i purchased a 2003 freightliner century classic,in november 2009,purchase price was incorrect told the truck was 22000,but the actual price was 57000,in rush to get this done as quickly as possible i overlooked this ,it was a rough time i was unemployed and trucking seemed like the best option to start my own business,this was my first purchase of something this magnitude, i missed alot of red flags knoxville promised to help pay for tags and fees as well as the sales tax,they charged me $57000 for the truck but only paid sales tax on a purchse price of $22000,l ooking back on the paper work more thoroughly there was a signature on the bill for $22000 but none on the bill for $80000, which was a truck and reefer trailor combo the reefer was 23000 no sales tax was generated for that part of the
transaction either.
next came the repairs,within 5 months i had major repairs,the king pin had a problem, then a few weeks later the clutch,which totalled more than $2800, besides routine maintenance the tires came apart ,the dealer said these were virgin tires replaced all the batteries within less than a year of purchasing,the turbo went bad just this past may.
The final straw came 2 weeks after repairing the turbo,the truck would not start.spent money towing it back to atl only to find out from the mechanic it needs a new engine,about $10000 ,to repair needless to say i dont have that kind of cash. the repairs and down time really hurt my ability to save for something this big,the bank tennesse commerce was taken over by the fdic recently ,they have no intentions of giving me the money to make the repairs,so its sitting in a garage not making any money. Tennesse said they would give me 60 days of interest only payments,before i tried to get them to refinance and i was rudely refused now that the fdic has taken them over i was told i could make an offer to the fdic for a lump sum or get a third party to refinance,yeah not with a busted truck,who will refinance that?i tried to reason with tennesse letting them know that they would be repossing an inoperable vehicle and its better to let me repair the trucl my allowing me to make interest only repairs for seven months, while i save the money for repairs instead of me defaulting entirely,the best they could do was offer me interst only payments for 3 months.i have already made more than $48000 in payments i am half way to fininghing paying for this clunker but they refuse to see it this way .as an entreapeneur who was trying to start something during a time when the economy was falling of a cliff, knoxville and tennesse took advantage of me and others, when i did point out the descrepancy to tennesse commerce about the two different sale prices and i got that rude response i knew i was on to somethig. i think my only recourse will be to sue and all the other customers who had trouble with these two entities to join me in doing the same.