Hmm? I wonder if that UFO I saw last night was part of the smart grid? I think it had a G.M. badge on the front....... sorry couldn't resist

I guess Patch Adams and Joe Diaz missed the sign above, eh?

@ chris @John Quinn: Patch W Adams is not being satirical, the trends he describes are unfolding daily. Unfortunately, most people are unaware of the profound implications of current events (national, international, economic, political, ideological, technological). It's amazing to see the degree to which most of the populace are in a type of induced trance state; like lambs, blithely -and willingly- going to slaughter.

Chris -- haha! This string was getting so long, we were bound to see something like this. There's one in every crowd! ahahaha...

Patch W Adams. With all of this getting people so hot under the collar I hope your satire was not lost here! Of course, if you are serious, well.....WOW!! LOL

Ann, you should have your vehicle. I was in the same situation. I told my dealership that the NHTSA as well as the CARS hotline confirmed that I should have gotten my car the day of the deal. The NHTSA also requested that I report the dealership to them, and that the dealership could face fines if they refuse to deliver the vehicle. Tell the GM that under the rules of the program, they should not be waiting for the government money, and that the NHTSA has requested that you report the dealership to them because of this violation (and that they can expect fines if refusing to deliver your new car). Also, when the NHTSA made this a new CARS requirement to deliver the vehicles, they also gave the dealerships the option to opt out of the program if they couldn’t afford to get rid of the cars before receiving payment. Instead, your dealership (and many others) are bending the rules of the program in order to sell more vehicles. As a result, they are taking away the consumers clearly outlined rights under the program.

Maybe the dealer GMs are more stubborn in my state but talking with the GM didn't produce results. He says the state law says it is illegal for the federal government to tell him how to run his business and that he can decide not to release the vehicle until he receives approval on the voucher. I am still paying insurance on the trade in vehicle that is signed over to the dealership, the warranty is running on the car that is on the lot. The GM says I should be okay with the warranty since my estimation of how much I drive would make the warranty mileage driven not time driven. Bottom line he won't release the car, he tells me it is my option whether to turn my clunker in to his lot and he can arrange for someone to pick it up if I decide that is what I want to do. Also, signing an agreement to pay $4500 or return the car has fine print which states I would be responsible for depreciation and other costs involved with using the car if I decide to return it.
State AG office seems surprised that the fed government refers me to them for problems with a federal program.

This Program is designed to Destroy the Used Car Market so that eventually People will only have a Choice between a Government Made Smart car or a Government Made Smart car.

That is the only Reason for the Government to Demand the Destruction of the Used Cars and to restrict the Program to New Cars only. This will Drive up the Cost of Used Cars and Drive Used Car Dealers out of Business Faster. Eventually this will leave nothing on the Market but Battery Powered Government created/approved Vehicles. It's called Behavioral Economics.

This Program was a Test for a More Permanent Program later. Probably to be inserted into the Senate Bill for Cap and Trade. It is all about the Smart Grid.

The Government wants you to have to Drive a Plug in Electric Vehicle so that it has to Plug into the Smart Grid. This will give them the Power to track your movements, TAx you by the Mile and in Conjunction with Cap and Trade, allow them to restrict your CO2 Output.

If you don't know what the Smart Grid is...you better soon. Some of it is going on Line Next Year...

As far as not getting paid and why it seems so confusing, that is obvious. It's called Thinning the Herd.

The Goverment is hoping some of you guys that are Not Government Run, will go out of Business when they tell you that you are not getting paid. That is so that there are fewer choices and down the Road the Public will only be able to Choose from a
Government Created Smart Car...Or a Government Created Smart Car...

Wake up...You are Helping in your Own Destruction. They are using your Greed against you....

Anne,
Here is the update from our car purchase.
We picked up our car last night. Salesman treated us great, had a crud remark from another employee. Our pick up was not with out a few glitches but the were small and got worked out quickly. Hope your situation gets worked out soon.

Ann, if it makes you feel any better, we are in the same boat. We put a deposit on the new car on Aug. 4th, the dealer submitted paperwork on Aug. 6th and as of today, the dealer still won't release the car. They claim that they aren't waiting for the reimbursement, just the approval. They didn't want the clunker initially but had us drop it off on Aug. 15th. I didn't and still don't have much faith in their knowledge of the C4C process and have a feeling that the application will be rejected during the first review, which means that there's still a long wait ahead of us after they resubmit whatever they neglected to send initially. Luckily, we have two other cars that we can use, but it would be nice to get this whole process done with! >>edit -- We signed over the title to our clunker as well, so there's no turning back!

Would you mind sharing what changed and how?

