Guidelines

I am one member of a five person board. The opinions I express on this forum are mine only, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Escambia County Staff, Administrators, Employees, or anyone else associated with Escambia County Florida. I am interested in establishing this blog as a means of additional transparency to the public, outreach to the community, and information dissemination to all who choose to look. Feedback is welcome, but because public participation is equally encouraged, appropriate language and decorum is mandatory. Although this is not my campaign site for re-election--sometimes campaign related information will be discussed, therefore in an abundance of caution I add the following :








Wednesday, October 3, 2018

Traveling Car Sales Drawing Scrutiny from Established Local Dealerships

I've been told there are travelling car salesmen setting up temporary, fly-by-night car "lots" at University and Cordova Malls, undercutting local dealerships and dumping "lemons" in our community to unsuspecting buyers.  Time for the BCC to look into an ordinance on this like every other Florida County already does....


I received an interesting call today from a local car dealer.

Apparently, there are groups of car salesmen from out of state and from South Florida coming up to Pensacola and opening temporary, short-term car sales operations in our local mall parking lots.

"Jeff, these groups are coming up here and dumping cars on our citizens and skipping town" he said, somewhat exasperated.

"Many of these cars are defective, and once these folks leave town, the buyers get stuck with these cars.  I have seen this, cars with bent frames and cars damaged in the floods." he continued.  "Locals bring this in to our dealership, and we often have to give them the bad news--the car is a salvage and not repairable"

In our conversation, he told me most, if not all, other counties in our state do not permit these sorts of fly by night sales.  He said he would send me additional information and I told him I would support some regulations to curb these sorts of practices, if such ordinances are not in contravention to state law.

I did not know this was an issue, glad I got the call.  If we need to put a stop to this, I'll bring an ordinance to do so very quickly. 

We don't want lemons being dumped in Escambia County!

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