Woman Buys Chevy Cruze On Facebook Marketplace. Then She Tries To Transfer The Title: ‘They Messed Around…So I Wouldn’t Find Out'

A woman says the Chevrolet Cruze she bought on Facebook Marketplace seemed fine at first. Then one problem after another started surfacing.

"I got scammed so bad,” Esmeralda Saucedo (@essmei1) said of her predicament.

She says the trouble started when she took the car in for an emissions check. Saucedo said it failed after she learned the previous owners had apparently tampered with the dashboard. That means warning lights that normally alert a driver to engine or other problems may not appear.

Saucedo also claims the Chevy’s mileage had been tampered with.

And those weren’t the only issues.

She says the air conditioning does not work—a particularly unwelcome discovery in the middle of summer. “Not only that, it shakes so bad to the point where it feels like there’s an earthquake,” Saucedo added.

Then came another surprise at the DMV. Saucedo said she went to transfer the title and learned the previous owners owed roughly $1,000 of unpaid taxes.

What made the situation especially frustrating, she says, is that none of this was obvious when she bought the Cruze.

Saucedo said the car was “doing amazing” at first and drove normally for about a month before the problems began piling up.

“It just started going downhill,” she says.

Now she says she is stuck with the car and cannot afford to replace it.

As of this writing, Saucedo’s video has more than 108,900 views.

The Mileage Claim Is The Biggest Red Flag 

Of everything Saucedo describes, the alleged mileage tampering is the clearest potential legal problem.

Federal law makes it illegal to alter an odometer with the intent to change the mileage shown. Sellers are also generally required to disclose a vehicle’s mileage when ownership changes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

NHTSA recommends checking the mileage on the title against maintenance records and a vehicle history report. Big discrepancies are typically a sign that something is amiss.

The dashboard issue could cause issues, too. Saucedo says the warning lights don’t appear when the Cruze is started, but the video does not establish what was changed.

As far as why the car didn’t pass its emissions test, this can happen for several reasons, according to AutoZone, and inspection rules vary by state. Without knowing where Saucedo registered the Cruze or seeing the inspection report, there is no way to say exactly what caused the failure.

The $1,000 she says surfaced during the title transfer is harder to assess for the same reason.

Individual jurisdictions handle taxes, registration fees, and unpaid charges differently, and the video alone does not show whether that bill actually belonged to the previous owner or became Saucedo’s responsibility when she bought the car. It’s also true that private-party sales come with fewer safeguards than buying from a dealership.

Still, a pre-purchase inspection would have likely caught at least some of the mechanical problems Saucedo now describes, including the shaking and broken air conditioning. It’s not clear from her video whether she got one before buying.

Gallery: 2019 Chevrolet Cruze / Cruze RS

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Viewers Urge Buyers To Get A Second Opinion

A lot of commenters focused on what Saucedo could have done before buying the Cruze.

“Always take someone that knows about cars with you when buying a car from Facebook Marketplace,” one person wrote.

Another suggested going a step further and having the seller meet at a repair shop so the car can be inspected before any money changes hands.

“Have a mechanic check it out,” another viewer added.

Others questioned whether Saucedo test drove or inspected the Cruze before buying it.

“Did you just buy the car without test driving it or even checking it out? Because how,” one commenter wrote.

Some viewers also urged buyers to look more closely at the paperwork.

“For anyone who sees this, you can do title transfers online now during your purchase. Make sure you do that while the sellers are next to you!” one person wrote.

Others suggested Saucedo take legal action, though commenters disagreed over how much recourse she might have.

“Take em to court!!” one person wrote.

Another replied, “It’s a civil thing you can’t really do much.”

Motor1 contacted Saucedo via TikTok direct message. We’ll be sure to update this if she responds.

 

 

 

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