Dennis, the owner, is the type of guy who gives car dealers a bad name. He is dishonest, doesn’t' do his job as the person selling the car, and is categorically untrustworthy. Read our story before considering buying a car from him. We purchased what seemed to be a clean 2002 Suburban from him through eBay - sort of. This was our first eBay purchase and we were looking for a car for our family that didn't come from Vermont with all its rust issues. Dennis was selling one and when I called him to ask question and see if he would accept an offer we eventually agreed on a price and instead of purchasing it through eBay and its protections, he told me to send him a credit card deposit directly. If I wanted it, I had to purchase the car sight unseen aside from the pictures and my conversation with him since the auction was ending that day.
Since it was selling for market rate, I asked him specifically several times "is there anything wrong with it?" as I did not want to get into a project car. I was reassured multiple times it was in great shape with no problems. We agreed on a price of $6100. I made arrangements to travel to Long Island and pick it up. We went through a very frustrating process of his poor communication about wiring money. While Dennis was eventually correct in his requests regarding the wire transfer, he was rude, obnoxious and failed to communicate things clearly to us, which caused a delay and much consternation in transferring the rest of the money in the sale.
I arranged with him to be picked up at the ferry 10 minutes from his location which he agreed to do. After taking a 5 hr bus ride and then a ferry I arrived on the ferry I told him I was taking and he had agreed to pick me up from. When I arrived, no Dennis. After and hour I called him and he said, he had sent someone (who later told me in the car Denis had forgotten to pick me up). I believe it was his father in law. Another hour passed and eventually the ride showed up. When I arrived at his location, a store front in a strip mall, Denis was not there and the only person there was the father in law who picked me up. When I asked him to walk me through the care for my inspection, he said he didn't know anything about the vehicle and Dennis was nowhere to be found.
Then the really bad stuff happened. Against my better judgment but stranded in Long Island with the keys to the vehicle I now owned but no way to truly inspect and understand, I got in and drove off. What this all boils down to is that Dennis bought this car from a dealer or an auction and then did one of 2 things - never inspected and just put it up for sale to make a profit or did inspect it, realized he had a catastrophe on his hands and lied through his teeth to sell it. In either scenario it doesn’t reflect well on Dennis and Select Auto.
I drove down the road a mile to a gas station and filled up. Being right at the pump and anxious to get home I left the keys in the ignition. 1 minute later while standing pumping gas, I heard the doors lock on their own, with the one set of keys, my wallet, and my phone in the car. After hitching a ride back down the road, luckily I found the receptionist at Select's office there, and she called the fellow who gave me a ride to bring me back and break into my car so I could drive home. Thus began our now month long pursuit to rid our new car of the gremlins Dennis was either too incompetent to assess or dishonest in not disclosing. So here goes.
After driving the vehicle home I gave it a once over in the garage and realized that Dennis had very carefully framed every picture in the eBay add to avoid seeing every flaw in the vehicle. Things like missing trim pieces on the inside, the plethora of amateur electrical hacks(see later), the radio and backup camera that were installed by someone with a sawzall simply cutting the dash to fit, etc... etc... I fortunately saved the eBay add as a web archive and looked it over to see that the pictures were absolutely precision crafted to avoid showing the many defects.
I also diagnosed something was wrong with the radio installation as the backup camera faulted out and prevented the stereo from working at which time I distinctly remember Dennis telling me on the phone in our first conversation "oh yeh I drove that one home the other night from work - really nice car!" There is no way he could have driven it anywhere without knowing something was wrong with the aftermarket radio and camera install.
My wife drove it to work one day and then down to Boston and back to visit her parents with our children for February break. -so about 500 odd miles. When they returned we took it to get inspected here in VT within our 15 day window from purchase. Then she got the call from our trusted mechanic shop Utton's automotive (See their reviews at: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=uttons+automotive&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 ) The car would not pass inspection. All four tires had dry rot, the brake lines were all corroded and had illegal compression fittings on them. We had to replace rear rotors, 3 out of 4 calipers, the backing plates for the rear brakes, and brake pads. So we had to get that all fixed and buy a brand new set of tires.
