Complaint Review: Drive Time

Let me start with a little background of how I ended up at Drive Time instead of a traditional dealership. I lost my job in the past year after I was diagnosed with a form of Leukemia. Because I lost my job I burned through my savings, 401K, and my car was repossesed which left my wife and I with 1 paid off vehicle with a lot of miles. I made that car last until the tie rods, shocks, struts, and brakes were shot. I had no money for repairs and family is no longer able to help. My wife and I took the car to Drive Time since my credit was shot and I knew we had to have a reliable car. The staff at the dealership itself was very nice and we settled on a 2005 Kia Amanti because it only had 55K miles and they would accept my old car as down payment. That was at the beginning of August. Since then the car has made 2 separate trips to my mechanic to replace different sensors (throttle position sensor and O2 sensor) that have gone bad. Drive Time's warranty department wanted me to take it to a Sears auto Center, but I explained that the closest Sears was 30 miles from me and that I don't trust them anyway due to previous bad dealings with them. They agreed to let me take it to a local shop as long as they are ASE certified. My preferred shop is a great place and their guys really know their stuff. Drive Time made my mechanic jump through hoops to get paid for the job. 3 hour hold times on the phone don't work very well for a mechanic with a line of cars to fix. My wife and I had to play phone tag for them with Drive Time warranty. We made countless calls just to get them to authorize the repair. We ended up having to get a "back door" phone number from the sales manager at the dealership in order to get anything done with warranty. Completely ridiculous. Also, Drive Time warranty claims get a TAX FREE status making me pay the sales tax to the repair shop out of pocket. They are not a church, farm, or non-profit organization. How can they do that?

Second issue is the promo I have yet to receive. If you bought during the month of August you are supposed to get a $200 gas card. I made my first payment more than a week AHEAD of schedule yet when I called about my card I was told that it wouldn't even get processed until 30 days AFTER my first payment was due. That's nice. Maybe I'll take the same attitude when I make my payments with them from now on. Oh, and I suggest you sign up for auto-payment because any other method of payment will incur a fee every month. This has been a horrible experience so far. The worst part to me is that I fully know how much profit they made off of my purchase. I am a car guy. I read up on vehicles and the market, but I couldn't buy the traditional way because of my ruined credit so I paid close to double what the car is actually worth. Thanks for listening to my rant.