Ensure a car has valid papers before buying it
Buyer can be charged with fraud and vehicle repossessed
When selling a vehicle, a car dealer or private seller must give the registration certificate to the buyer as this lets the buyer know whether the seller has the right to sell it or not.
It also allows the buyer to know whether the car is new, used or rebuilt, its age and how many previous owners the car has had.
But consumers are still sold cars without papers.
Oupa Ramphomane, 55, will have no car by the end of this week despite paying the full purchase amount to Sybil Motor Dealer in 2016.
Ramphomane said he thought he was uplifting a black-owned company when he approached a dealership coowned by Nthabiseng Sybil and Thabiso Serage in 2016.
Ramphomane paid R530 000 for a 2013 Range Rover 3.0L diesel through an electronic funds transfer.
At the time, the dealership was operating from 418 Pretoria Road in Silverton, Pretoria.
In April, he was contacted by Standard Bank’s car tracers who informed him they were instructed to repossess the car because it was owned by Standard Bank.
“I produced the car registration papers, which are in my name as a title holder, to the Standard Bank car tracers but the problem persists to this day,” he said.
Standard Bank has also proved it had a finance agreement with Nthabiseng Sybil Serage, who signed the finance agreement in April 2016, and that she only paid one instalment.
Consumer Line could not get comment from Nthabiseng nor Thabiso as they have vacated their previous place of business and their cellphone numbers are no longer in service.
Shakeel Amod is another buyer who paid R259 000 into an account of Bidvest McCarthy in December but has no paper that states he is the legal owner of the car.
What compounds his problem is that the car has been sold twice in the past three months with no valid papers, and he has been threatened with fraud charges as he has no papers, he said.
Solving this has proven futile as Amod was told he was also to blame as he should not have bought a car without ascertaining it had papers.
‘ ‘ I showed the pape rs but the problem persists
“They are a reputable company and I would not suspect that they did not have them,” said Amod.
Steve Keys of Bidvest McCarthy said he was not aware of Amod’s complaint, but assured Consumer Line that Amod would get his car papers before the end of this week.
He said the papers were lost in transit as the car was transported from Parow, Cape Town, to Gauteng in December.
Keys said the challenge was getting duplicate papers from the last licensing department the car was registered at.
The car was last registered in Eastern Cape, he said.
“Unfortunately there is no licensing department in the Eastern Cape and the registration has to be done via the Post Office which makes the process cumbersome.”