Unethical, Immoral and downright unlawful practices

I have bought and sold many cars over the years and have never had to write a review on a company I’ve dealt with until now. VW of Oakland is the poster child of what gives cars dealerships a bad name.

TLDR: VW of Oakland agreed to purchase my vehicle under the TrueCar car purchase program. Papers were signed, they told us a check would be mailed the next day because they didn’t have the appropriate signers present, title was given, car was left. Next day the dealer called to renege on the offer after made up faults their technicians found and refused to cut a check This is ILLEGAL.

Full Story:

Normally I would have tried to sell this car via private party. With COVID we wanted to sell the car as simply as possible with the least human interaction understanding that we would accept a little less money for the convenience. I went to CarMax to have a baseline for the value and after inputting data to KBB, Carvana, Vroom and TrueCar, TrueCar had the highest cash value for our 2011 Porsche Cayenne S. TrueCar offered 2 dealers to inspect and purchase the vehicle, VW of Oakland called first and were a large manufacturer so we decided to go to them.

Upon arrival 2 members of their team inspected the vehicle, one sales person and one sales manager. They told me that they wanted to have a technician inspect the vehicle the next day and renegotiate the price then. I was ready to sell my car that day and had all offers in hand. They negotiated a lower price which I agreed to under the stipulation that I wouldn’t have to negotiate yet again the next day when someone else looks over the car. We signed the title over, gave them keys and got it in writing and signed that they would send the check the next morning when their full team was there. They informed me that they were unable to write a check that day due to the lack of a secondary manager to sign.

Mid way through the next day the dealer called to say that they would no longer pay us the agreed upon amount based on what they claim was odd start up noise and alternator whine. This is total BS. The car had just had it’s 60k mile service done at Porsche in Stevens Creek less than 2 months ago which included a multi point inspection. I have the service paperwork to prove this. None of these issues they claim to were noted and VW of Oakland was unable to reproduce these issues when I told them to send me a video. The car was serviced on time by a Porsche dealer its whole life and even the 2 members who inspected the car noted the car was the “cleanest 2011 vehicle” they have seen.

My assumption is this dealer had a case of buyers remorse. The value of the car they were offering me was at or near private party values online which is why I jumped on the offer to sell it. There was no margin and they regretted the offer. Had this been the other way around, I would not have a foot to stand on, and neither do they.

Rather than deal with a lawsuit we had them bring the car to Carmax where we sold the car immediately with no problems in their inspection. I contacted TrueCar and they will be investigating the situation. All in all this was a horrible experience and a giant waste of time from our side. The opposite of what these “online car selling” offers suggest.

My ask from anyone reading this review is that they think twice about doing any business with this unethical and immoral dealership. Instead of taking the loss on the car, they’d rather this poor review of their dealership show up online and hopefully negatively impact other customers from purchasing a vehicle through them. I will be posting this to all the forums and online review locations I can find.