Spent a day on the phone with City Auto Wholesales 'finance manager' JAKE working out pre-approval and current car's trade in value. Next day drove 30 miles to car lot only to find out the entire phone call was a SCAM. Jake is a telemarketer that was hired by City Auto Wholesale to tell people anything to get them to the car lot and isn't there (you will be told to ask for JAKE when you get to the lot). Also, I only saw maybe 3 cars that were on their website.. all of the cars I was interested in were NOT there. The cars on the website looked really nice, but about 95% of their cars were total beaters. The cars are not detailed, some of them even reek of cat urine (not kidding..) Please don't waste the time and gas driving out to City Auto Wholesale.. I read these reviews and thought I'd take a chance they were just some bad experiences, but these reviews are TRUE!!! High pressure sales that border on abusive (way worse than the average used car lot salesmen), the sales guy will hold onto your car keys so you can't leave.. I had to ask for my keys back three times. I told the man I was going to call the police if he didn't give me my keys back because I was being kept there against my will.

I spoke with Jake through the ad he posted on Craigslist for City Auto Wholesale. We went through the whole credit application and over my credit in detail. He took 45 mins to "talk to the finance company" and called back to say we were approved for $7K, but the bank wanted us to come to finish purchase that day. We explained we lived 2 hours away and stressed the importance of our time not being wasted. We brought all necessary paperwork and showed up only to find he was not there, he doesn't even work at the lot, only sending leads there via internet/phone. The salesman then proceeded to tell us we had two vehicle options: a wrecked truck and a Kia van without a backseat (4 seats total in vehicle)! In addition our loan of $7K included a $2K finance charge which left us $5K for a purchase and only those two vehicles on the entire lot to choose from! Yes, I have bad credit, but no I am not stupid. We expressed our disappointment and frustration knowing that we were out the $50 for travel, but wanted at least a respectful "I'm sorry" for our time veing wasted exactly how we expressed we didn't want it to. Did we get that? No! Instead they denied most of the first phone call's conversation, like I had been having a conversation with myself and told us it was only our fault for having such bad credit. Jacob wouldn't even let me get one single word in edgewise and was almost shouting at me over the phone the next day. I was at work and ended up having to hang up on him. It was so unprofessional and very clear they could care less about good business practices, even if they are a used car lot. Thank goodness we didn't end up doing business with them. BEWARE!!!

We went to City Auto Wholesale around 2 weeks ago and purchased a 1993 Acura Integra from Chuck. We were merely looking for a second vehicle to get us around, that we could pay off quickly and use while we reestablished our credit. The day we purchased the car, the battery was dead. They told us it had been sitting for a while and there was nothing wrong. We trusted them. The car seemed alright. It has high miles, but Acuras are very reliable cars. The car seemed like it had been well taken care of - clean, no major visible damage, seemed sound in both appearance and ride.

Today my husband was driving it and drove it from Portland to Albany (roughly 70 miles) and on ended up overheating. He opened the hood, and saw holes in the radiator and water shooting out. He had both of my children in the car and they were stranded for 3 hours until I could get there to pick them up.

The car is still in Albany. We intend to go back to City Auto Wholesale tomorrow morning to discuss the situation. We would hope that they will be honest - tow the car back from Albany, and either give us our money back - $1000 down, or provide us with a car that does not have major mechanical problems, or fix the problem. We'll see what happens.