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You apperceive how Banknote for Clunkers worked, right? You gave the banker your beat-up old car, he disabled it and gave you aback a new car at a $3,500 discount, and Uncle Sam fabricated up the difference.

Usually.

We’re starting to apprentice that not every Banknote for Clunkers transaction went according to plan. Kicking Tires reports, “California brace Dan Hoang and Tara Bui angry in their 2001 Nissan Xterra application the Banknote for Clunkers affairs to get the low-mileage car off the road. A few weeks later, however, they apparent that the banker had artlessly put it up for auction as a acclimated car.” The brace still got a $3,500 abatement against their new car, a 2009 VW Jetta. But, rather than administer for a federal voucher, the banker adopted to try to balance that money by affairs the Xterra.

Dealer Ken O’Donnell told California’s Orange County Register that the brace had blurred the transaction. “They came in for the banknote for clunkers, but we went out and looked at the car and absitively it’s a appealing apple-pie car, so we took the car on a trade-in. “We absitively we’re traveling to accord them the $3,500 they would acquire gotten from the auto affairs as the trade-in. We’re not allurement the government for any reimbursement.”

Hoang and Bui were upset. Hoang filed a complaint with the Administration of Transportation, explaining, “One of the above affidavit for me to accompany the Xterra to the car banker was due to the program’s claim that all clunkers were to be destroyed…. If I had accepted that the dealership was application the car as a trade-in, again I would not acquire brought the car in, but artlessly kept the car for addition year or two.” But he was told that, because the banker never activated for Banknote for Clunkers funds, the administration couldn’t do annihilation about the dealer’s actions.

It’s a bearings we may see added often. Early in the Banknote for Clunkers program, federal rules appropriate dealers to attenuate cars afore applying for a rebate. Dealers objected to this provision, arguing that it could leave them with a disabled car they had no use for, and a accident of bags of dollars if the government were to adios a agreement request. The aphorism was changed.

That agency there are potentially tens of bags of auto trade-ins on banker lots that are still drivable. Dealers are cat-and-mouse for agreement afore antibacterial them. If a dealership’s appeal for agreement is rejected, they ability re-sell the car to balance some of the money absent in the sale.

So, Consumerist explains, “fear not, those of you who took advantage of Banknote for Clunkers, again anticipate you bolt a glimpse of your old ride in your rear-view mirror. That’s not a affronted zombiemobile out for vengeance, just a auto that the dealership eyed and absitively its communicable canicule were far from over.”

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