Complaint Review: The Car Connection of Palm Bay - Palm Bay Florida

The Car Connection of Palm Bay is run by an individual by the name of Pat. I bought my first car from him in 2002 and had little problems with it but that's to be expected from a used vehicle. Over the years I have sent many, many people to him to buy their cars because I thought he was a decent guy to deal with because he helped me out so much buying my first car from him. But little by little, every one that I sent to him told me that this guy is ripping me off or he won't help me fix the car like he promised to do or he won't help me do this or that. In other words, he just helped them get into the vehicle thru the finance company and everything that happened after that with the vehicle is their fault or their problem even though it has a dealer warranty and some of them even have a manufacturer's warranty still attached to the vehicle during the reported problems. Well I recently purchased another car from him on January 29th of this year. And at first sight it look like the car might have been in a scuffle or maybe a small fender-bender so I asked him had the car been in a wreck and his exact words were "well the car is used and Dents & Dings are to be expected" ( he also rambled a few more things after he said that). So I took his word for it because I trusted him and left it at that,although I still should have done a Carfax report on the car, but I don't believe it would have helped in my particular situation with this particular car because when the car was in a recent Collision on october 13th 2017,do to someone running into the front drivers Fender side.. I had the car taken to the local Ford dealership here in my area for repairs, they immediately started taking the cars front panels off to repair it and found major existing damage that the car body shop repair manager said was old damage because it certainly didn't come from the accident that the car was in on October 13th of 2017 when I owned it..

So the Sunrise ford body shop manager asked me to come in on that following Tuesday too look at the damage that he had already documented from the accident that happened on friday October 13th of 2017 and then he showed me the existing damage that was already done when I bought the car and he said that if he called the Department of Transportation to look at the car that they would lock the car up and wouldn't allow it to be driven anymore until that damage is fixed.. The previous damage is the front reinforcement that absorbs the shock and protects vehicle occupants against potentially fatal front end collision is nearly completely split in half from a previous front end collision and still is split in half because I can't afford to pay 5 thousand dollars for it to be repaired and im not going to pay that because I don't feel I should have to pay for something the car salesman sold to me in that condition and he had no knowledge of...so the ford repair shop fixed only what the insurance company paid for. And because the previous damage wasn't covered in my insurance claim ,it still exists and I still have to drive around with that damage. To give better understanding of this previous damage, if I ever got into any front-end collision and ran into something or someone ran into me head on, the entire engine would be sitting in the car on top of me. This is the type of damage I'm talking about.. So after the discovery of this, I contacted the car salesman at the Car Connection of Palm Bay and I talk directly with Pat. At that point when I described the previous damage that the car repair shop at Found, only then is when packed stated to me that the car had been in a collision in 2013 the same year the car was brand new. And I asked him why couldn't you tell me this when I asked you if the car was in a wreck before, because he had the same information in January when I bought the car that he had when told him about the damage in October. He even went as far as to say that maybe the damage happened from the Collision on October 13th 2017. I said the car repair shop manager stated that this collision damage is old and is obviously old even when I looked at it because the damage that happened on October 13th 2017 was in a different place than the old damage that was discovered. Then Pat says "how does the body shop manager knows when that damage was done" . At that point it was obvious that He was saying anything to keep from being responsible for selling me a piece of crap vehicle. So I contacted the finance company about it and they said they can't do anything about it,Pat says to me to get the repair done to the vehicle that happened on October 13th 2017 and bring the car back and he will do another Finance to put me in another car and I said no. Because I shouldn't have to go through Finance qualifications all over again because he sold me her piece of crap. And he's of course going to ask for more money down and I already gave him $2,000 down on this piece of crap.. And what's even more disturbing is that the reason I said a Carfax report may not even work on this vehicle to find damage is because the Sunrise Ford body shop manager could not pull up an insurance claim for the vehicle for a collision. Which tells me that the vehicle was fixed Shady and that's why that damage still exists under those body panels... Because if it was an insurance claim from that 2013 collision,that damage wouldn't be there. It would have been fixed because that's what insurance claims are for. So I called the state and they said that lemon law doesn't apply to it. So I have no choice but now to expose this car dealership based on my situation...

I've also read tons of reviews of this dealership not following through on helping the consumers repair the vehicles they sell to them even when they are lawfully obligated to... This dealership puts 30-day warranties on vehicles they sell and they are 50/50 warranties just like mine was where the dealer pays 50% and the buyer pays 50% to repair the vehicle within that 30 days. But of all the reviews and the people I know that bought cars from him, most of the problems happen within 30 days and he still refused to help fix it. And in my situation, there was no way I would know the damage was even there unless an accident was to happen and thank God it wasn't a front-end Collision because somebody could have been killed... To sum it all up this car dealership and salesman often sells crappy vehicles and once he gets you in the vehicle he washes his hands on it and it's your your problem and everything that has to do with the vehicle is on you after that... People like him should not be in business I don't care how long he's been in business... The Car Connection of Palm Bay Florida is not a place to buy a vehicle... steer clear of this place and go anywhere else.. you can thank me later.