn't pony up another $3K after the sale was finished). I doubt that Bill Heard Chevrolet expected the kind of publicity they got from this.

Of course, even a cursory search of the name in Google revealed that the "largest Chevrolet dealer in the country" has a long history of this kind of fraudulent behavior in other states as well. Hm.