Ford

I attempted to attach copies of two letters that I have sent to the Minnesota Attorney General's Office, but I will have to copy them to this page.

John H. Handforth
213 E Fremont St.
Spring Valley, MN 55975
28 May 2019

The Office of the Minnesota Attorney General --- Keith Ellison
445 Minnesota Street, Suite 1400
Saint Paul, Minnesota 55101

Dear Sir,

I would like to make you aware of a less than honorable automobile dealer. I know: it is a shock to all of us due to the sterling reputation and honesty that they always advertise about on television. The dealer in question is Zumbrota Ford in the heart of Zumbrota.

This one disappoints me because I had almost always heard good things about them and just how hard they will work to put you behind the wheel of a wonderful automobile created for your well-being. After my experience with them, the creativity behind their advertisements is utterly amazing.

Last year, a friend of my niece lost her job and needed a place to stay. We worked out a deal where I would let her stay in a bedroom that I was not using, let her use my food, my kitchen, and provide gas money so that she could go to school twice a week in Minneapolis. Her obligation was to clean and organize my house.

She found a new job about a month later. To be honest, I was very concerned about the car that she was driving. She was going to work daily. She still had the two trips every week to Minneapolis and bringing her son here from Wisconsin, twice a month. She needed something safer and more dependable.

She asked me to cosign for her, because she had only been on the new job for a month. We had both heard about this wonderful auto dealer in Zumbrota and seen many cars with the Zumbrota sticker on their trunk. We decided to pay them a visit, so I drove her up there, just in case she found something that she liked.

They found her a nice little GMC Denali pickup truck. The price was acceptable, but it was late in the day and they asked us to return the next day with her trade-in. They asked her to take the truck home for the night and to return the next day with the truck and her trade in.

We returned the next day and had to wait almost two hours for the loan manager, which rather put me on edge, but I ate my popcorn and waited until we were called into the office. It was not a pleasant experience. Her credit was not good, but mine was on the cusp between good and excellent. Due to our poor credit, they were going to raise the price an additional $4, 000, which I refused to go for. After many harsh words we declined, backed out and drove her trade-in back to Spring Valley.

We expected a few telephone calls with price reductions and other incentives. What I did not expect was the number of credit rejections that started to arrive As an attorney, you know that a rash of declined credit applications can be detrimental to a person's credit. When we called the used car manager, he said that they hadn't applied to anyone in my name. He didn't really lie to me. They hadn't applied to anyone. They must have applied to everyone. There were close to forty declinations and I lost close to 150 points on my credit rating. I wanted to do some work on my home and I have been unable to refinance my mortgage.

It was at this point that I decided to make copies of my rejections and send the copies to you. I wish to apologize because not every copy is perfect. At first I thought that the rejections were just copies of duplicate requests, but when I frequently found three copies from the same bank, I decided to look a little closer. Why did I send all three to you in several cases? Because they have different application numbers. These rejections WERE NOT clerical errors. Many of them were intentionally doubled and tripled WITH MALICE.

There has to be a law, or many laws, about this kind of business behavior.

I am hoping that your office can investigate this negative activity. I am sure that I am not special. They must have done this type of thing to others in the past. I am hoping that you will have a chat with them and do something about their shoddy business behavior. What I would appreciate is a letter from your office to each of the three credit reporting agencies, tell them what you have discovered and get an adjustment on my credit score.

Should you have any questions or any other need to converse with me, please feel free to call me at [protected].

If you need any document copied again, please let me know, because I was just learning to operate this printer.

Thank you for all that you do,

John H. Handforth

18 July 2019

The Office of the Minnesota Attorney General --- Keith Ellison
445 Minnesota Street, Suite 1400
Saint Paul, Minnesota 55101

Dear Sir,

I would like to apologize for not getting back to you about ten days ago, but your letter was misplaced, along with my job hunting paperwork. I really hope that you are looking forward to this letter. I want to say that Zumbrota Ford's letter almost made me gag, because we were only there twice, on consecutive days. There was a lot of backslapping and handshaking on the first day and a lot of antagonism on the second day.

After I retired from Qwest Communications (now CenturyLink) in 2002, I tried selling cars for about two weeks. I am familiar with the process of making customers wait for a couple of hours to apply a little stress and make them salivate over the deal. They applied that strategy and then told us that the price had gone up $4, 000. I walked out after less than twenty minutes had gone by, but Ms. Newman tried to stay and bargain, which was a waste of time. There were about three phone calls in each direction after our last visit. They hadn't given up on trying to sell us something and we were getting annoyed with the frequent rejections or declinations that were arriving too often to be a fluke.

When I read the response that you received from Mister Johnson I was more than just a little upset. Incensed would be a more appropriate word. For one, Ms. Newman went online in an attempt to find a truck similar to the one that we saw in Zumbrota. She found one in Harmony that personally belonged to a dealer. We looked at the truck on Sunday, at his home. He called the local bank on Monday and the deal was set. She took possession on Wednesday. They never had to flood the world with applications, while Zumbrota Ford was sending them out for another four to six weeks. At first, we were discarding the rejections, so I don't even have them all, but I sent you copies of almost all of them. At first, I thought about the possibility of computer error, but, when I took a closer look, I realized that many of them looked very similar...

If someone in your office wants to examine them you will find that there are three, or four, sets of identical rejections that look alike, except for the application DATES and the application NUMBERS. A new one went to several lenders every ten to fourteen days. This was a malicious attempt to sabotage my credit, and it worked. My credit rating dropped from 720 down to 550. I have been unable to refinance my home through the Veterans Administration because my credit is no longer acceptable.

I have spoken to several lenders that cannot refinance my home at the present time because too many credit inquiries have been made to finance a truck, in my name. I need your intercession in my behalf with the three major credit bureaus and a letter of apology to those credit bureaus from Zumbrota Ford.

I have been having my car serviced at Rochester Ford and the difference in attitude, service and cooperation is several worlds apart. Some warranty work on my car took longer than expected, last week, and they provided me with a loaner car without charge. Zumbrota wouldn't have offered me a bicycle.

The funniest thing that has come out of this, is that Zumbrota Ford has sent me at least one card and one letter, saying that my credit is good and that they'd be glad to sell me a car. There is no chance of that ever happening.

Yours truly,

John H. Handforth

Zumbrota Ford advertise about how much they have done for the community, but it is doubtful if they will ever tell what they have DONE to the community. I have received THREE communications from them, saying that they have a car with my name on it at the dealership. I am VERY happy with my Lincoln MKZ and the 39 mpg that I get. I live much closer to Rochester Ford, which is a wonderful dealership, by comparison.