A Winnipeg man recouped $1,500 from a local auto dealership after spotting an error in the paperwork for his new car purchase, months after he bought the vehicle.

Wade Reidy and his wife bought a new 2016 Chevrolet Equinox last July, but it wasn't until a few months later that they discovered a costly error in the documentation for the purchase — literally because of an accident.

Reidy had dropped the papers for the car purchase on the floor one day in November, and that's when he took a closer look at the math.

"I started working the numbers backwards and I couldn't get it to add up. I couldn't get it back to the advertised price. It was quite a bit off," he said.

"I'm sitting there and I do the math myself. I've got a notepad and I write down line by line," he explained. "You go from a pit in your stomach to, I want to say, almost anger."

Reidy and his wife concluded they had been overcharged roughly $1,500.

Wade Reidy liked the new Chevy Equinox he bought but didn't like trying to figure out the calculations in the paperwork for the purchase. (Jeff Stapleton/CBC)

"I thought, 'How could this be? Maybe it's a simple mistake. Maybe I'm not adding something up right.' So I went back to the dealership."

On three separate visits, he met with sales staff and managers at Birchwood Chevrolet Buick GMC to comb through the numbers.

The complicated nature of the paperwork didn't help.

Reidy's deal involved the price of the new vehicle, the trade-in of a 2014 Chevrolet Cruze, financing, warranty and the purchase of optional accessories, including a remote starter, window tint, cargo cover and splash guards.

Reidy said he saw different dollar figures on the various documents in the deal.

"From the offer sheet that I had signed, to the loan document, to the bill of sale — if all those numbers were the same across all three documents it would have been very easy to keep track of," Reidy said.

"You're looking at a list of numbers that just don't add up from one document to the next. It's very hard to make sure they are the same throughout the whole process."

Wade Reidy couldn't make the math add up and eventually discovered he was overcharged about $1,500 on the purchase of a new vehicle. (Jeff Stapleton/CBC)

At the dealership, Reidy sat down with a finance manager to try to figure it out.

"He couldn't get it to add up and I had to talk to one of the sales managers of some sort, so he did the old switcheroo. He left his office and sent the other manager in and then he couldn't get it to add up."

"I'm thinking, 'If you can't get it to add up — I mean, this is your guys' math — it has to add up. If you guys can't find the mistake, what's going on?'"

Birchwood ultimately concluded Reidy was overcharged and in December cut him a cheque for $1,520.69.

If it happened to me, it could easily happen to somebody else. - Wade Reidy

Reidy was satisfied with the outcome but wasn't satisfied with the explanation.

"How they got to that number, I don't have much faith in. But the number is correct," he said.

"Eventually, they had told me that they believe it was an adding mistake with my accessories. They had double charged me for my accessories."

Then in January, Reidy received another refund cheque from the dealership for an additional $97.51. He said the explanation was that the tax on one item had not been calculated properly.

Wade Reidy discovered the $1,500 mistake in his car purchase by accident, but now wonders how often such mistakes happen. (Jeff Stapleton/CBC)

"I am glad that the matter has been resolved to our customer's satisfaction," Birchwood Automotive Group president Steve Chipman told CBC News by email.

"I understand that we made a procedural error in the calculation of the price of the accessories that were subsequently added to the vehicle. Once it was brought to our attention, we apologized," Chipman wrote.

"Our bills of sale and ancillary financing/leasing documents are all computer generated and require only one single entry of the relevant information to produce all documents. We now understand how the mistake occurred and while errors like this can happen, it is a very rare occurrence and is always corrected to our customer's satisfaction," the email said.

It is a very rare occurrence and is always corrected to our customer's satisfaction. - Steve Chipman, Birchwood Automotive Group

"As to his concern about the complexity of the documentation, we should make our documents as simple as legally possible and error free. Our customers should be able to clearly understand the terms, conditions and calculations."

Reidy wants others to know about his experience.

"It makes me wonder, how many times does this happen? Does it happen one in every five deals? One in 500 deals? One in 5,000? If it happened to me, it could easily happen to somebody else," he said.

A Winnipeg man recouped $1,500 from a local auto dealership after spotting an error in the paperwork for his new car purchase, months after he bought the vehicle. 3:17

'It's a recipe for disaster'

Jack Gillis, director of public affairs for the Consumer Federation of America in Washington, said the paperwork that consumers receive when buying a car often has some kind of error.

"We hear it all the time," said Gillis, who CBC News asked to review some of the documents in Reidy's purchase.

"I think the fact that the dealership itself had a very difficult time understanding the paperwork to determine why he was overcharged is prima facie evidence that this is a serious problem," he said after seeing the documents.

"If the dealership folks who deal with this on a daily basis can't figure it out, how in the world can we expect the average consumer to understand these numbers?"

The Consumer Federation of America's Jack Gillis advises customers to question everything they don't understand when when signing papers for a car purchase. (CBC) Gillis said there are no national standards in the U.S. for documents in auto sales.

"The only practice that we're aware of is the consumer walks out of the dealership with a handful of papers, the vast majority of which they probably don't understand," he said.

"So all in all it's a recipe for disaster for the consumer and there needs to be far more transparency and logic behind all of this paperwork."

Gillis advises customers to take their time when signing papers for a potential purchase and question every detail they don't understand.

Apart from the calculation errors on his purchase, Reidy was also able to recoup money from the dealership on another item: the $899 charge for the Birchwood Advantage — a package that included items such as roadside assistance, tire and rim warranty, and theft protection.

Reidy filed a complaint to Manitoba's Consumer Protection Office, arguing the dealership had added the cost of the Birchwood Advantage on top of the advertised price for the vehicle and told him it was a mandatory part of the deal.

Under a Manitoba law meant to ensure truth in advertising that became effective June 1, 2015, all car ads have to give the total price for a vehicle, including all additional charges except the PST and GST.

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