Bought a car from a terrible person in Baton Rouge *Warning Super Long*

I want to first warn this will be long and I am mostly just venting. Seriously, no one has to read all this crap I am about to post. I will put a TL/Dr at the end.

So, my previous thread mentioned how my mom was involved in a wreck with a driver running a red light. Her car was totaled. We decided to take the total loss money for the vehicle.

We needed a new vehicle fairly quickly, because my dad had to go out of town for a bit and she would be without a car.

We are in Lafayette. My parents were all set to go to Houston together, because my dad was heading that way any ways.. and they tend to have the best car deals in the area. We actually had a few cars lined up to look at.

The day before they were set to leave to Houston to car shop, we found a vehicle in Baton Rouge with a used dealership called Auto Connect. It was pretty much exactly what we wanted. It was a little more than we were willing to spend, but it was less than an hour away. It seemed like a much easier thing for us.

So I call up the guy, Ricky Barnes, and I repeatedly asked him if there was anything wrong with the car.

I first asked, "Is there anything wrong with the car" He replied, "Nothing, it's beautiful." Then I asked him specifically, "Is there anything mechanically wrong with the vehicle?" He replied, "No."

I said, "No oil leaks? Nothing"

He then said, "Nope, the only thing I had to fix was the Cue system"

That is the "in-vehicle infotainment" system that controls like everything inside the vehicle.. He said that was the only issue with it.. and these things going bad are actually common. They all eventually go bad and need to be replaced, so this was no big deal to me.

So I made an appointment for my parents to meet him first thing the next day. That night I read some reviews on him, which were very few, but they seemed positive. One of the reviews actually looked like he left a positive comment for himself.. which should have been a telling sign.

This guy seemed incredibly nice, almost like a character, and some of my research made it seem like he was a good guy. I even saw he was a self proclaimed pastor, so I felt good about trusting him enough for my parents to go get the car.

When my parents first got there he brought them inside and just started the paperwork right away. My mom thought it was already a "done deal." that I had sort of made. I was actually helping pay for the vehicle. My parents looked over the car and noticed several minor things wrong with it. It had scratches all over, two dings in the windshield, stuff like that.. which is not a huge deal, but it was so many little things that sort of added up.. and then there was a huge dent he never made mention of. I never knew about the dent, or else I would have either never had them make the trip or I would have told them to talk him down from his asking price. I was under the impression from him that it had nothing wrong whatsoever, so I was okay paying full asking price. Especially out of convenience being local.

Well, my parents had to use 4 different methods of payment just to get the vehicle. A check for the totaled car, a personal check, cash money, and a credit card for the final $200 (which I really assumed he would cut my mom a break and now charge, lol, but nope he ran it)

That's another thing, his ad stated he financed. He doesn't. This was another lie, among several. He asked me how much I could put down as a down payment. Then he told me he could find someone to finance us if I was bringing that much money. He made it seem like his dealership financed. He is so slick, it's disgusting. We first tried to get financing locally, but no one wanted to finance a car over 120k miles. I decided to sell a few things to help get the remaining money it would take to just buy the car.

So my parents buy the car, and he immediately just leaves.. which was somewhat strange.

They come home and I see the dent and I am immediately thinking what the world.. but I know, that's on us as buyers.. (he never showed the dent or mentioned it over the phone, but my parents should have made mention it) so while it was disappointing, that's still on us. It's messed up he would let us travel that far without telling us though.

We then take it for some riding and it seems fine.. that is until we slowly pull into the garage. We finally hear a noise that we never heard before. For one thing, when my parents got in the vehicle over there he had Rush Limbaugh blasting throughout the car, and they struggled to figure out how to turn it off. Any ways, the noise sort of comes and goes.. but it's mostly when driving at slow speeds and while turning. A quick google leads us to believe it's the strut and/or bushings.

So my dad calls up Mr. Barnes about the noise. My dad asked, "Did you know the vehicle is making a noise?" and he replied, "Yes, I did, but I didn't think it was serious or worth mentioning." He then says he thinks it's the strut and he hangs up with my dad..

I am so disgusted right now. We were not looking to scrape every penny we have to buy a vehicle that would immediately need repairs. I realize this is always the gamble when you buy a used vehicle, but the fact that he knew and purposely withheld.. he flat out lied to me when I asked him about it.. just goes to show how horrible he is to take advantage of us.

My mother is devastated about this. We went to get a rough estimate of what it may cost to fix the noise and it's any where between $500 to $1,000. And that's if it's even what we all believe it to be.

I have personally written Mr. Barnes twice about all of this and he has not responded once. He's acting like a coward. I would like for him to make this right, but he doesn't seem interested. I want him to either pay for the repair of the noise he knew about and lied to me over, or for him to take the vehicle back. I was told by another dealership that if I pitch enough of a fit then he should take care of this, but so far he isn't responding whatsoever.

I realize there isn't much you can do when you purchase a used vehicle, but I just wanted to vent somewhere. It's really helping keep my cool. There are other minor things he lied about in his listing too.. such as he said it had heating and cooling seats, it only has heated.. this was actually a huge selling point for my family. The mileage was also off by 3k miles, even though the ad had just been posted the same week.. Again, I know that's on us to check out, but so much of the stuff listed wasn't true.

I know there is a Louisiana Lemon Law for used car buying, but I really wish he would just make this right and at least offer to pay for the repairs. Does anyone even know this guy? Or have any advice?

*TL/DR version.

We purchased a used vehicle from a used auto dealer who lied about the condition and then admitted after the fact he knew it had a problem and purposely withheld from us.