Some sellers think they can get away with ignoring buyers when they’ve knowingly sold a bad product.

What would you do if you bought a car only to realize it was a complete lemon, and the seller refused to answer your calls? Would you cut your losses? Or would you find a way to make sure they couldn’t ignore you any longer?

In the following story, one car buyer finds himself in this exact situation and finds a creative way to get a refund. Here’s what he did.

Bought a car that turned out to be a lemon. Seller ignored me so I sent him a text.

About 10 years ago, I drove 3 hours to buy a very specific car and got an hour home when the car died. Luckily, it was at a garage. I had a mechanic look at it, and he said it was obvious the seller had bodged a problem with piston rings, which would cost more than I paid to fix.

I called the seller to discuss it with him, but he ignored my calls and refused to reply to texts. I was very polite; I just really wanted to talk to him about it. No abuse was sent.

After a couple of days, I got fed up, and I remembered that this guy had a very old phone, one that only accepts text messages of a certain amount of characters, and then I had to split the text into another message.

Frustrated, he sent the guy a really long text message.

I, on the other hand, had an iPhone. So, I copied and pasted all of Shakespeare’s works into a message and sent it.

Apparently, it took a week before he could use his phone again without a text message interrupting him. They came every second or so anytime he turned his phone on.

I eventually got a refund, and he got his car back.

Wow! That must’ve been super annoying!

Let’s see what the fine folks over at Reddit think about his story.

Great advice!

It would’ve worked if he cared to translate it.

That’s an easy way to get your money back.

That about sums it up.

This worked out well for him.

But, next time, he should note that unless otherwise specified, used cars are sold as-is.

So, he needs to do more research and be more careful when buying cars.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.