Kruse International has been facing difficult times throughout the past year and even though some people are mad the company is trying very hard to regain its position as a top collector car auction company. Kruse International is not and has never been a ripoff or scam – we have been in the collector car auction business for more than 40 years and broken records and still hold records. William Harrah trusted this company to sell his prized car collection. Dean Kruse is the original auctioneer who showed the world just how much money a Duesenberg is worth.

Any problems that customers have employees try their best to answer. These are hard economic times for almost everyone in the collector car industry and many other industries, but Kruse is making changes and improvements constantly to do the right thing. A new general manager has recently been hired and an auction funds protection account has been put in place to guarantee sellers their funds. To anyone who is frustrated with Kruse, we are sorry. Please know that we are working to make this company the best that it can be. Every employee, including Dean Kruse, has been making efforts to communicate and improve to protect our customers.

Please read the following most recent article about our company. Our improvements are working. The article is called “Kruse speeds funds to car sellers”

http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/2010/01/22/20100122biz-kruse0123.html

Everyone in the Kruse office tries their hardest to answer questions and communicate with customers. Unfortunately sometimes we do not know the answer, but everyone in the office will answer your phone call and try to help you to the best of their ability. We try to keep customers informed and happy, but sometimes we do not know the answers or everyone that needs help. Please if you have something you feel needs resolved call us and bring it to our attention so we can begin to help you.

Well if Kruse employees are helpful now, things have changed. When I was waiting MONTHS to get paid for my car I endured dozens and dozens of unreturned phone calls, several “the check’s in the mail” stories and a laughable collection of excuses….”The person who can help you is out of town” or “is ill” or “has a sick child” or had surgery” or “their mother broke her hip” or “we’re having software problems”. Then, when the RUBBER checks finally began arriving it was “something’s wrong with our bank” and “we don’t know how that happened”. Oh Please…. I had a phone conversation with a Kruse employee at one point who admitted that she knew she was not telling the truth but she needed the job……

To “Kruse International”. Your statements are a bold faced lie. My brother and I have been trying to resolve the missing $16,000 payment for our 71 cutlass since the beginning of November (end of 30 day payment period). No one at the company has been helpful. If and when they answer the phone, they claim they don’t know what the problem is, but after 2 calls a day for four months straight, no one in the company has so much as returned a single phone call. How can you call this helpful, when your employees will not even call back. Further more, my brother was told if he went to Kruse headquarters he would get a check. So, he and my father each took a day of work to drive 10 hours one way from PA to Indiana, and when he got there, no one would even talk to him about a check. Finally, Kruse’s lawyer came after the CBS news crew showed up, and gave my brother a signed note promising payment 14 days after the Florida auction. This was the beginning of December, and still no money. Further more, all I here from Kruse is that the economy is bad, and that people are not paying for the cars they bought. If this is the case, why are titles sent out to these non-paying customers. The reason is that this is yet another lie from the Kruse organization. In our case, we have contacted the buyer of our car. The money was taken out of his account the week after the car sold at the Hershey auction (held in Lebanon presumably due to Kruise’s bad reputation). According to PA and Indiana State auctioneer licensing laws, sellers are to be paid directly out of the funds that are paid for their property (in other words we have to be paid out of the check that our car was paid for with). This clearly did not happen, so Kruse illegally used our money to pay for something else. Lets be clear, the money in that check did not belong to Kruse. Only a portion (commission) belonged to Kruse, the rest was mine. Finally, as for the “recovery fund” this is something set up by the Indiana licensing board that auctioneers must pay into. To file a claim against this fund, you must be awarded a judgment in a civil court and have exhausted all of the appeals processes. This claim must be filed within 1 year of the sale of your property, and it will only award you a maximum of $25,000. Worse yet, any related claims (cars sold in the same auction or possibly even by the same company) will be combined in a single claim by the state of Indiana for which the maximum payment is only $50,000 to be spread out across all parties. Also any one auction company may only have a maximum of $50,000 taken from this fund over a lifetime. To any parties who are dealing with a similar situation. DO NOT sign any promissory notes from Kruse. Kruse will use these notes to tell the state licensing commissions and attorney generals offices that they are in negotiations with their customers when really this is just yet another lie. Instead, file formal complaints with the attorney generals, insurance commission, and licensing commissions in your state and in Indiana, because what this company is doing IS illegal.
This is what we have have done, and will continue to do to try to ruin Kruse’s business so he cannot hurt anymore innocent people.