No car? No problem ...

Caller tried high pressure tactics to sell car warranty to woman without car

By PAULA BARR
Daily Journal Staff Writer

The caller was insistent. The Park Hills woman needed a warranty on her car. The caller spent two months trying to convince the woman to buy one.

But the caller couldn’t seem to understand one very important point: The woman does not own a car.

Perhaps this was the same caller who told a Desloge man he needed to buy an extended warranty for his car. The vehicle, however, is 10 years old, and the warranty on it ran out a long time ago.

The potential customers, whose real names are not being used, shared their stories to alert other readers to pressure tactics being attempted in the Parkland.

Beth’s caller was persistent.

“They kept telling me I shouldn’t be driving without a warranty,” she said. “They told me if I don’t get a warranty, they will take me off the list.”

The caller did not explain what list was at stake.

“Sometimes, the lady gets a little angry because I hang up on her,” she continued. “The last call I got told me that I have one more chance to get the warranty.”

Most of the calls came up as unknown on caller ID, or as no data.

Greg’s call was listed as unavailable. The caller wanted to know what kind of car he drives.

“Why?” Greg asked.

“We can extend your warranty,” the woman answered.

When she continued questioning him, Greg decided to turn the tables and started asking her questions. She switched him to a man who began the questions all over again.

Greg explained that his car, which is made by General Motors, is 10 years old.

“What’s the mileage?” the man wanted to know. “Is it over 100,000?”

“I said no, but I started getting suspicious,” Greg related. “Why would anybody want to extend a warranty unless it was General Motors?”

Greg asked what this was about. The caller again said he wanted to extend the warranty on Greg’s car.

At this point, Greg’s wife took the phone. When the caller tried to talk to her, she hung up.

Neither Beth nor Greg bought a warranty.

According to Chris Thetford, an investigator for the Better Business Bureau (BBB) in St. Louis, there are a number of companies in the St. Louis area that sell extended service contracts for cars. Some of those companies have been sued by the state attorney general’s office.

Complaints to the BBB about those companies tend to fall into one of two issues, he said.

“The mailers that people receive that try to entice them to call are misleading,” Thetford explained. “They imply that the contract is affiliated with the manufacturer or the dealer, and they are not. They often imply that the person’s warranty is about to expire. That is not always true — sometimes the owner does not even have a warranty.”

The mailers are one way companies step around the state’s No Call List, which prohibits them from calling people who are registered on that list.

The second problem the BBB hears about are complaints that the warranties often are not accepted by the person’s usual mechanic or they do not cover the parts that need repair. Many contracts have pre-existing conditions that are exempt from coverage, Thetford added.

Before buying one of these contracts, check out the company’s consumer complaint history on the BBB Web site, http://stlouis.bbb.org. If the idea of an extended warranty or extended service contract (the two have different limitations) appeals to you, Thetford offers one more piece of advice.

“Ask that they send you a copy of the whole contract for you to review before you decide to buy it,” he suggested. “Tell them you will look it over and call them if you are interested. That gets you out of a high-pressure situation and gives you time to decided whether the contract really meets all your needs and you can find out in advance if it is honored by your mechanic.”

The Daily Journal has made a commitment to keep readers abreast of scams that hit our area. If someone tries to make you the victim of a scam, call us at 431-2010 and tell us what happened. We will include your story in our scam alert series to prepare others who may find themselves in the same situation. The Daily Journal will run Scam Alert stories in the paper every Monday.

 

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