Customer: ‘We feel like we’ve been swindled’
The warranties and lifetime free service agreements for cars purchased from the now-defunct dealership HamiltonEV may now be “worthless”, a former co-owner of the company says.
Meanwhile, the firm’s owner Nicholas Down - who supposedly fled the country to Dubai last week, with thousands owed to creditors - is apparently blaming “panic” among lenders and car suppliers for the enterprise’s demise.
Two of the people who bought a car from Down about two years ago, Hamilton couple Vickie and Gavin Bane are among the potentially hundreds of people wondering whether their “Free WOF and free service every year for life” deals are now worth the stickers they are printed on.
Vickie Bane said she had last week inquired with Down about the warrant for her Nissan Leaf, which she and her husband bought about two years ago.
Down told her to take it to Vehicle Testing New Zealand and he would reimburse her the cost - but to her great surprise he posted the very next day on Facebook that he was effectively bankrupt and was departing the country.
“It’s false promises,” she said. “We feel like we have been swindled. There’s no way on god’s green earth we can afford to replace the battery if it goes kaput. The lifetime warranty was why we bought it.”
In a post in the NZ EV Owners group on Facebook, Shane Hobson - Down’s former business partner when HamiltonEV began operating in April 2019 - said he reckoned the warranties and free servicing agreements were now “mostly worthless”.
“Unless they were backed by a third party mechanical breakdown insurance (MBI) policy.
“During my time there, we bought MBI from a company called Provident for the more expensive cars (such as 40 kWh Leaf). But the vast majority we underwrote the warranty ourselves.“
Warrants of Fitness issued to recently-imported cars would have been independently inspected and would very likely be perfectly safe, he said.
Down has not responded to requests to clarify the situation, however the HamiltonEV website now features a short, stark message for customers:
“It is with the deepest of regrets and sadness that the directors and shareholders of all companies associated with Hamilton Electric Vehicles Limited have announced today that the company is closing,” the message - which is not credited to Down or any other person - reads.
“We will now sit down around the table with the directors, banks and shareholders and finance companies to discuss a plan moving forward.
“In the interim customers are to provide their own warrant of fitness and keep the receipt and another announcement will be made as soon as practically possible.
“We would like to thank our customers for their extreme loyalty and we would like to thank those that used [our] company for advice and knowledge and then went and bought elsewhere.
“As a result of Covid and the effects that it had on our trading and income we have never been able to recover from the trading pattern and downturn.
“Then when the Government announced that the clean car rebate was to be scrapped, we were unfortunately left with 147 vehicles that were arguably $4500 to $5000 overpriced.
“This led to a panic response from lenders in the bank and lending industry as well as our main suppliers.
“We are currently considering an offer from another dealer to co-join with their brand and we will update you as soon as possible on this potential development.”