The next day I decided to dig into the stereo and see if I could sort out the issue. Keep in mind while I'm not a stereo installer I am a General Contractor and I build and fix things everyday. I've probably install 20 stereos in car in my life and not once had even a hiccup. I also found the cause of the mysterious locking of the doors - a mis-installed remote car starter and alarm system. I disabled the car starter and then quickly realized the stereo was way out of my league. There were splices on to wires everywhere - and not the correct splices, but rather a piece of insulation stripped back and a wire wrapped around with electrical tape covering it.
They were everywhere - under the dash, behind the stereo, in the wires in the floors, in the headliner, etc... all the factory wires to the speakers had been cut and were re-run to a now non-existent aftermarket amplifier. Realizing I was out of my depth, we took it to the local auto accessory place and asked them to strip out all the old stuff an put it back to original, rip out the aftermarket stereo and leave me with the factory wire harness so I could do a new radio install. After 4 hrs he was only able to remove the old remote started and alarm, and pull out the stereo. He told us it was safe but it would be probably a full day or more fixing it all. I decided take that on.
Well he wasn't kidding. After a couple weeks of me not having the time to do it and my wife driving around without a stereo, she took it to another accessory place an hour away that is well respected. After looking it over he said "I'm going to do something I haven’t done in 20 years, walk away". The wiring mess was so bad, he simply didn't want to get into it. Which then landed back in my lap. So that weekend I spent a grand total of 14 hrs tearing 75% of the interior out of the car, and removing half a trash can of wires to nowhere.
I went to a junk year and cut out wiring harness from the same car and properly installed a clean wiring harness with butt splices to the loom coming from behind the dash. I then patched and repaired all the factory speaker wires and connections including all the splices that had been put in under the dash - and then installed the stereo. Everything worked but no sound! So we took it to another friend who is a mechanic and he was able to figure out that the car had a hidden factory amplifier that simply needed to be bypassed and all my wiring was correct. Another $200 later, the radio worked and all is well. During my final button up we had to reinstall a new turn signal stalk ($75 from A1 Auto.com) because as we found out the cruise control did not work -even though it was advertised as having it). That was another 2 hrs of fiddling only to find that the stalk isnt the issue and it is likely a control module for the cruise control that is in the $400 range.
So in the end, Denis is either incompetent or unabashedly dishonest. In either case - not the person to buy a car from. All told we are now up to over $5k spent in repairs and probably a good 20hrs of my time so even discounted for my lack of experience another 15 hrs of mechanic time ($1000-1500) The end result is a Suburban that seems to be in good shape now but one we never would have purchased had we known even a smidge of the problems it really had.
As for how Dennis has handled this - as expected - excuses, lack of acknowledgement, passive aggressive behavior, and a refusal to meet our terms. At the time we had about 3k of repairs and I said we were willing to pay for 25% of it due to our risk involved in buying a used car and asked him to send us a check for $1900 to help make this situation whole. It had copies of receipts and explanations of the issues. He did not respond aside from sending me an email saying he had refunded my $500 deposit. I thanked him for that gesture but explained that was not enough. I then made a second offer to let this go if he simply sent us another $1000 bringing his contribution to the problems up to a total of $1500 or I would then start posting negative reviews on the internet for him. He has since ignored that and not responded, leaving me no choice.
Dennis has proven through his actions he is the classic "sleazy car salesman", with an excuse and explanation for everything, and is well versed in dodging questions with accusations or misdirection. He even tried to argue with me that the fixes on the brake lines wouldn’t have cost $1000 and that his buddy could have done them for $400. I explained to him that shipped had sailed and if he wanted to fix them for $400 he should have done it before he sold it. I have given him every opportunity to step up and take responsibility for his actions and he has chosen to avoid that and hope I'd go away. As you can tell, I'm thorough and when I am wronged I don't take kindly to it and thus I hope my actions here help others avoid the same mistakes I made with eSelect Auto.
