Liquidcool,
It's simple, sue the car company in small claims court for the cost of the warranty. They represented the car as having a warranty, when in fact the warranty was not valid at the time of the sale. You paid for a warranty, there was no warranty. You paid for a service that you did not get.

 

Agree.

You will NEVER get them to say, in response to a phone complaint, "yes, you are right, we were wrong, here is $3900".

You will need to prove that the warranty company was toes up at the time they sold the car, along with the documents showing they represented it as having a warranty.

Many folks screwed by RRGs just bailing- a big one was in Hawaii. There is a reason that warranties are hard to buy if you live in CA...

A

 

If Ohio has a department of Insurance, find out if the company was licensed to do business in your state. If they were, and they went out of business, the Department of Insurance might be responsible for handling the claim. Most insurance companies pay premiums to the state licensing offices to handle these type of items. If they weren't licensed to do business in the state, then I agree with the comments about going after the dealer.

 

I'm not licensed to practice in Ohio, so take this with a grain of salt as Ohio law may be different. Based on what you're telling me, I would venture that the dealer is on the hook for breach of contract, in that it essentially failed to satisfy a condition which was material to the transaction. I think there is a breach of warranty claim here (semantically confusing verbiage here in that the breach of warranty claim involves a warranty, but what I mean is that the dealer warranted that the vehicle came with a warranty, when in fact it did not, thus the goods tendered by the dealer are non-conforming).

Further, tortious liability may attach in this scenario. IF the dealer knew at the time he made the representation regarding the warranty that the warranty company was BK or about to go BK, then it would be fraud. This will be hard to prove as you need to show knowledge on the part of the dealer, and it isn't particularly likely that the dealer would cop to that. Nonetheless, if the BK has been underway for a while and the dealer has been doing business with the warranty company over the long-term, you might well be able to show at least constructive knowledge. On the other hand, IF the dealer claims that they were unaware of the problems at the warranty company, this is ripe for a negligent misrepresentation claim.

Any way you cut it I would say you have some legal recourse here. Certainly enough to get the dealer to come to the table with an early offer to at least split the difference. Remember that although the actual damages involved may only be around $3,900, your sale contract almost undoubtedly contains a loser-pays attorney fees provision. That means that fighting you and losing would cost the dealer WAY more than the warranty (indeed, possibly more than the car). Remember that dealers don't much like trials, because juries don't like dealers (seems they have a bad reputation amongst consumers), and dealers know it.

In sum, my advice is to see a COMPETENT attorney (pay heed to the emphasis on competent). If you can't find one on your own, PM me and I'll see if I have any referrals for Ohio lawyers of high repute.

 

UWC was bought just now by GMAC. So, they may not be out of business....but actually even more stable. I just called them and was told this. I called 800-232-0389. Perhaps you should get a fax sent to you confirming this.


FYI only. They could be lying to me/us. I have not tried to confirm this fact.


JB