Anne Landman

Consumer advocacy, Ethics, Red Rock dealerships, Red Rock Hyundai Grand Junction, Scams, Weird Grand Junction Stuff

Buyer beware: A tale of two car-purchasing experiences in Grand Junction

by Anne Landman • January 29, 2023 • 10 Comments

Afoxland Hyundai Kona EVTwo western slope residents purchased 2022 Hyundai Kona EVs around the same time last year. They both shopped at Red Rock Hyundai in Grand Junction. One ended up buying their car from Red Rock, while the other went to Red Rock first, felt uncomfortable, and ended up buying from Ralph Schomp Hyundai in Aurora, Colorado. Neither buyer left the western slope to complete their purchase or obtain their vehicles. The two report having had two vastly different experiences, as well as incurring vastly different total expenditures for their purchases.

Here is a side-by-side comparison of their buying experiences:

Consumer advocacy, Crime, Ethics, Local scut, Red Rock dealerships, Scams, Weird Grand Junction Stuff

Shake up at Red Rock

by Anne Landman • January 27, 2023 • 6 Comments

Brantley Reade (far left end of check)

As of today, Brantley Reade, Platform Manager for Red Rock Nissan, is no longer with the Red Rock Auto Group. He was formerly the designated person to call if you had been victimized by a deal at Red Rock’s Nissan or Kia dealerships.

So now, if you were a victim of a deal at any Red Rock dealership in which your digital signature was added to a contract without you being able to first see and expressly approve or reject any charges added to it, for example for extended warranties, maintenance agreements, protective coatings, key fob insurance, GAP insurance or other items, or if you found your signatures were forged on any documents from your deal, or if your gross income, monthly housing payment, description of your vehicle or any other information was misrepresented to your lender on your loan application and it got you into a loan too big for you to handle, contact Red Rock owner Bryan Knight at (801) 792-3711 or email him at bryank@tdauto.com to make an appointment to discuss your situation and give him a chance to make it right.

KREX-TV broadcasts 5 minute news segment about Red Rock forgeries

by Anne Landman • January 26, 2023 • 3 Comments

KREX-TV last night ran a 5 minute news segment about Red Rock dealerships, which are currently under investigation by the state for problems including forgeries of customers’ signatures on legal/financial documents like contracts, Powers of Attorney, title and loan documents, and the addition of thousands of dollars worth of extras to customers’ contracts without their knowing, like extended warranties and special coatings.

Below is the full statement of a former title clerk who worked at Red Rock. This person asked to remain anonymous. This statement was included in the KREX news segment, but it merits fuller attention because of its gravity. This person’s employment at the dealership has been verified, and they had experience with the Mesa County Department of Motor Vehicles before going to work for Red Rock:

Review of Red Rock Hyundai received from a reader

by Anne Landman • January 20, 2023 • 2 Comments

Review of Red Rock Hyundai received from a reader via snailmail earlier this month, pg. 1

Why does Red Rock go to such lengths to push “Portfolio” extended warranties?

by Anne Landman • January 19, 2023 • 6 Comments

A common theme running through customer complaints about Red Rock dealerships is that the customers discovered thousands of dollars in extended warranties added to their contracts without the dealership having asked or told them about it, and they spotted these extra charges only after their signatures had been affixed to their contracts electronically. Customers repeatedly say they did not want these warranties and never agreed to them, only to find they had been added to their contracts anyway when they finally saw their paperwork. Once saddled with them, the customers had to go through the ordeal of trying to cancel them in a timely manner, because the warranties are only fully refundable within 60 days after purchase.

Mack Post Office closed since Dec. 31, with no re-opening date

by Anne Landman • January 17, 2023 • 1 Comment

Note taped to the front door of the Mack Post Office.

We’ve already heard about the dire labor shortage that is causing major mail back-ups at the Post Office’s Scarlet mail handling facility, and delays in delivery of residential and business mail locally.

Now we just found out the Mack Post Office was closed indefinitely on December 31, 2022, leaving people in the Mack area without any retail postal services. People needing postal services are told to go to the post offices in Loma and Fruita.

Grand Junction Scarlet Post Office sorting facility reportedly in disarray

by Anne Landman • January 16, 2023 • 15 Comments

USPS carrier facility at 734 Scarlet: turmoil inside

It may look peaceful on the outside, but a longtime U.S. Postal Service employee at the Grand Junction Carrier Annex at 734 Scarlet Drive reports that inside the building the Postal Service is “going crazy lately.”

The employee reports, “We are delaying mail and it is running horribly.”

What’s going on and why is this happening?

