Dealer insisted on giving me a GT even though I purchased the Touring

You should have pretended everything was allright right after you asked your second question to the sales guy. Should have kept your mouth shut with financial person, and drove away in GT. The thing is, nobody would have noticed that, except for the sales guy who would have figured something out after the fact- a week or two in the sales process. And you'd never be on the hook!

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I think odds are, if OP kept his mouth shut, he'd end up with the GT at the price he paid. I think the only recourse the dealer would have, once the mistake eventually came to light, would be to take back the GT and honor the original deal. At that point the GT is used. It is probably not worth more than a new Touring, especially when adding in the extra work and hassle and the fact that it was their mistake and they are inconveniencing the customer.

That said, the moral/ethical thing to do was to point out the the mistake. After pointing it out once though, I don't know how adamant about it he was obliged to be.

I still have a never used, unopened, brand new smartphone from over a year ago, because a big box office store mis-advertised due to incompetence (mixed it up with another model with the same name). It took me several back and forths and escalation for me to get them to acknowledge the mistake and get a refund. I wasted a lot of my time and patience with them. When they issued the refund, but never followed through with issuing the RMA and shipping label, I decided I had no further obligation to waste any more of my time with their incompetence.
 
That's a thing with big corp small guy mess up. If you're ahead, don't mess with it. 99% nobody would notice. And if they do, the guy that actually have messed it up will straighten everything up. He and his immediate boss are on your side, so this would never show up in the bigger -picture report to their management. Many of them care for their jobs, you know...

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What would have happened if I had driven off with the GT even though my bill of sale was for a different car? Sorry for the long post, but this was kind of funny.

The dealer would have found the mistake, asked you for the car back, and called their attorney if you failed to return it. It's a unilateral mistake of fact.

FYI to all those thinking this could have ended any other way, the law favors the injured party in cases like this. You don't get to just take advantage of honest mistakes when it's obvious you know better. The dealer would have found their copy of the original sale and used that as proof the OP should have known it wasn't their car.

No harm here since the OP is an honest person. I would extract freebies from the dealer for the wasted time.
 
The owner would only benefit from any scenario. If the dealer didn't find out, they've got GT for the price of Touring. And there's good chance the dealer wouldn't find out, many reasons. If it does, what's a harm in driving the GT for a while, and then getting brand new Touring that they desired?..

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Not sure how the licencing is getting done in your state, but where we are you get a car from the lot with license plate on it, whether provided by you or the dealer, included in price...

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The dealer would have found the mistake, asked you for the car back, and called their attorney if you failed to return it. It's a unilateral mistake of fact.

FYI to all those thinking this could have ended any other way, the law favors the injured party in cases like this. You don't get to just take advantage of honest mistakes when it's obvious you know better. The dealer would have found their copy of the original sale and used that as proof the OP should have known it wasn't their car.

No harm here since the OP is an honest person. I would extract freebies from the dealer for the wasted time.

^^^This

Even if, and that's a big IF, he took the GT and got to keep it in the end I imagine there would've been decent legal efforts / lawyers involved to do so without having to pay the extra cost.

For the couple thousand $ difference between a GT (which he didn't want in the first place) and his specified vehicle it would've cost the same or more to fight it between lawyers and time. That time alone would deter me from trying to take advantage of the situation. I know what I would've done: exactly what the OP did and make sure it's right from the first go around.

Karma can be a serious b*^$h, IMO not worth trying to roll one over when you know it isn't right.
 
Not sure how the licencing is getting done in your state, but where we are you get a car from the lot with license plate on it, whether provided by you or the dealer, included in price...

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True, but not true... (I'm also in Ontario).

Plates are provided and registered by the MTO. The cost of doing so is simply passed onto you by the dealer and they do the leg work for you. There are scenerios where you leave with your car plated but unregistered with the MTO - our delivery was one of those scenerios.

