OKLA. CITY – Mike Munhollon got his van, but he can’t get the title to legally tag it.
“I want to be able to prove I own the vehicle,” he said.
He purchased the van from Motor City OKC, but the place was cleaned out weeks ago.
Owner Gene Gay’s been hiding from the In Your Corner team ever since.
On Youtube he touts his dealership saying, “’[We] try to treat our customers totally different that we would treat them in a manner that was respectful.”
Customers we talked to say they want less lip service and more customer service.
We tracked down the guy who sold Mike the van.
Salesman Jimmy Romo says he had nothing to do with the accounting or title work at Motor City and has no idea what happened to customer titles.
In fact, the same thing happened to him last year!
He says he purchased a car from Motor City and his own employer forced him to wait nearly 4 months for his title.
That’s not all.
“We purchased a warranty, never got a warranty paid for,” he said.
Jimmy and others allege they purchased extended warranties through Motor City, only to find out the warranty companies never got paid.
One of those warranty companies wouldn’t confirm or deny the allegation, but tells the In Your Corner team it “intends to honor all vehicle service contracts that were issued.”
The Oklahoma Used Motor Vehicle and Parts Commission licenses and regulates used car dealers and continues to receive complaints on Motor City and its owner, Gene Gay.
OUMVPC Chief Investigator John Lancaster said, “titles not received, pay offs not made. Things like that.”
Customers are protected, sort of.
The state requires all used dealers must get a surety bond, except Motor City’s bond is only worth $25,000 dollars.
“We realize that’s not a whole lot of money, especially when you’re dealing in today’s type of vehicles,” he said. “If the bond is cancelled, they’re automatically out of business.”
We went looking for Gay at his home.
No one was there.
We got word he was running his operation out of a second house.
There were pick-ups parked out front and lights on inside, but no one ever came to the door.
It didn’t matter. Gay got our message loud and clear.
After we started putting pressure on him to come up with Mike’s title he finally delivered.
“Your involvement definitely focused that this is a real problem they need to take care of and I don’t know I could have got their attention without that,” Mike said.
The state tells us it is giving Gay until the end of the month to smooth things over with customers.
The In Your Corner bottom line:
- Inspect the title before finalizing a sale.
- Ask a tag agency to pull it and run a car fax online.
- Remember, you don’t own the car until the title is in your name.
