Car Dealer Slimeballs

If for some reason you simply must buy a Chevrolet, here is an excellent reason not to buy from a Bill Heard dealership:

Earl Kieselhorst thought he owned a 2003 Chevy Silverado -- a truck that he bought from Bill Heard Chevrolet in Antioch. He traded in his car and gave the dealer a check for $8,100.

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.

But the next morning, when Kieselhorst woke up, his truck was gone. The dealership had come and taken it in the middle of the night.

Oh, but it gets better. The police wanted to file charges against Bill Heard for stealing the truck, but a judge wouldn't let them:

Metro police investigated and wanted to file charges against Bill Heard for stealing the truck.

Detective Ray Paris got a statement from Bill Heard, blaming a rookie salesman for what happened and calling it a mistake. "They inadvertently sold the vehicle at a lower cost than what they should have," Paris said.

We have a word for that in the business world: Tough. You can't just take back an item you legally sold because you decided later that your price was too low. That's larceny. Apparently, the judge who refused criminal charges needs to go back to law school.

But it ain't over yet:

Yet even after Bill Heard had taken back the truck, the salesman called Kieselhorst again.

"He calls me back and offers to sell it to me for $11,000 more than I paid for it," Kieselhorst recalls.

Sell it to him?!? He OWNS IT!

The dealership actually parked it back on the lot and slapped a sticker on it after they stole it.

I generally take a dim view of tort lawyers, (to put it mildly), but I'd be taking these clowns to court for every dime I could squeeze from them. I'd also be demanding the State Attorney General's office review the competency of a judge who can't see a criminal law violation when it's two inches from his face in bright daylight.