Bait-and-switch leaves elder with truck he can’t drive
Navajo Times | Cindy Yurth Carlton Tsosie poses with his new truck he can hardly get into. Tsosie says he thought he was buying a smaller truck.
SALINA SPRINGS, Ariz.
Navajo Times | Cindy Yurth
Carlton Tsosie poses with his new truck he can hardly get into. Tsosie says he thought he was buying a smaller truck.
The ol’ bait-and-switch is as old as sales. Most of us have fallen for it at one time or another: a salesman draws you in with the thing you really want, then when you find out you can’t afford it or someone else puts in a higher bid, he substitutes something you really didn’t want as a consolation prize.
Most of the time, you chalk it up to experience and let it go. But an arthritic senior citizen in Salina says he was tricked into buying a truck he can’t even step into, much less drive, and he wants people to know his story so it doesn’t happen to them.
Carlton Tsosie, who believes he’s around 60, walks slowly with the aid of a walker, due to bad arthritis, especially in his left knee. His doctor has been urging him to have it replaced. He had helped his mother with her sheep, goats, horses and chickens until she recently passed away; now he manages the livestock and both houses by himself.
He had driven a Ford Ranger for years until he crashed it and the insurance company totaled it out. He had been depending on his sisters for rides, which made him feel like a burden. So when a salesman from Tates Auto Center in Holbrook, Arizona, called him about 8:30 a.m. on Jan. 4, he didn’t hang up.
The salesman, Ambrose Francis, was also Navajo, which made Tsosie feel better about the call. According to Tsosie, Francis asked him if he was in the market. “I told him, ‘Only if I can find a small truck, like a Ford Ranger or a GMC Colorado,’” Tsosie recalled. “That’s the kind of ride I need.”
Tsosie explained about his knees and that he couldn’t climb into a full-size truck. “He said, ‘Yeah, we do have some small trucks,’” Tsosie recalled. “I said, ‘I have no ride to get there.’” According to Tsosie, Francis arranged to drive out to Salina and pick Tsosie up. “About 10:45 he came around,” Tsosie recalled. “I had second thoughts, but he really wanted me to go with him so I could get a new ride.”
As the men pulled into the dealership in Holbrook, Tsosie wondered if Francis were wasting his time. He didn’t see any small trucks.
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Highway 264,
I-40, WB @ Winslow