Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there ... right in the middle of trouble!
At least 8 lawsuits have been filed around Ohio against State Farm, salvage yards and wrecked car rebuilders, and car dealers who sold rebuilt cars without disclosing the truth about their prior history. Others are being filed around the country.
Read the newspaper article by clicking here.
In each case consumers bought a car or truck or suv and received a clear title, only to find out last September that they had bought a vehicle that State Farm had totaled out in the recent years. The lawsuits claim that State Farm was totaling out vehicles nationwide and reselling them to junk yards and salvage yards with "clean" titles, car titles that showed no history of the truth about what had happened to them.
The vehicles could then be rebuilt and dumped on the used car market, where unsuspecting buyers would pay thousands of dollars to buy what they thought were good used cars, only to find out later that they were worth no more than a fraction of the price. Some insurance companies won't insure a salvage vehicle and some banks won't give a loan to buy a salvage vehicle.
Worse yet, without a thorough safety inspection, the current owner of a salvage car could be driving a shoddily repaired car with "fake" airbags or other inadequate repairs. It could cost thousands of dollars to make a salvage car roadworthy and safe again.
You can find out more about Salvage Cars and why they can be a dangerous consumer ripoff by clicking here.