When you take delivery of a vehicle outside of MTO's business hrs and you are re-using your own plates from a vehicle that you are trading in (i.e. registered to a vehicle currently on the road) your plates will get installed on the new car before you drive off the lot. However the plates are still registered to the old car and will get registered to the new car next business day. The dealer will then mail (or make ready for pickup) the ownership of the new car once the plated registration is completed.

Your valid insurance on the new vehicle - required before you can leave the dealer's lot - plus the bill of sale for the new vehicle plus a copy of your previous plate ownership act as a temporary plated ownership slip for the new vehicle until you receive the new original.

That's exactly how we took delivery of our car. The dealer doesn't like doing deliveries this way because it's more work from them, but we were unable to pick up during MTO business hrs.
 
Okay, I read the first post correctly too. The other responses seemed to be replying to something other than what you posted. That's why I wondered if they had more information from another thread, as opposed to just being dense and rude.

Agreed. The other poster did not read OP correctly.

justdeb, you did the right thing. Sounds like had you signed paperwork for VINB (someone would have noticed at some point) you could have driven away with it. I've heard of similar instances where a mistake was made in final paperwork and dealer calls to get customer to come back in. Sometimes it's a scam...other times legit.
 
I think it would have worked out if she (assuming op is a she here...Deb). Yes, what the lawyer sounding guy said is certainly true, dealers not going to go through the hassle of calling his lawyer if you try to fight him. Dealer isn't going to spend 2 grand in lawyer fees for a 3,000 dollar mistake.

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Dealer isn't going to spend 2 grand in lawyer fees for a 3,000 dollar mistake.

Dealer like has attorney on retainer, so the money's spent. Threat to sue will be enough as customer lawyer would know they couldn't win. This would never get to court.

No business is going to let someone get away with something of this magnitude and then blab all over town about it. Were I the dealer, I would give freebies to the customer and take them out of the guilty employee's hide if they weren't a stellar performer.

Car dealers routinely hose people $50 at a time. Do you really think they'd eat a grand or more?
 
Dealer like has attorney on retainer, so the money's spent. Threat to sue will be enough as customer lawyer would know they couldn't win. This would never get to court.

No business is going to let someone get away with something of this magnitude and then blab all over town about it. Were I the dealer, I would give freebies to the customer and take them out of the guilty employee's hide if they weren't a stellar performer.

Car dealers routinely hose people $50 at a time. Do you really think they'd eat a grand or more?
I do. I absolutely do. My firm only asks for retainers for Divorces or Criminal Cases. None of our larger business clients are asked for Retainers. They are billed as work is performed.
I've seen a lot of companies lose much more then that to avoid larger kisses or to simply not look like assholes.
IMO, OP did the right thing. I would have too. But I think Deb could be driving a GT right now.

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I do. I absolutely do. My firm only asks for retainers for Divorces or Criminal Cases. None of our larger business clients are asked for Retainers. They are billed as work is performed.
I've seen a lot of companies lose much more then that to avoid larger kisses or to simply not look like assholes.
IMO, OP did the right thing. I would have too. But I think Deb could be driving a GT right now.

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I think so too. And, if she wasn't driving a GT, then the dealer would lose a $1k+ anyways because I would've put enough miles on it for it to be considered used by the time they got it back. Of course, I'm sure they have a stealership game of hide-n-seek for that too...
 
LOL. I hope y'all know I meant losses up there...not kisses.

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Thanks for everyone's input on a rather bizarre scenario. Only 5 days in with the new car and I already have a story to tell! Had I driven off the lot with the GT knowing it wasn't the car I actually paid for, it wouldn't have sat right with me. That said, it's been interesting playing "what if", which leads me to another thought.

How many people actually check the VINs on their cars when they take delivery of the vehicle, and how often does something like this happen?
 
I check mine every single time as I don't trust a stealerships word on anything. Like when I bought my cx-5, they had two identical sitting on the lot, one Awd (mine), and one not...now the paperwork was right, but when I went to test drive it right before signing, they had washed the wrong one,and presented the fwd as mine. And honest mistake,sure,but still,you gotta pay attention and be on your toes while at a stealerships at all times...
 
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