Select Auto Brokers Reviews
Dennis, the owner, is the type of guy who gives car dealers a bad name. He is dishonest, doesn’t' do his job as the person selling the car, and is categorically untrustworthy. Read our story before considering buying a car from him. We purchased what seemed to be a clean 2002 Suburban from him through eBay - sort of. This was our first eBay purchase and we were looking for a car for our family that didn't come from Vermont with all its rust issues. Dennis was selling one and when I called him to ask question and see if he would accept an offer we eventually agreed on a price and instead of purchasing it through eBay and its protections, he told me to send him a credit card deposit directly. If I wanted it, I had to purchase the car sight unseen aside from the pictures and my conversation with him since the auction was ending that day.
Since it was selling for market rate, I asked him specifically several times "is there anything wrong with it?" as I did not want to get into a project car. I was reassured multiple times it was in great shape with no problems. We agreed on a price of $6100. I made arrangements to travel to Long Island and pick it up. We went through a very frustrating process of his poor communication about wiring money. While Dennis was eventually correct in his requests regarding the wire transfer, he was rude, obnoxious and failed to communicate things clearly to us, which caused a delay and much consternation in transferring the rest of the money in the sale.
I arranged with him to be picked up at the ferry 10 minutes from his location which he agreed to do. After taking a 5 hr bus ride and then a ferry I arrived on the ferry I told him I was taking and he had agreed to pick me up from. When I arrived, no Dennis. After and hour I called him and he said, he had sent someone (who later told me in the car Denis had forgotten to pick me up). I believe it was his father in law. Another hour passed and eventually the ride showed up. When I arrived at his location, a store front in a strip mall, Denis was not there and the only person there was the father in law who picked me up. When I asked him to walk me through the care for my inspection, he said he didn't know anything about the vehicle and Dennis was nowhere to be found.
Then the really bad stuff happened. Against my better judgment but stranded in Long Island with the keys to the vehicle I now owned but no way to truly inspect and understand, I got in and drove off. What this all boils down to is that Dennis bought this car from a dealer or an auction and then did one of 2 things - never inspected and just put it up for sale to make a profit or did inspect it, realized he had a catastrophe on his hands and lied through his teeth to sell it. In either scenario it doesn’t reflect well on Dennis and Select Auto.
I drove down the road a mile to a gas station and filled up. Being right at the pump and anxious to get home I left the keys in the ignition. 1 minute later while standing pumping gas, I heard the doors lock on their own, with the one set of keys, my wallet, and my phone in the car. After hitching a ride back down the road, luckily I found the receptionist at Select's office there, and she called the fellow who gave me a ride to bring me back and break into my car so I could drive home. Thus began our now month long pursuit to rid our new car of the gremlins Dennis was either too incompetent to assess or dishonest in not disclosing. So here goes.
After driving the vehicle home I gave it a once over in the garage and realized that Dennis had very carefully framed every picture in the eBay add to avoid seeing every flaw in the vehicle. Things like missing trim pieces on the inside, the plethora of amateur electrical hacks(see later), the radio and backup camera that were installed by someone with a sawzall simply cutting the dash to fit, etc... etc... I fortunately saved the eBay add as a web archive and looked it over to see that the pictures were absolutely precision crafted to avoid showing the many defects.
I also diagnosed something was wrong with the radio installation as the backup camera faulted out and prevented the stereo from working at which time I distinctly remember Dennis telling me on the phone in our first conversation "oh yeh I drove that one home the other night from work - really nice car!" There is no way he could have driven it anywhere without knowing something was wrong with the aftermarket radio and camera install.
My wife drove it to work one day and then down to Boston and back to visit her parents with our children for February break. -so about 500 odd miles. When they returned we took it to get inspected here in VT within our 15 day window from purchase. Then she got the call from our trusted mechanic shop Utton's automotive (See their reviews at: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=uttons+automotive&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 ) The car would not pass inspection. All four tires had dry rot, the brake lines were all corroded and had illegal compression fittings on them. We had to replace rear rotors, 3 out of 4 calipers, the backing plates for the rear brakes, and brake pads. So we had to get that all fixed and buy a brand new set of tires.
