Sold TDI Prior to Scandal - Get Nothing

I sold my Golf TDI two weeks prior to the scandal breaking for $14K. I checked the VW website and I get nothing. The guy who bought my TDI gets $13.5K for the car PLUS $5,500 in restitution!

That doesn't seem right. I paid a premium for the car in 2009. Anybody else in this boat?

You didn't lose the post scandal rapid depreciation.... You basically took a loss on your car because you wanted out of it. You got fair trade in value accordingly. Fair deal, sorry.

So the new owner gets a windfall of almost $19K? That quite a return on his investment and doesn't address the fact that I was still defrauded in 2009.

drewnyc said:

doesn't address the fact that I was still defrauded in 2009.

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What harm did you suffer from that fraud?

Sometimes it is what it is. I bought after the scandal broke. My logic is a little similar to yours but I don't really understand why the previous owner gets half. They bailed out in my opinion. For all I know, they got a good trade-in value despite the scandal. They got the Goodwill package and bailed.

Current owner should really be the only one getting compensation.

But again, sometimes it is what it is.

ben

I am in the same boat as I owned a 2011 Golf TDI that was sold a few months before the scandal and a 2012 Passat TDi (wifes) that was sold about a year before the scandal. Both were bought new from the same VW dealer. I sold them because at the time I was in a tight spot for money.

Fast forward to March of this year I was finally able to get another 2011 Golf TDI. I of course only get half of what I would have off of my first one and get nothing for the Passat. Just the way my luck always goes.

DanB36 said:

What harm did you suffer from that fraud?

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I paid a premium in 2009 for a new TDI which I would not have purchased had I known the truth.

I sold a house in Florida once when the market was low. It later went up in value and I wished I hadn't sold it that soon. The new owner made all the money.

The fact that you didn't own a TDI at the moment the scandal broke meant that you weren't harmed by the deception. Now, if the guy you sold it to came back and sued (or beat you to a pulp) for doing so, you might have a justification for a complaint. But you'd already moved on. You don't get to go back and have a do-over.

Armourbl said:

My logic is a little similar to yours but I don't really understand why the previous owner gets half.

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Post-9/17/15 (but pre-6/28/16) sellers get half because they dealt with the loss in value when they sold. Values of TDIs tanked when the news hit, and if they had to sell, they ate more of a loss than they would have otherwise. But owners who sold before 9/17 didn't have that problem. Sure, they paid a premium for the TDI, but they should have similarly gotten a premium price when they sold--there was no harm to the market until the news broke.

I sold my '12 Golf in April of '15. Got what I thought was a fair price for it, although from numbers I've seen I would have received more in a buyback. However, I would also have had to paid for insurance, personal property tax, registration, and maintenance for the better part of a year before I'd have received any $$. And of course I'd have had the risk of theft or an accident in the meantime.

VW and the EPA had to make some choices about how the program would work. This was one. Moral of the story: Never pay a premium for any car. It's sunk money. I've done it a couple times, will never again. It's hard to feel good about it after.

drewnyc said:

I paid a premium in 2009 for a new TDI which I would not have purchased had I known the truth.

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as did the person you sold it to.

drewnyc said:

I paid a premium in 2009 for a new TDI which I would not have purchased had I known the truth.

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What premium? You paid more than MSRP?

DanB36 said:

What harm did you suffer from that fraud?

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The common term is known as "butthurt".

oilhammer said:

The common term is known as "butthurt".

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^^THIS EXACTLY, lol!!!

drewnyc said:

I paid a premium in 2009 for a new TDI which I would not have purchased had I known the truth.

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And you sold for a premium as well.

Well let's see you're whining bc you lost 50% of the value of your car from when originally purchased. Maybe more maybe less, either way this is average for every car after 5 years, you got 6 out of it. Be happy.

Entitlement

IndigoBlueWagon said:

<snip> Moral of the story: Never pay a premium for any car. It's sunk money. I've done it a couple times, will never again. It's hard to feel good about it after.

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Maybe it stems from the fact that this car (in sig) is only the second one we've bought new in 50 years, out of 16 or so, but I have hard time believing anyone pays a premium price on a new car. When we bought this one, I called USAA (one of our banks) and asked them for a price. They gave me a certificate on a dealer in the northern part of the state I didn't want to go to (higher tax), so i just sent e-mails to a half-dozen dealer asking if they were willing to match the USAA coupon. I got a call two days later from Suntrup in St. Louis. They didn't match USAA, they beat it, and got us exactly the car, color and all, that we wanted. The Passat stickered for $34-something, and we got it for $29,198.
Going into a car dealer wanting a particular car is like going into a grocery store hungry— never, never do this.

drewnyc said:

I paid a premium in 2009 for a new TDI which I would not have purchased had I known the truth.

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Same here. The new owner stands to get several thousand dollars more than I sold it for 2 years ago. This is not right. The fraud was initiated at the time of original sale. I would never have purchased this car had I known of this at the time. I could have spent less money on a more environmentally friendly car.

The class action has been going on for nearly a year. In all that time, none of the many lawsuits that were consolidated into the single class action now pending have included previous owners who sold their cars before 9/17/15. Why is this only now a problem?

NYC-TDI said:

Same here. The new owner stands to get several thousand dollars more than I sold it for 2 years ago. This is not right. The fraud was initiated at the time of original sale. I would never have purchased this car had I known of this at the time. I could have spent less money on a more environmentally friendly car.

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So let me understand, the problem is that you're not getting any money?

If all you cared about was VW getting punished for the wrong doing then I'd say yeah that guy truly cares about the environment. I feel like people who claim to buy these only for environment purposes, not the crazy well fuel savings to power, are riding some high horse.

