Man Takes on Dealership and Wins in Modern-Day Version of David vs. Goliath

Without turning all bitter and pessimistic or seeing conspiracies on every corner, there are days when it feels like the whole game is rigged, and not in favor of the average Joe or Jane. Abelardo Usandivaras, a farmer and occasional politician in his home pueblo of Metán, in Salta, Argentina, felt that on his own skin, when he tried to upgrade his truck on the farm for a 2023 model advertised as new, with zero miles on the odometer.

Usandivaras, now known as El Gaucho de Salta, became a viral star earlier this month when his desperate act caught the attention of people from his home country and abroad. A "gaucho" is an Argentinian cowboy, but with certain Robin Hood inclinations, so the term certainly applies to him. In following interviews, Usandivaras made sure to highlight that he refused to give up the fight because he felt he was standing up for every man ever tricked by the system.

So, what exactly is it that happened to earn Usandivaras viral fame and such a reputable nickname? Arguably, the former can come for the dumbest things like the cinnamon challenge, but the latter is hard to win. Usandivaras earned both by barricading himself inside a car dealership in Buenos Aires, in protest for not getting the car he had already put a considerable deposit on.

The story started late last year when Usandivaras decided it was time to upgrade from his old truck to a newer one. As noted above, he is an occasional politician, but he spends most of his time doing agricultural work, so he needed a vehicle on which he could rely.

He settled on a 2023 model from an unspecified automaker, having found a zero-mile unit at a dealership in Buenos Aires, Automotores Sentire S.A. There's some legal hubbub about how the term dealership doesn't really apply because they sell various makes from various brands, including used cars, Usandivaras says, stressing in a recent interview that such a distinction is highly irrelevant in this particular case. What they did next is what matters.

In December 2023, Usandivaras made a downpayment on the truck to the tune of 10 million pesos, which amounts to some $11,500 at the current exchange rate and nearly half of the total value of the vehicle. Delivery would take a maximum of 120 days, Usandivaras was told, but it would hardly require that much.

The dealership ceased all contact with Usandivaras right after, he later told the media. Whenever he'd call to ask for updates or a status on his order, he'd get passed around from one department to the other, and his question would be sidestepped in the most obvious – and frustrating – way. At the end of March, with the initial deadline missed, he was growing desperate.

He gathered the rest of the amount (13 million Argentinian pesos/$14,900) by borrowing from friends and traveled to Buenos Aires with his family. His initial thought was that, if he showed up at the dealership with the rest of the money, he'd get to drive home to Salta in his new truck. It sounds like a very naive approach, and Usandivaras doesn't get into specifics.

When he got there, he was again passed over from one rep to another and repeatedly refused a concrete answer. In the same interview, he notes that he couldn't even get a last name for a supervisor, let alone the boss of the business.

Eventually, he was told he wouldn't get the car he'd ordered and was offered another, older model instead. If he was hell-bent on getting the car he had ordered, he'd have to wait some more and, perhaps more infuriatingly, pay more.

So Usandivaras barricaded himself inside the dealership for 12 hours, during which time his story went viral. It helped that he spent most of that time by a large, floor-to-ceiling window waving to the people outside, talking to the media and, in whatever spare moment he had, to the policemen who had come to mediate the conflict.

Usandivaras asked for one thing, having finally understood that he wouldn't get the truck he'd wanted: his money back. At the end of 12 hours, he walked away with his 10 million pesos, which he used to buy a 2021 truck from another seller.

The story could have ended here, but Usandivaras is readying himself for the next chapter, where he sues the dealership. His argument is that, while he did receive the full amount back, inflation has dwindled its value, so he still came out as the loser.

He's also determined to teach the dealership a lesson. He says this way of doing business is "a system that gets you to spend on items they don't have," a scheme where "they use your money and then try to make you another deal." He's also quite upset that, despite the attention his case got, the dealership "continues to operate as if nothing happened."

For its part, Automotores Sentire S.A. has issued a statement to claim that the whole thing was a setup orchestrated by unknown actors running fake websites and fake ads in an attempt to get them to go out of business. They don't elaborate on that, let alone explain why they repeatedly failed to communicate with a man who had, allegedly, been tricked to believe he was a client.