Saturday May 12, 2:17 PM
SINGAPORE : The Consumers Association of Singapore says the car industry is among the top three businesses receiving the most complaints for the past three years, besides timeshare and contractors.
CASE receives an average of 1,426 complaints about the car industry every year.
Most complaints are about problems in getting car loans approved.
Some car buyers also tell Channel NewsAsia about their bad experience with parallel importers, or PIs.
They choose to get their cars from PIs hoping to get different models and at lower prices.
But some consumers end up with late delivery and poor after-sale service.
One said, the parallel importer failed to deliver his car, `three times over three months'.
What's worse, the buyer felt threatened when the agent told him "I know where you stay and work, so be careful".
Another told Channel NewsAsia he was asked for a S$2,000 compensation when he cancelled his contract after months of waiting.
He was also told that he had to forfeit the deposit of S$3,000 he had placed for his car.
The buyer said eventually he did not have to pay the compensation but lost his deposit.
Another buyer told Channel NewsAsia that having booked his car in January, he had put down a deposit.
He was promised delivery before the Chinese New Year but till today, the buyer is still waiting.
So a new organisation is aiming to change that bad image.
It is called Symbol That Assures Reliability and Trust, or START, and it wants to regulate parallel importers.
It is asking parallel importers who sign the contractual agreements to follow guidelines.
Melvin Lee, Founder, START, said: "Those dealers who want to become START members, they will have to give certain commitments like a banker's guarantee, and to sign a draft agreement from the lawyers to make sure that they are of the same mindset to provide the services according to our guidelines."
We asked Vin Cars, which says most of its customers are happy with its service, what it thought about being regulated by guidelines.
Mike Teo, Senior Manager, Finance and Administration, Vin Cars, said: "It should clear up the misconceptions of the public in the view of the wrong ideas about parallel importers. So I think it should work."
And if START members break the guidelines provided?
"If they break these guidelines, action will be taken against them and we will remove them as members straight away and announce it to the public," said Mr Teo.
Even so, START admits it can't do much for customers who have fallen victim to unscrupulous parallel importers.
So the aims are noble but the challenge is to get more PI's to follow the guidelines that can help clean up their image. - CNA/ch
i would like to purchase a car from the PI, but from the comments made by the ts,give me less confidence on the PI liao.
Anyone in the forum meets any prob buying a PI cars??