Disregard, NO Help needed, we are picking up our car tomorrow!!! :-D

IS there any recourse for the consumer who is still waiting on their new car purchased over 5 weeks ago through C4C? This doesn't seem right. Herb Chambers in Massachusetts is one of the dealers that won't give out the new car. They want their money first. I would have never purchased from them had I known they would not go by the rules of the program. You would think they care more about customer service and their reputation, but they don't. Cheers to Ernie Boch for giving out the new cars like the rules said. Shame on you Herb Chambers!

Now the car dealers know what it's like to be a physician. The problems they are describing are the same ones physicians have in dealing with Medicare, CHAMPUS, Medicaid and other government medical programs. I hope the car dealers recoup more then most physicians do from government sponsored programs.

@ Ann, I'm not aware of a way to cancel a 'pending approval' claim. My understanding is that we can only modify a claim when it goes into a reject status in order to make corrections. I can check with my admin staff on Monday to get clarification on that and post more then. In the meantime, the dealership doesn't want to take the remainder of your money because that would consummate the sale and would leave them with no reason to hold your car. It would also start the clock ticking for them to submit payment to their bank prior to receiving the CARS rebate for the full amount of the vehicle if they finance their inventory. In the end, I believe that once you talk to the GM you should see some results. Have a great weekend and I will post on Monday after I find out about if a claim can be cancelled that's in a pending approval status.

Charles- I went back to read some of the recent posts and want to thank you for your recommendation on speaking with the General Manager. Of course I want this deal to go through. I wonder if my deal would or could be cancelled by the dealer when I continue to request they release the new car to me and that they take possession of my clunker? I also want to pay the remainder of what I would owe for the car. It's strange to me that a dealership doesn't want to accept my payment as well.

That part of the agreement that was created weeks after I committed to the car which states that the dealer can choose not to deal if I don't sign an agreement to pay the voucher value or return the car doesn't seem like it should be able to be applied but since a lot of things do not seem to be logical in all this, would I really be surprised?

I have done the math on what this dealership has at stake monetarily based on what they have told me. 5 approvals, no ultimate rejections, but resubmitting paperwork was involved, 27 total deals-somewhere around $115,000. I didn't subtract the approvals since I am assuming the money hasn't been paid yet. From there I have no idea if that is something a dealership should be able to handle financially.

Back to my initial question- can a deal be cancelled by a dealer a month later with paperwork submitted and a "pending approval" status?

@ Travis, the rejection reasons can be quite interesting to say the least. We sold a vehicle that has a base MSRP of $41000 but with options totaled over $46000. We submitted the claim and it was rejected because the sale price exceeded $45K. No where in the rules is sales price mentioned, only base MSRP. After a very long wait on the hotline, our employee that submits CARS claims had to explain to the NHTSA rep that base MSRP and sale price are two entirely different things. They then asked for a scan of the window sticker to prove the vehicle had the base MSRP that we stated. Luckily our manufacturer provides us with the ability to retrieve pdf versions of the window stickers of vehicles in our inventory. We submitted that claim again and are waitinng for payment. Talk about making up the rules as you go!

It seems to me that the Government is cherry picking the deals to see if they can reject them, they are skipping around in the most random of orders, there is no method to how they look at them, probably closing their eyes and pulling a number out a barrell, out of 85 total deals I have been paid on 7, however they reject 2 - 3 daily, and believe me I have had to call them( the government) to inform them that they made the mistake, not us on a number of occasions in regards ot rejections. It seems like they cherry-pick the rejections and leave the approvals to just a handful of people, its probably easier for them to kick it back instead of filing the paperwork to approve it and then when it gets rejected it probably goes back in the pool for some other poor guy to look at and do all the paperwork. Out of 10 rejections, only 4 of mine have been valid, after I finally get them on the phone and make them go over it with me, they say stupid crap like "you should have circled the dates for them to see" , this is crazy and my GM gets every rejection email and he thinks we're a bunch of douche bags shortcutting on the paperwork lol

@ Ann, no problem. Our business is extremely cash intensive. Most dealerships in the US finance their inventory with a bank (either an independent bank like Wachovia, Bank of America, etc or a manufacturer's captive finance source like Ford Credit or Honda Motor Credit). The bank requires payment in full from the dealer when the vehicle is sold by a certain period of time. If this does not happen, the dealer can lose its source of inventory financing and could have to close its doors. Furthermore, the dealer is subject to spot checks by the bank and if the car isn't present most banks require the dealer to pay it in full irregardless if the dealer has received full payment for the vehicle. Here's an example: $10,000 car - $4500 rebate means customer pays $5500 for vehicle. However, the dealer has to pay the bank $10,000 for the vehicle so from a cashflow standpoint the dealership has now gone backwards $4500. This happens every day with manufacturer rebates. However, those rebates have a very simple claiming process with a defined payment schedule. This isn't the case with the CARS rebates. One claim might not seem like alot of a drain but taken with 50 or 100 others and this can create a serious cashflow problem. At our stores we complied with the guidelines set by NHTSA and delivered the vehicles at the time of sale and took the clunker from the customer. Fortunately for us we have sufficient capital to do so and can wait for the government to pay us for our CARS rebate. It sounds like the place where you are conducting business saw that their exposure on the CARS program was such that they were uncomfortable with releasing more cars without receiving payment from the government and thereby having to pay the vehicles off with their finance source and having negative cash flow. This predicament placed them in an uncomfortable position between alienating customers by asking them to wait or risk further cash drain by releasing vehicles that they don't know when or if they will receive full payment for.

