Buyer of used car with 11 summonses gets refund

KOTA KINABALU: A car dealer at Jalan Lintas was instructed to fully refund the booking fee to a customer plus costs after it was found that the complainant had a valid reason to cancel his purchase of a second-hand Proton Pesona.

The complainant, Azmi Gastom told the Consumer Tribunal yesterday that he found out the vehicle has 11 unpaid summonses amounting to RM1,850.

Worried that he would have to be responsible for those summonses issued before he bought the vehicle, he decided to cancel his booking in less than 24 hours after paying the RM1,000 booking fee.

Consumers Front of Sabah (Cfos) secretary general Hashima Hasbullah Yahya, who had assisted in this consumer complaint and stood as a witness, told the Tribunal that the vehicle might have been blacklisted as those summonses were issued on the vehicle registration number, thus road tax renewal in the future may be affected especially if it involved speeding offences.

Hashima supported her statement by producing a chat conversation with an experienced Traffic Prosecuting Officer of Kota Kinabalu.

A representative of the company, in rebutting the claim, stated that they had spent more than RM500 on repairs allegedly instructed by the complainant.

A bill from the workshop was presented to the Tribunal, and it included a new battery and engine servicing.

Azmi strongly denied ever telling the salesman to do any repairs to the vehicle as he knew there was no need to do so as it was advertised on Mudah.com a day before as “Engine Serviced, New Battery, Well Maintained”.

Therefore, Tribunal President Yong Pei Yi allowed the consumer’s claim and instructed the company to pay Azmi RM1,035 including costs within 14 days.

In another interesting consumer claim case involving a car dealer was instructed to pay its customer the cost of repairing a vehicle the complainant, Ng Kong Hang recently bought for his son.

Although its advertisement published on Mudah.com stated the vehicle being in good condition and did not require any repairs, the Land Rover car had too many problems since it was bought from the dealer.

The Consumer Tribunal found the advertisement by the dealer to be misleading.

Yong said that although it was a second hand car, the quality of the car has to be satisfactory to serve its purpose.

Furthermore, the car dealer did not challenge the complainant’s witnesses who did the thorough checks and repairs, thus Yong allowed Ng’s claim and ordered the company to pay RM13,549.30 within 14 days.

In another claim, the Consumer Tribunal told a company to pay RM3,200 to Dydimus @ Day Joos Josue for failing to deliver iron works the consumer had ordered in October 2018.

The complainant had requested for the grill to be made according to his specifications and installed at his house, which the contractor promised to do so in a month with a 50 per cent deposit.

However, the work was never done until January 2019 despite Dydimus’ reminders and many extensions.

Florence, a representative of the company claimed they had not promised the consumer a one-month period for the work to be completed, but this was easily rebutted with pages of WhatsApp conversation between them.