Two things in life I really should have learned by my age ~ no good deed goes unpunished, and *always* read reviews before trusting a business. Yeah, I flunked both of those this week. A friend was desperate to get into a vehicle and I agreed to help. After talking to Jon at Truck N Auto Depot who provided me all the "details" of the down, future payments, etc., I agreed to make the down payment via credit card over the phone and signed the documents authorizing the one time charge that Roslyn emailed to me. When my friend went in to sign the paperwork - surprise - the details all changed, dramatically increasing the price/payments/down and he walked away from the deal. He called me and I emailed - both because it was now after hours and so it was in writing that I was withdrawing my consent to charge my card.
Should be simple enough to simply reverse the charge for the down payment on a vehicle that was never driven off the lot to my card, but nope, I need to provide an unacceptable level of personal information to "prove I'm the one who made the original charge" - and that will only maybe get me a conversation with the GM - ummmmmkay you're emailing me at the same email address I used to approve the charge, and I want the charge reversed/refunded to the same card - the vehicle never left the the lot because you changed the terms - what's exactly complicated about this?!
Unethical or stupid? After reading the reviews (yeah, better late than never even though that horse is now so far out of the barn he's in another country) my vote is for highly unethical.
Lessons learned - again - and hopes this helps someone else from making the mistakes I made.