A new car purchased. The sales slip with the financial information given to us was not ours but another customer who also bought a car from the same dealership. I do not know where ours is or if it was switched by mistake. I asked for ours and was told it would be sent SHORTLY via e-mail. That was over 12 hours ago. What do I do?

Call them in the morning. I'm not certain what privacy act you are referring to.

Well, I had a huge and detailed response written out but we lost power briefly (been happening all day long) and I lost it. So here are the basics of it:

In PA, I had to undergo State and FBI background checks before I was allowed to offer financing at my dealership. They are very particular with what you do with peoples financial information during and after the financing process. Everything had to be kept locked and what was no longer needed had to be shredded. There were some very specific rules and regulations regarding the handling of any financial information.

You did not bother to mention your state but I will bet that if you google "(your state) banking laws" you will find the banking and securities commission for your state. On that website they will most likely have a section there for consumers. You will probably find the laws you need there. If not, they should have a phone number that you can call and talk to someone about your situation.

BUT...before you go and report them, keep this in mind...it was probably an innocent mistake. Sure, it's a mistake that they made and shouldn't have made. On top of that, they don't seem to care much about fixing it. Offering to send you an email only solves part of the problem but still leaves the bigger part of the problem, and the most important part, still out there unaddressed....WHAT happened to your information and WHO has it? This is the problem they need to take care of as they made the mistake. Sending you an email with this information does not solve the problem.

Also...you aren't really clear about what papers you did and didn't get. You did financing so I assume the papers you are talking about are the signed financing papers, or is it something else like the application and approval or the bill of sale? If it is in fact, the financing papers that have the disclosure page and all the pages that you were supposed to sign, they are most likely violating a law on this as well. All states (as far as I know) require you to have duplicate hard copies (NOT electronic files) with your signatures. If it is the bill of sale, most states require that you also get a hard copy of that too.

So, find out the laws in your state (using the google method I mentioned), which are very likely to be similar to here in PA, then call the dealer, talk to the manager or owner, and explain to them that none of this is acceptable and that if it doesn't get taken care of properly, you may have to go to the banking and securities commission about this as well as perhaps the state DMV.

It is all going to come down to how important this is to you and how upset you are and will be about it.