Honda Cars of Mckinney (a Hendrick Motorsports Dealership) The finance manager (Billy Slopnik) lied about the requirements of obtaining a loan adding substantial costs to the amount of the loan. Mckinney, Texas

I am writing to you to let you know about what happened to me over the past weekend when I went to buy a used van from a dealership that I felt was reputable and honest.

On a whim, I took the wife to take a look at some used vans because the one we had was over 10 years old and it was in serious need of several repairs. Instead of performing that maintenance I felt it would be better to get a more reliable newer used van. We loved our Honda Odyssey so it was pretty much an easy choice for us, we wanted another one. We headed to the closest Honda dealership, Honda Cars of Mckinney.

With great patience and perseverance the salesman (his name is Willie, he was awesome) and the sales manager (Gary, he was great too) found us the perfect van that was almost within our budget. It was a little on the high side for us, but as long as we are careful, we can manage it so we said yes. Now the hard part comes. We had already been at the dealership with our 3 kids for 4 hours when we were sent back to finance. The finance department had at a minimum 6 people working in it and there were 2 customers in the offices, none were outside waiting that I could tell. So I figured it would be a fast 30 minutes and we would be on our way. Two hours later we were called back to sign paperwork. Thankfully my mother-in-law came up to get the kids while we waited the last hour and a half.

Once we got back to finance, the finance manager himself (Billy Slopnik) was the person managing our account. He told us that Wellsfargo was the only bank willing to finance us. My FICO credit score lists me as "low-very low risk" according to freecreditscore.com and two of my credit card accounts that give me the FICO score as part of their service to me. I was a little amazed that with more than 6 years since I have had a late payment that only one bank would finance me, but I wasn't really concerned about that as much as what he told me next. He stated that "as a part of the financing agreement, Wellsfargo is requiring you to buy gap insurance and the powertrain protection warranty". I didn't have any documentation to disprove him, so even though it felt fishy, after being at the dealership for 6 and a half hours, I just wanted to get out of there and get something to eat. So I signed the paperwork and we left with our new(er) van.

On Monday, I called Wellsfargo Dealer Services and spoke with one of their service representatives about the fact that I have been a client of their bank for over 15 years, I have savings and checking accounts there as well as my brokerage and business banking, and I didn't understand why they would require something like that for a long time client. The customer service representative told me that in no uncertain terms has their bank ever required anything like gap insurance or the warranty in order to obtain financing from them. The customer service representative told me that the finance manager lied to me.

So I called Honda Cars of Mckinney back and I spoke with Billy Slopnik, after I told him what I found out he told me the best way to take care of this was to cancel the coverage when the paperwork came in and to refund the money back to my vehicle loan account which won't lower my payment but it will lower my amount owed which will pay off my loan quicker.

My problem with this is that a) he lied to sell me something that I did not need, and b) if I hadn't done my own research on this, he would have gotten away with it. Now I feel the need to let other people know about this experience because if he (the finance manager) did it to me, I am pretty sure that the entire department is doing it to people and I feel fairly confident that he has done it to other people.

I don't really know where to go from here. I told the sales manager what happened, he told me that he would pass it on to Billy's boss, but that still doesn't feel like enough. If this is a common practice, people need to be informed of this practice.