Miller Leiby has been retained to represent both consumers and dealerships in a variety of matters relating to Automobile Dealership Fraud. Auto Dealer Fraud Law refers to the many fraudulent, deceptive and unlawful practices often used or alleged to have been used by new and used car dealerships during advertising, pricing negotiation, and sales and financing of a vehicle. Cases handled by our firm have included issues relating to:

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• Bait and Switch, a form of false or deceptive advertising, where the dealer advertises a vehicle at an enticing price, but when the potential customer comes into the dealership, they claim the advertised vehicle or deal is no longer available. The customer is then pressured to purchase a more expensive vehicle or the same vehicle at a higher price;

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• Add-On Concealment, where various optional add-ons are included in the final sales price without prior disclosure;

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• Vehicle Trade-In Undervaluation, where the dealer purposefully undervalues or underpays for a customer’s trade-in vehicle;

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• Negative Equity/Vehicle Trade-In Overestimation, where the customer’s trade-in vehicle is worth less than the amount owed, but the dealer misrepresents the value, deceptively elevating it to the owed amount and often adding the difference to the new vehicle’s price;

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• New Dealer Returns, where the dealer misrepresents and sells a vehicle as “new”, when it was instead returned to the dealership because of a defect or persistent mechanical problem;

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• Failure to Disclose Salvaged or Flood-Damaged Vehicles (related to vehicle title fraud), where a used vehicle is sold to the customer without disclosure that the vehicle has incurred significant damage, been designated as a salvaged vehicle pursuant to a car accident, or has been flood-damaged;

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• Odometer or Mileage Rollback (related to vehicle title fraud), where a used vehicle has had its odometer altered to conceal the vehicle’s true mileage;

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• Certified Used Vehicles, where certain manufacturers and dealerships implement certified used vehicle programs that are supposed to guarantee that the used vehicle is in good working order and free from major structural damage, but then label unqualified vehicles as “certified”;

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• Rewritten Contracts/Backdating, where the customer does not qualify for the financing terms of the originally agreed upon contract, so the dealer has the customer return to sign a new contract with different terms, but then backdates the new contract with the date of the original contract.