Thank you. I had been told by the Sales Manager that information from a conference call with the NHTSA noted that 150 vouchers a day were being processed. That seems too ridiculously small an amount for what is now a 2000 person effort to handle the paperwork. Just having information that is valid would be helpful.

Would you mind helping me understand how a customer paying for all but $4500 of the vehicle cost does or does not make any difference to a dealer?

My situation includes the dealer not wanting to see us with our clunker or our payment, beyond the deposit, until the deal is approved.

@ Ann, the government will release data pertaining to nationwide claim submissions and payment. For the deals that we have done under the CARS program, we haven't been able to figure out a pattern or find any type of cadence as to which claims are selected and when our claims will be paid. I think this is because of the sheer volume of claims that NHTSA and their contract employees are processing throughout the US. Initially it was a nightmare to submit claims because of site failures (crashes) and problems with the information that the government had (referenced in my post about not sharing the EPA's vehicle database). Many will sit in a pending status for quite some time and then are rejected for a clerical error or a document that didn't scan properly. We cannot edit the claim until it is rejected even if we know we made an error in submitting it so the claim will then take a much longer time to get paid. Ultimately, unlike a manufacturer rebate which has a predictable timing from submission to payment, the government rebate submission to payment schedule is unclear and is why customers like you are having difficulties completing your transactions.

@ Ann, I would contact the General Manager of that particular store and let him or her know you intend to contact NHTSA (at the 800 number on the cars.gov site) and let them know about the problem your facing. Contacting the manufacturer is pointless as each dealer is independtly owned and operated. The fines that are out there for not complying with the program exceed what the value of the rebate is, so s/he (the GM) has an incentive to try to make things work without involving the government. Although the dealership has the right to ask you to sign an agreement at the time of purchase to repay the government rebate if they do not receive payment from the government (not sure if they can ask you to sign this after you agree to the deal and have signed all of your paperwork already)and you have the right to refuse to sign it and therefore not do busines with them, they cannot hold the vehicle pending payment from the government or refuse to take your clunker at the time you consumate your transaction (sign the paperwork). If they have your title as you said they do and you cancel the deal, you may have recouse if they have already wrote on the title noting it as a clunker (a requirement for claim submission). In doing so they would make your vehicle have a 'junk' title thus dramatically reducing the value of your vehicle. I'm sorry that you're having these difficulties and I hope the store you're working with can resolve this issue quickly for you.

Charles- are you able to determine or have heard of how many claims per day are being decided as approved or at the very least processed?

@ Chris, I work for a multifranchise dealer in VA. The 'front end' of the program was a phenominal success(i.e. stimulating customer demand and sales). The folks that purchased from us were individuals who rarely buy new vehicles and keep the ones they have forever so I don't think this program necessarily pulled ahead customers from the upcoming months. Their vehicles were truly clunkers and I couldn't have given them a trade in value anywhere near what the government offered. Virtually all had outstanding credit and most paid cash for their new vehicles. The 'back end' of the program (i.e. claim submission and claim payment) has been challenging to say the least and has been the focus of extensive reporting through various news sources. The demand on our personnel and the time that it takes to submit a claim is unacceptable. The lack of integration between the EPA's database and NHTSA's database pertaining to vehicles built is also unacceptable and created major headaches with claim submission. I believe the government had the wrong department (NHTSA) administering this program as it is miniscule in size and lacked any experience and infrastructure with processing payments. These factors have lead to the existence of a 'claim purgatory' that claims live in for weeks on end, neither rejected nor paid. We believe that eventually our stores will be paid for all of our eligible claims and would participate in the program again as long as our theory holds true and the government can streamline the claim submission and payment process.

I seems this program has really become a mess. I am curious, to the dealers out there – if this program were to be offered again, would you participate or avoid all together? Is all of this mess worth the extra sales? In other words, has the “gift horse” that government has handed out to you too (I assume Net Sales for most dealerships benifited greatly, although I do not have any data to back that up at my fingertips), to the dealers become a “white elephant”? Or is it too early to tell (as in you do not know if the government will actually pony up what they may owe you)?