“It started when they decided to lay off our newest hires,” the employee said:

“They claimed ‘lack of work’ as the reason, but since then, we’ve been 5 or 6 people short of a normal crew to process the mail. I worked over 80 hours last week and we can’t catch up. In addition to that, we process mail for DHL, UPS and FedEx as part of an agreement with them. They dropped half of a semi [truck full] of bags of mail at our office at Scarlet Drive on Wednesday, and all of that mail is still sitting there.”

Bigger than Roe western slope march planned for Sunday, Jan. 22, 2023 @ 1:00 p.m.

by Anne Landman • January 13, 2023 • 1 Comment

Crowd gathering in front of the old courthouse before the 2019 Womens March in downtown Grand Junction

Fifty years to the day after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade made abortion a constitutional right, a march will be held locally in Grand Junction to demand that federal protections for abortion not only be restored, but be made even better than Roe allowed.

Last June (2022), the far-right Republican majority now sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court stunned the country when it reversed 50 years of precedent in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, invalidating Roe v Wade. The ruling end Americans’ federally-protected right to obtain an abortion. It was the first time the Supreme Court has ever taken away a fundamental constitutional protection from people in the United States of America.

Tina Peters’ first jury trial (on obstruction & kicking a cop) starts 1/25

by Anne Landman • January 12, 2023 • 7 Comments

UPDATE 1-24-23: Tina Peters’ obstruction trial has been delayed due to a prosecutor being exposed to Covid-19.

A short video reminder from last February of what Trial #1 starting 1/25/23 is all about

Get out the popcorn!

Tina Peters’ jury trial on charges of obstructing a police officer and government operations and kicking a cop (Case No. C392022M364) is coming up on January 25-26, 2023. The trial will start at 8:30 a.m. each day at the Mesa County Justice Center in Courtroom 2, before Judge Bruce Raaum.

People may be able to watch the trial from home using the WebEx video conferencing link to the judge’s courtroom. Here’s how:

What to do if you think you were taken in a bad deal at a Red Rock dealership:

by Anne Landman • January 10, 2023 • 5 Comments

I did this drawing myself.

Did you buy a vehicle from a Red Rock dealership and think you may have fallen victim to shady sales tactics? If so here’s some help:

First, think back to the day of your purchase:

Did the financial manager have you sign your name electronically on an IPad or email Docu-sign link? Did the financial person show you your full contract including the page with all the numbers on it, with the total price of the purchase and all the extras, before your signature appeared on it? Did the financial person tell you about the extras that had been added to your contract — extended warranties, maintenance agreements, oil changes, coatings, insurance, etc. – and did you openly agree to pay for all of them, or were they hidden from you?

Activities of Neo Nazis and violent white supremacists documented in the Grand Valley

by Anne Landman • January 8, 2023 • 14 Comments

In the Daily Sentinel on Sunday, January 8, Jacob Richards authored a column titled “The Grand Valley has a problem with hate,” in which he discussed leaked videos of local activity by the violent white supremacist group Patriot Front that were posted by Unicorn Riot, a noncommercial, decentralized nonprofit media organization of journalists.

One of those videos is above. It shows members of Patriot Front holding military-style training drills in Canyon View Park in Grand Junction on October 10, 2021. Members of the group came from Utah and Idaho to participate in this training. Some of the known Patriot Front members in the video have been identified as 26 year old Nathan David Brenner from Louisville, CO, 23 year old Cameron Pruitt of Utah, Richard Jacob Jessop and Nathaniel Taylor Whitfield.

Another Red Rock customer discovers unapproved charges & signatures that aren’t hers on her contracts

by Anne Landman • January 5, 2023 • 7 Comments

Credit application with Sonja Bartlowe’s real signature on it in three places. Her $3,500 gross salary type is marked “weekly,” “bi-weekly,” “monthly” AND “annually.” The application says at the top, “Incomplete applications will not be processed,” but none of the boxes below that are checked to indicate whether she is applying for an individual, joint or business loan.

Sonja Bartlowe is a single mom with two little girls and no child support who worked as a branch manager for a home care provider. Last May she traded in a vehicle and bought a 2016 Nissan Titan pickup truck priced at $39,000 from Red Rock Nissan, at least that’s what it was priced online.

Little did she know what she was in for.

Another Red Rock customer reports signatures on sale documents are not her own

by Anne Landman • January 2, 2023 • 16 Comments

Katelyn Slocum’s real signature. “I always sign my full name,” Katelyn says.

The signature that appears on all of Katelyn Slocum’s documents in her vehicle deal except one. Katelyn says this is not her signature.

