Buyer may have been taken for a ride

Friday, December 23, 2005

Dear Tom and Ray: Please, please help! When my single daughter wanted to buy a car two years ago, I advised her to buy a manufacturer's certified used car. She bought a 2003 Toyota RAV4 from a Toyota dealer in Maryland. Fast-forward to today -- she is getting married in three weeks, and she wants to sell the car. Since she's busy preparing for a wedding, I took the car to CarMax for appraisal and possible sale there. To my surprise, I was told there are several indications that the car had been in an accident. My daughter had not had an accident. So I took the car to the Toyota dealer where it was bought. Its used-car department's manager took a look at the car and insisted that the car had never had an accident. I went back to CarMax and told the story to a senior buyer there. He looked at the car and emphatically declared that it had been in an accident and had been repaired. I then took the car to a separate Toyota dealer for his opinion. The verdict was that the car had had an accident and was repaired. What should I do: sue the dealer who sold the car to my daughter, talk to Toyota USA or just forget it?

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