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A little over a month ago, I stumbled upon a local classified ad for a 1993 Festiva GL. At first, I didn't give it much thought, but after thinking about it for a while, I decided that rather than purchasing a more expensive vehicle, I would just buy the Festiva and use the remainder of my cash to pay off my fiance's 2005 Focus. When I arrived at the seller's house, I was very pleased with the condition of the car. I expected it to be completely trashed, as are most vehicles that are 16-years-old with 132k miles. I test drove the car and everything seemed great. The seller explained that the car belonged to his wife, but she wanted something bigger. After some negotiating, I managed to get him down to $750 from his asking price of $1200. A couple of days passed before I was able to get to the DMV. This is where the story gets bad. After the usual 2 hour wait at the DMV, I finally heard my number being called. I greeted the person behind the counter and was pleased that I was finally about to get out of that place, when I heard the following dreaded words: "I'm sorry sir, but this title is flagged with a sold vehicle code that doesn't match your name". I had never encountered a situation such as this, so I asked the lady to explain what this meant. She basically told me that it wasn't a big deal and that someone had probably just backed out of buying the car after the seller had already filed the sold vehicle code to get the car off of their personal property taxes. She gave me a bill of sale and told me if I got it signed and notarized that there wouldn't be any problems. I thought, well, this seems easy enough. I went back to my vehicle and called the guy that sold me the car and he then proceeded to inform me that his uncle was actually the owner and that the title was still in the lady's name from whom his uncle had purchased it. Basically, the whole line about it being his wife's car was a lie. He told me to bring the title back to him and he would get in touch with his uncle to get the title transferred properly. Being that the guy was already dishonest with me once, I decided to make a double-sided copy of the title and also speek to local LEOs in order to establish some kind of record that I did, in fact, purchase the car in case he tried to do something shady. Once I did all of that, I hand delivered the title to the seller. Three weeks went by without any progress whatsoever despite my repeated phone calls. I finally received a phone call a few days shy of a month going by and the seller told me that the only way he can take care of it is if I sign a paper saying that I no longer wish to purchase the vehicle and have it notarized because all of my information is already on the back of the title. I refused. I never dreamed the situation would occur, so I didn't get a bill of sale from him when I purchased the car. To make things worse, I paid in cash. If I signed that paper, there wouldn't be anything stopping him from coming to my house and taking the car back without refunding the money. As it stands now, I have the title back in my possession, but there is no way to get it transferred into my name. I guess the only thing left to do is sell it as a parts car without a title, which is a real shame because this thing is in great shape.
That concludes the Saga of X6StringerX's Festiva. Thanks for reading. :pukeleft:
That concludes the Saga of X6StringerX's Festiva. Thanks for reading. :pukeleft:
It's a good thing you don't read the stickies, you might of learned something.
Poverty produces creativity
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