Katelyn Slocum is a Certified Nursing Assistant with two small kids who works as an in-home hospice care provider for HopeWest. She uses her own car to get to her patients’ homes, and at the end of 2021, she decided she needed a more efficient car. She ended up at Red Rock Nissan, where she traded in a 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee with almost 100,000 miles on it for a 2019 Subaru WRX with about 17,500 miles on it.

The transaction happened late on a Monday. Katelyn said, “It was a super-rushed purchase because it was past closing time, as it took awhile to get me approved for the loan amount.”

After hearing about other people whose names were forged by Red Rock and all the other problems people had had with their purchases, she was prompted to more closely examine her documents for the purchase of her vehicle, and on December 22, 2022 she took another good look.

Former G.J. Chamber of Commerce CEO Diane Schwenke to run for G.J. City Council

by Anne Landman • January 1, 2023 • 24 Comments

Longtime Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce President Diane Schwenke

The former longtime CEO of the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce, Diane Schwenke, has announced she will be running for the at-large seat on Grand Junction City Council in 2023.

Yes, THAT Diane Schwenke.

The one who endorsed convicted felony embezzler Steve King for state Senate in 2012.

The one who endorsed Ray Scott as a replacement for convicted felon Steve King. In 2018, Scott double-billed both his legislative and campaign expense accounts for over $1,000 in Uber rides, effectively doubling his personal reimbursements. He was also sued by the ACLU for blocking constituents from his official social media accounts, costing taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.

The same Diane Schwenke who endorsed Laura Bradford for Colorado House of Representatives in 2012. Bradford was pulled over by Denver police for driving under the influence of alcohol during her first and only term in the House. She quit after that term.

The same Diane Schwenke who endorsed Rose Pugliese for County Commissioner. Pugliese worked to kill the Riverfront Trail System by gutting all funding for it, circulated a petition to force D-51 teachers to stop teaching kids about climate change, and also stumped for the disastrous Tina Peters to be elected County Clerk.

Update: Customer gets satisfaction from Red Rock Hyundai after bad deal is exposed; dealership wants blog about his experience taken down

by Anne Landman • December 31, 2022 • 13 Comments

The $9,000 in extra charges Red Rock Hyundai included on a 21 year old customer’s contract without his knowledge or approval. After this deception was exposed and the customer confronted the dealership, they removed these charges and gave the customer a satisfactory new deal on an entirely different vehicle. See the bottom of this article for who to contact to get satisfaction if you’ve been ripped off by a Red Rock dealership.

The 21 year old customer of Red Rock Hyundai featured in a December 29 blog about the horrendous way the dealership treated him during his purchase of a used mid-sized truck reports that after almost two months of dealing with the situation, he has finally gotten full satisfaction from the dealership.

It wasn’t without a fight, though.

After the blog about his plight was published, the customer returned to the dealership with his father to press for concessions beyond the $4,500 the customer said the dealership had previously paid him “to essentially stay quiet about the deal.” As a result, the dealership took the problematic truck they initially sold him back as a trade-in, gave him a decent amount of money for it, and then sold him an entirely different vehicle for what the customer also considered an appropriate price. The dealership also removed the $5,000 charge for the extended warranty that the customer said he never wanted, and the $4,000 charge for a “Resistall” coating that the customer also didn’t realize he’d been charged for.

Canyon View Park vandalized

by Anne Landman • December 30, 2022 • 2 Comments

Vandals plowed through a wooden split rail fence in a large vehicle and proceeded to tear up the turf in an area near the east side of the park off the big, gravel parking lot. The damage was spotted around 9:30 a.m. on Dec. 30, 2022.

An incredible Red Rock dealership story from a 21 year old

by Anne Landman • December 29, 2022 • 3 Comments

Got a crazy Red Rock dealership ripoff story? Send it to anne@annelandmanblog.com. If we use it, we’ll keep you anonymous if you prefer.

I got an email yesterday from yet another Red Rock Hyundai customer who had a story that was so incredible, I had to share it. It includes yet another charge of forgery, as well as the addition of thousands of dollars in extras to the contract without the customer’s knowledge or approval. I spoke to this person on the phone to verify that they were a real person, get more details about their story and clarify some of the terms they used in the email.

The person who wrote this is 21 years old and came from out of town to purchase the vehicle. The name is redacted to keep the sender anonymous, upon their request:

Kremlin state TV praises House Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) for refusing to stand and applaud Ukrainian President Zelenskyy

by Anne Landman • December 26, 2022 • 10 Comments

Tucker Carlson and Lauren Boebert praised by Russian state TV

Western Colorado House Rep. Lauren Boebert has a new fan — the Kremlin in Russia.

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