Used car scams take Chinese consumers for a ride

The 2012 Mercedez- Benz C200 was bought in January from a used car dealer in Jinan, Shandong Province.

The buyer, surnamed Wu, didn’t ask too many questions when he saw the low $ 170,000 yuan ($ 28,333) price tag.

But when he had the vehicle serviced over Spring Festival, Wu realized the deal was in fact too good to be true.

Mechanics found that the odometer had been rolled back 40,000 miles. While registering his car, local authorities told Wu the car had changed hands 13 times since April.

Wu demanded his money back. The dealer, Ouruida, denied any responsibility. “We have no obligation to inform buyers [ how many times it has been sold] unless they ask us first,” said the manager surnamed Liu.

Cases like Wu’s are becoming increasingly common in China’s used car market.

Industry experts blame the high rate of complaints on lack of industry standards.

“Some used car platforms just lower the bar for profit when they test and appraise vehicles, creating potential risks,” auto appraiser Gao Dapeng told thepaper. cn in November 2016.

In Ningbo, Zhejiang Province alone, about 100 official complaints of fraud were filed against used car dealers between April and October 2015, said a study published in Auto Industry Research on Tuesday .

The trend also reflects a lack of buyer awareness, according to Lin Chao, a co- author of the paper “Problems in Secondhand Car Trading.”

“Before making a purchase, most consumers substitute a full diagnostic by a mechanic and instead let friends look under the hood,” Lin writes.

In addition, experts cite a lack of industry regulations, while leaves loopholes for practices such as odometer tampering.

“It’s hard to determine who is accountable once the dealer and the owner begin blaming each other,” auto industry expert Liang Aimin, another co- author said in the paper.

Wu has yet to settle his complaint. “It is totally unfair to charge 170,000 for a car sold 13 times,” he said.