I agree that you can’t always anticipate what might go wrong… but that being said, you should ALWAYS get a written receipt for any sort of significant financial transaction. Certainly the sale or return of a vehicle is one of those things… not just vehicles you have had for a long time, but short term rentals as well.
Another common problems with vehicle transfers is that registration info with the DMV may not be promptly updated, so the person who has relinquished possession may find themselves getting notices of unpaid parking tickets after the transfer, or worse - potential legal liability for accidents paperwork still shows them as owning or possessing the car.
So bottom line, don’t ever walk away without a receipt. E-receipts are fine, but you need to follow up on those immediately if they haven’t shown up in your inbox.
Nope, you are not stupid. You did what many of us would do . . . . . have faith and trust in the WORD of others.
Keep the faith and the trust, just not in car dealers.
I had a lengthy entanglement with Sprint recently. It only ended because I threatened to abandon all 5 of our family plans and seek legal help. I hate that sort of thing!
But, it could have been avoided if I had insisted that the first person who helped me on the phone had sent an email confirming my order before I hung up. After an hour on the phone with that rather dim person, the order was all wrong. And the people I spoke to over 3 1/2 hours in the next 2 days made me promises and assurances but didn’t send anything in writing. A month later, the bill was still a mess. After I got my next promise, I had him email it before we hung up. Let’s hope it works!
I have some sympathy for them. I have a friend who works for a major state university system. They “upgraded” to a new system for registering for classes and picked the cheapest one. Basically, you “figure out the problems as you use it” because it hadn’t been properly checked before it was rolled out. Two years later it’s still a disaster and she regularly comes to work to find 2000 emails from frustrated students. I think a lot of businesses and government agencies use bad interfaces like that, and everything becomes a problem all too easily.