I had an '02 Volkswagen Passat that was on the brink of collapsing on me. I bought it from an…read moreuntrustworthy man on craigslist, and we even almost went to court because he couldn't pass the smog test, but he kept lying and told me that it was my responsibility since I had bought it off him. (Legally, the car was still his, so he HAD to do the smog test. Fortunately, he passed it after thousands of dollars fixing the problem)
The car was doing fine for a while, but I realized it was taking a toll on my wallet because it was taking up a lot of gas, and sometimes, I would have to rev it quite a bit for it to go up hills. At first, I thought it was just because it was an old car and it was pretty heavy.
So I decided to take it to Fast Cash to see if they could get me approved for a loan (I have no credit whatsoever), and if I could trade in my Volkswagen to cover up for some of the down payment.
Sue and Gus, the owners of Fast Cash, were extremely friendly and they definitely wanted to help me out the most that they could. They searched up all and any banks that were willing to give me the loan, and since I had no credit, unfortunately the APR is very high, but they told me that just after 6 months, I could refinance and it would be all good.
In the end, I traded in my Passat at $2000 and paid $1000 down for an 06 Honda Civic Coupe. They changed the windshield wipers for me and made sure that the car was in good condition.
The only reason why I give them 4 stars is that they did not give us warranty. Unfortunately, I found out 6 months after driving the Honda, my engine block had been cracked. My mechanic told me that the only way to fix this was through replacing the engine, which would cost me $3000 - $4000.
When I called Fast Cash and asked them if we had warranty on the car, they said that we probably didn't, and when I looked at the documents, there wasn't any warranty on it. So, in truth, they did sell me a faulty car (I could not have caused it because it takes a LOT for the engine block to crack, but I did not have any accidents, minor or major, not even a bump).
They did say that the car had a clean title, but my s/o's father, who is a car detailer, saw that they had repainted one side of the car, so I had my doubts, but decided to trust Fast Cash anyway.
Turns out that 06-09 Honda's have had engine block problems, and so Honda issued a technical service bulletin (10-048) that extended their warranty for engine block repair to all 06-09 Honda owners for 10 years from purchase date.
Luckily, my Honda qualified for the warranty, and so now it is at the Honda Service Center getting an engine block replacement, free of charge.
I wish Fast Cash had had that information prior to selling me the car so that I would not have had the breakdown after receiving news of the engine block crack. Instead, I had to research for quite a bit to find this miracle.
Otherwise, I would have given them the 5 stars because everything else they did for me was superb.