If we weren't getting money from the buyback would you guys be complaining like this? I think not.

You bought a car and paid whatever you felt was reasonable. You sold or traded the car and accepted a value you felt was acceptable. At the time of both the purchase and the sale there was no information about the emissions cheat, so it wasn't affecting values. So you paid and received what was considered fair value, without any impact of the cheat. You aren't owed anything.

That the EPA negotiated a generous payout for the current owners of these cars is a windfall for those owners. No one knew it was coming. And to take advantage of the windfall, some have had to keep cars longer than they wanted to, perhaps for over a year longer.

If you want to complain about something, perhaps the compensation is too generous. But people who bought and sold before the cheat was made public were not harmed by the cheat in any way. They deserve no restitution.

IndigoBlueWagon said:

If you want to complain about something, perhaps the compensation is too generous. But people who bought and sold before the cheat was made public were not harmed by the cheat in any way. They deserve no restitution.

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This, exactly.

Edit: The people who bought after the scandal broke don't deserve restitution either. We either knew of the issue, or we failed to do our due diligence before buying. The difference is that we have the cars, and VW needs to get them fixed or off the road, so they're giving us a monetary incentive to do so.

drewnyc said:

So the new owner gets a windfall of almost $19K? That quite a return on his investment and doesn't address the fact that I was still defrauded in 2009.

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Windfall of 19K? Well, they paid 14K to you, so according to my math, he only gets a $5000 windfall.

Just picking nits here.

poor drew! For there to be fraud there has to be damages. What are your damages?

For owners who owned at the time dieslegate broke it is very easy to determine the damages.

Even though VW lied, their lies did no harm to you. The butthurt you feel now is just the greed nerve kicking in. I see it all the time..... Everybody is worried about what others are getting.

Yes we (current owners) made out better than you

I'll send you a dollar and a sympathy card if you care to share your address.

You remind me of the guy who bought stock, held it for ten years, and then sold. Two weeks after selling, the stock price shoots up 50%.

Sorry, that's the breaks. As others have said, as there was no scandal announcement while you owned the car, you did not suffer the sudden depreciation caused by the scandal. Therefore, the scandal caused you no monetary damages.

All valid points although I don't think stock / home ownership are good analogies. It would appear that the VW "restitution" payment is more about apologizing for defrauding its customers rather than making people whole again. The guy who bought my car is essentially getting all his money back + use of a car for 1 year + $5500. I understand that I'm probably out of luck but it still doesn't feel right.

So imagine this...because it's happened. You buy a Jetta Wagon in '02 for $22K. In '06, for whatever reason, you decide to trade it in, get, say, $12K. VW says they aren't going to have TDIs for '07 and '08, there aren't any wagons in '06, and fuel prices go up to $4/gallon. The car you traded in '06 for $12K is worth over $20K in '08.

No one owes you anything. Market timing worked against your decision to sell. That's how it goes sometimes.

You guys keep trying to use normal market fluctuations to discount his agitation over being defrauded by a company. The situations are not analogous.

Fraud happens whether or not you realize it, whether or not you feel direct harm, the fraud is harm in and of itself--you don't need additional damages to have been defrauded. Even if you benefit from someone defrauding you, it's still fraud, it's still illegal, and you'd still be entitled to compensation.

Just like if someone breaks into your house and steals something. It wouldn't matter if they stole a turd out of your toilet bowl, it'd still be theft and it would still be wrong. Even if you didn't realize the turd was gone, or if your grandma's heirloom brooch was stolen but you never opened the box and looked inside, it'd still be wrong and it would still be illegal.

bizzle said:

Even if you benefit from someone defrauding you, it's still fraud, it's still illegal, and you'd still be entitled to compensation.

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This simply isn't true--the law just doesn't work that way. Civil fraud is the kind where the plaintiff (i.e., you--the person who was defrauded) sues and (if successful) gets some money. In order to be successful, the plaintiff must show that he was harmed. The plaintiff's recovery is going to be based on how badly he was harmed. If the plaintiff benefited from the "fraud", there's (legally speaking) no fraud, and the plaintiff doesn't recover anything.

Edit, because it might help: The main goal of civil law, as opposed to criminal law, is to compensate the plaintiff for his losses, rather than to punish the defendant. In the case of torts (which would include fraud), that means to (as best as possible) put the plaintiff in the same position he'd be in if the tort had never happened. Yes, punitive damages are sometimes available, if the defendant has been naughty enough (and VW almost certainly has here), but even punitive damages have to be related to the actual damages.

In criminal law, the defendant can be punished even if what he (illegally) did actually benefitted the plaintiff. But in civil law, a plaintiff who's suffered no actual harm can't ordinarily recover anything.

In this instance of consumer fraud, where victims were sold a vehicle under false pretenses and the government's claim of damage to the environment that impacts both society at large as well as the individual drivers, simply because some drivers got to drive a nice car with enticing torque numbers and good fuel mileage that does not mean that the fraud can go unpunished.

And simply because you don't know it happened does not mean the fraud goes unpunished.

The responses here are trying to argue that because the fraud wasn't made public he wasn't harmed or is not entitled to compensation, but that's not accurate. You can be defrauded and not know it...that's the intent of fraud (to remain undetected).

There are statute of limitations that could preclude someone from presenting a claim after finding out about it, but that doesn't mean you weren't harmed during that period of time simply because you didn't know it at the time.

DanB36 said:

But in civil law, a plaintiff who's suffered no actual harm can't ordinarily recover anything.

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You inverted what I wrote.

You can benefit from fraud and still have a fraud claim.
That's a separate issue from whether you are *harmed*

You can simultaneously be harmed *and* benefit from something.