Business ProfileforHoward's Auto Sales

I believe this business address has relocated to 4601 10th Ave S, Great Falls, MT 59405, as this is the address where the issue occurred. On November 18th, 2023 my husband and I bought a used Ford F150 truck from Howard’s Auto Sales for $7,000 and owed $600 on this date. My husband drove it for 1 week and half and it started shaking really bad when we would come to a stop or sit in a drive through fast food line. We went to Howard’s today 12/6/23 and spoke to Howard the owner. We asked if we could trade the car in for equal or lesser value because after going to multiple auto shops we found out there was an issue with the timing belt and were quoted $3,500-$4,000 to have it fixed. Howard told us we would not get the value we paid for the truck ($7,000 at this time) but he would work with us to get a different vehicle after we payoff the remaining $600 we owed, even if that meant we would be making payments on a different vehicle. This was completely not an option for us as we’d just spent $7000. I told him that I understand knocking off some money due to us putting a few miles on it, but it didn’t make sense that we wouldn’t get majority of the trading value from the $7000 we paid because timing belts don’t just go out all of a sudden and we’d only had the vehicle for 2.5 weeks. He said he had no knowledge of the timing belt issue and wouldn’t have bought the truck if he’d known about it. He also admitted he knows people who have bought cars from him with timing belt issues and the cars have lasted 2-3 years. He declined us test driving other vehicles to see if we would be interested in something else because “they sale cars so fast that what we want may not even be there by the time we want to trade the truck in. Inventory hadn’t changed much since Nov. 18th. Howard’s words to us were once we pay off the remaining balance, we could trade the truck in to a different dealer who has no knowledge about the truck’s issue which I believe is poor practice and unethical.