The next day I decided to dig into the stereo and see if I could sort out the issue. Keep in mind while I'm not a stereo installer I am a General Contractor and I build and fix things everyday. I've probably install 20 stereos in car in my life and not once had even a hiccup. I also found the cause of the mysterious locking of the doors - a mis-installed remote car starter and alarm system. I disabled the car starter and then quickly realized the stereo was way out of my league. There were splices on to wires everywhere - and not the correct splices, but rather a piece of insulation stripped back and a wire wrapped around with electrical tape covering it.
They were everywhere - under the dash, behind the stereo, in the wires in the floors, in the headliner, etc... all the factory wires to the speakers had been cut and were re-run to a now non-existent aftermarket amplifier. Realizing I was out of my depth, we took it to the local auto accessory place and asked them to strip out all the old stuff an put it back to original, rip out the aftermarket stereo and leave me with the factory wire harness so I could do a new radio install. After 4 hrs he was only able to remove the old remote started and alarm, and pull out the stereo. He told us it was safe but it would be probably a full day or more fixing it all. I decided take that on.
Well he wasn't kidding. After a couple weeks of me not having the time to do it and my wife driving around without a stereo, she took it to another accessory place an hour away that is well respected. After looking it over he said "I'm going to do something I haven’t done in 20 years, walk away". The wiring mess was so bad, he simply didn't want to get into it. Which then landed back in my lap. So that weekend I spent a grand total of 14 hrs tearing 75% of the interior out of the car, and removing half a trash can of wires to nowhere.
I went to a junk year and cut out wiring harness from the same car and properly installed a clean wiring harness with butt splices to the loom coming from behind the dash. I then patched and repaired all the factory speaker wires and connections including all the splices that had been put in under the dash - and then installed the stereo. Everything worked but no sound! So we took it to another friend who is a mechanic and he was able to figure out that the car had a hidden factory amplifier that simply needed to be bypassed and all my wiring was correct. Another $200 later, the radio worked and all is well. During my final button up we had to reinstall a new turn signal stalk ($75 from A1 Auto.com) because as we found out the cruise control did not work -even though it was advertised as having it). That was another 2 hrs of fiddling only to find that the stalk isnt the issue and it is likely a control module for the cruise control that is in the $400 range.
So in the end, Denis is either incompetent or unabashedly dishonest. In either case - not the person to buy a car from. All told we are now up to over $5k spent in repairs and probably a good 20hrs of my time so even discounted for my lack of experience another 15 hrs of mechanic time ($1000-1500) The end result is a Suburban that seems to be in good shape now but one we never would have purchased had we known even a smidge of the problems it really had.
As for how Dennis has handled this - as expected - excuses, lack of acknowledgement, passive aggressive behavior, and a refusal to meet our terms. At the time we had about 3k of repairs and I said we were willing to pay for 25% of it due to our risk involved in buying a used car and asked him to send us a check for $1900 to help make this situation whole. It had copies of receipts and explanations of the issues. He did not respond aside from sending me an email saying he had refunded my $500 deposit. I thanked him for that gesture but explained that was not enough. I then made a second offer to let this go if he simply sent us another $1000 bringing his contribution to the problems up to a total of $1500 or I would then start posting negative reviews on the internet for him. He has since ignored that and not responded, leaving me no choice.
Dennis has proven through his actions he is the classic "sleazy car salesman", with an excuse and explanation for everything, and is well versed in dodging questions with accusations or misdirection. He even tried to argue with me that the fixes on the brake lines wouldn’t have cost $1000 and that his buddy could have done them for $400. I explained to him that shipped had sailed and if he wanted to fix them for $400 he should have done it before he sold it. I have given him every opportunity to step up and take responsibility for his actions and he has chosen to avoid that and hope I'd go away. As you can tell, I'm thorough and when I am wronged I don't take kindly to it and thus I hope my actions here help others avoid the same mistakes I made with eSelect Auto.