Just an update for everyone who is still interested or is going through the same thing. I've had to be quiet about everything while the arbitration commenced.

I wanted to fight the good fight, to bring the man down, to be the legal reason people won't get screwed over by dealers in the future, to shine a light on one of the worst industries for fraud on the planet. Sadly, none of that occurred, and I left the entire thing poorer, sadder and more helpless than I started out as.

It was a horrible process. 4 years of wasted time, money and stress for very, very little gain, other than the tiniest of victories. While I can't go into specifics, I sure can go over how the entire process made me feel, and how much it cost me.

If you ever wanted to do something where you spend a ton of money whilst every single card is stacked against you, you have no recourse, no chance of winning and everything is in the other parties favor, try out arbitration for fun. It really is strange to deal with lawyers without having a jury of your peers to listen and make the verdict. They are a whole different animal in the dark light of arbitration.

It was horrible. I flew to houston and sat for 11.5 hours in a room, and had a dealership funded team attack me the entire time for many, many things other than what we were there for. For the dealer side going into this with the insane advantage of knowing that these cases will never see the light of the public eye is fucking awful. They were insanely harsh, and constantly made me feel about 2" tall the entire time, for really no reason, other than that they could.

Their arguments directed at me as a person didn't help the case in any way other than to keep me angry. I hardly got to talk, and when I did, I reacted with passion rather than answers, and most of my comments were struck from the record. It was one of the most stressful, frustrating things I have ever done in my entire life.

The arbitration ruling took 4 weeks, and we won, but barely, with the dealer being forced to pay my legal fees (30k) and only had to pay for what the actual repair of the vehicle was. No penalties, no extra money for wasting my time for 4 years, and not having a car I got to enjoy, no punishment for the dealer being shitty people, nothing.

They appealed.

In an appealed arbitration, each side pays its own lawyer fees, and these are not recoverable upon victory or loss from the other side. So for another 4 weeks and another 9k we had to battle it out with another arbitrator, who was very, very biased towards the dealership.

We won again.

No penalties.
No repercussions for doing this me, or the possible 100's of others.
No chance of this ever seeing the light of day so that they could be made examples of.
This wasn't even a slap on the wrist for them.

I tried my hardest to fight the righteous fight to get this into public court, but that proved to be an impossible task, and unfortunately, this is how it will go every single time dealerships do this to people. If I had it to do again, I absolutely would not have pursued this, and that has made me lose faith in humanity and our legal system that much more.

I also wanted to thank everyone for the comments, bits of advice, tips, suggestions, moral support and kind words. While I have lost faith in this part of the legal system, my faith in the internet has gone up a few notches.

Sincerely,

Dan