Tanya Jackson learned that the hard when she bought a 2016 Ford Transit. She and her boyfriend looked over the van for any problems.
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"We drove it around, drives great, it's clean. It had been detailed. We looked underneath it to see if there was rust or anything," Jackson said.
Jackson purchased the van and drove it home. Her plan was to convert the van into a vehicle she could sleep in if she was on a road trip.
After getting the van home, she noticed a strange smell, so they pulled out one of the seats. Jackson said she discovered dozens of dead roaches.
"You can see them kind of littered around in here, roaches, just little baby ones which are indicative of the fact that they were living in here," Jackson said.
As she tore up the carpet in the van and took off the dash, the dead roaches were everywhere, she said.
"So I pulled this one cup holder, 38 to 40-ish because I counted, and they were just sitting there," Jackson added.
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The roaches weren't the most startling discovery. Jackson couldn't believe what she found dead in the door frame near the airbag.
When asked what she found, Jackson said, "I don't know. I think a hamster or something, it looked sort of ... that creamy tan or white, and its fur and stuff, and its little droppings and things around up in here. It's been dead for a while."
Jackson said before the rodent passed, it chewed at some wires and ate around one of the airbag areas. She took the van back to the car lot she bought it from, and while they did offer to clean it, she said that was it.
"They said, 'Well they're dead. I don't know why you are so upset about it,'" she recalled.
Jackson said she was furious, but since she bought the van as-is, there wasn't anything the car lot had to do. When you buy a vehicle as-is, if there are any problems, you are stuck with those problems from the minute you drive off the lot.
Jackson says she's still converting the van and keeps finding more dead roaches.