Normandie Berl is a professional sports announcer who is comfortable with a microphone in front of huge audiences. But she had to admit, “Car buying is an incredibly stressful and scary process.” So when she went in to look at a used Chevy, she shared her experience in a TikTok video titled “Be careful out there girlies.”

After “a minor fender bender” in her Cruze, Normandie found the perfect replacement. It was “in a great price range that had low mileage and had all the features I was looking for. And it was pretty much my car, just two years newer.”

There was only one downside. “The issue was is this dealership is two hours away.”

Normandie punched in her contact info and immediately had salespeople contacting her. “I tell this lady that I am two hours away, not sure if I can see the car today. And I definitely just want to think about it.” But she continued talking to various salespeople. “I was told by several people that this car is going to sell immediately and I can’t even drive it.”

Normandie drives two hours into a salesman’s Chevy Cruze bait-and-switch

She decided the recent Chevy Cruze must be a fantastic deal. So she drove all the way to the dealership the same day she discovered the car. After the long drive, her salesman greeted her with a smile. “Probably eight minutes later, he pulls up a black Chevy Malibu. And I came to see a silver Chevy Cruze.”

The salesman badly wanted her to splurge on the more expensive car. The man even refused to let her test drive the cheaper Cruze. “He said, ‘so the car that you want to see is not safe for you to drive.’” Why? “He basically says that there’s parts on back order and they don’t know when they’re going to come in…. probably like four to six weeks, but you can put a deposit down on this car and we’ll pull it off the market.”

Despite the Malibu being more expensive, and not even having the remote start Normandie wanted, she agreed to test drive it. During the test drive the salesman said, “It’s honestly only 2,000 more than the one you wanted to see.”

He offered to get it to her with the same monthly payment. Normandie had the foresight to say, “I don’t care about my monthly payment. I care about the overall price of the car.” She’d been hoping to pay $10,000 for the Cruze. And he knew it.

“He says, ‘if I can get you the Malibu at $12,500, you’ll buy a car.’ I said, ‘yes.’”

That’s when Normandie handed him the keys to her old Chevy Cruze so he could assess trade-in value.

“He finally comes back over, won’t tell me what my trade-in’s worth and is being weird about the numbers. He has like three different tiers of pricing listed.” The salesman kept showing Normandie different monthly numbers. But she did the math, knew she was making a big down payment and had good APR, and the numbers didn’t add up.

“Every time I compute the numbers, it’s coming out that I’m paying pretty much over $18,000 for this car that’s supposed to be $12,500.” She asked about it. “He starts treating me like I’m stupid.”

Normandie said, “I tell him probably no less than four times that I want to leave.” The only problem? He still had the keys to her old car and refused to hand them over. “He keeps trying to get me to sign.”

Calling in the manager

But she wasn’t signing. “Finally, he gets his manager. The manager comes over and he is like, what’s going on here?” Normandie asked the manager to break down the numbers for her. Finally, he pulled out the out-the-door price she was paying for the car. “It was listed at $15,971.”

“He’s going through the breakdown. And I said, ‘sir, I’m going to stop you. This number at the top, this number right here, that’s too much. We said the car was going to be $12,500. Give me my keys. I’m leaving.’”

Normandie finally got on the road. “But that was after me being a hostage for no less than probably 45 minutes. It was horrible. I had asked for my keys several times and they would not let me leave.”

After the experience, she had a warning to her followers. “And also if you’re a girl especially going into a car dealership alone, just try not to sign anything unless you genuinely know what you’re signing off on.” You can see Normandie tell her story herself in the video embedded below: