CRAZY - My Tacoma Search

Greetings,

I have been looking for a 1st generation tacoma for a few weeks now and was about to pull the triger on a 96 v6 5spd 4wd that had 1 owner and was in decent shape for $5,500. I have been talikg with the guy who was very nice and responsive so I thought he was an honest truthfull guy. Well tonight before I made the 1.5 hr trip up to get the truck I asked him for the VIN number to make sure that it really only had 1 owner, about 30min later he said it was sold.... I was mad I mean this was a great deal on a good truck... So here I am to hours later and I get this text message.

"Hey man. I lied to you about the truck. I am feeling real bad about it. I want to apologize. I didnt sell it. It doesnt belong to my brother-in-law and it does not have 178K miles. I bought it from a guy in G. It has 298K miles on it. I rolled the miles back then got scared about it. I took it off craigslist and put the original miles back to what it is suppose to be. It is in very good condition. I build engins for toyota and have worked on and sold trucks my whole life and truly belive that it has maintained very well. Anyway im sorry i lied to you. You seem like a real good guy."

CRAZY. I was speechless. I texted him back thanking him for telling me the truth. The search continues...

Anyone ever had this happen before?

CHECK THE VIN# BEFORE YOU BUY!!!!

 

I have had this happen to me with a car I was looking at buying. The guy seemed reat uneasy about getting me a car fax report. It was a small private owned dealrship and they get crazy discounts on stuff like that. Well when I mentioned it to him he said he could no longer get it. My gf at the time called BS and we just paid for the carfax. Come to find out on the carfax it said something about the odometer being messed with. I just stopped answering the guys calls and kept looking.

 

Fraud. Reporting him?

 

Damnnn that's really shady dude. It sucks that there are actually people like that out there. First thing i did with my truck was check the VIN.

When i was searching for the right truck i almost bought this pre runner for $7k, i delayed on buying it. I then called the guy a couple days later and checked to make sure everything was in good condition etc, to which he replied saying he no longer wanted to sell it as he just got both front and rear brakes replaced...they were completely shot.

Had i decided not to delay on the purchase i would have bought a truck with complete shit brakes. Granted i probably would have noticed on the drive home and turned right around, but still you don't wanna go through that bullshit.

 

That is why you have to be so careful when buying a used anything. and its not that is something new, people have been perfecting this "industry" right behind the birth of the auto industry. sometimes its just best to hunt ebay and only trust top rated used car sellers, and the good ones will provide a carfax.

 

Yeah OP,
while on the quest before buying my current 99 4x4, i ran across at least 6 sellers that were all bullshitting on their posting ad vs what the carfax would say. everything from odometer tampering to swapping frames. this is the effed up world we live in where 10+ yr old trucks are way overpriced & almost always tamperred with.

I wish you the best of luck OP in finding a great 1st gen taco.

 

the odo must be easy to roll back on these pickups. I've run into two that were in "great" condition until I carfaxed em and got rolled odometers on both.

at least he was honest with you. you have to give him that.

 

You dodged a bullet, Even though he came clean. One has to take into account how long he perpetrated that fraud. If he could lie about that, anything else would be easy...
I hope that no-one gets scammed by him!
While i was Tacoma hunting, i came across three that had Salvaged titles that they did not tell me about. I drove 2hrs to find out when i asked to see the pink slip... Then they acted like they did not know themselves..''
Shady Characters!

Great lesson for all.. Trust but always Verify..

Good hunting, your truck is out there

>G
03 164k $10 one owner

 

I sold my first Tacoma (a 95.5 with 256,000 miles) several years ago after a head gasket failure. Guy that bought it fixed it and put it back on craigslist advertised as having 156,000. I emailed him asking about it and he claimed it was a typo. The ad disappeared after that and I don't know what happened. But I did immediately put a comment in Carfax simply stating that I had been the owner until a head gasket failure at 256,000 miles. Hopefully that comment is still there. The comment made no mention of our transaction, or what I had discovered in his ad. It was just an objective placeholder that would serve as a future warning if anyone checked Carfax and found a discrepancy in the mileage.

People like this #ssh*le are pure trash. Good for him for coming clean, but the fact that he lied at all speaks volumes about his character. And good for you for not getting ripped off.

 

No mentions of reporting these people???

 

I cant speak for everyone else but I did not report him. If he rolled the miles back on the truck then fixed it there is not much that can be done. I have the text message on my phone but as long as the miles on the truck are correct then there really is not a case. If I see the same post with the incorrect miles then I will report him.

What is really funny is the same guy sent me another message the next morning of a truck that he just got wanting to give me first dibs on it because he felt bad about lieing to me about the other truck.. HA! No thanks!

Makes me wonder if I had not asked for the VIN would he have came clean?

 

That's why $40 for a carfax saves you big time in the end! Glad to hear you didn't get ripped off. A thief with a conscience? How strange

 

True enough! Hope none of them do it again and sell it to another who is less suspecting and more gullible.

But then again, if you're low enough to consider rolling back the odometer in the first place, lower still to go through with it and try to sell it to someone.. then I suppose you're low enough to keep doing it until you're busted.

Odd salesman!