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Dealership Remotely Disables A Car Over A $200 Fee (www.cbc.ca)
An anonymous reader quotes the CBC:
A car dealership in Sherbrooke, Quebec, may have broken the law when it used a GPS device to disable the car of a client who was refusing to pay an extra $200 fee, say consumer advocates consulted by CBC News. Bury, Quebec resident Daniel Lallier signed a four-year lease for a Kia Forte LX back in May from Kia Sherbrooke. Two months later, the 20-year-old's grandmother offered to buy the car outright when he lost his job and couldn't make his weekly payments. After settling the balance and paying a $300 penalty, Lallier said, the dealership told him he would have to pay an additional $200 to remove a GPS tracker that had been installed on the car...
Lallier said there was no mention of the removal fee in the contract and he disputed having to pay it."I just find it absurd that over $13,000 was spent on this vehicle and we still have to pay $200 more to have their device removed," he told CBC. After Lallier refused to pay the fee, a mechanic notified him by text message that his car was being remotely disabled until the dealership recovered the device and $200 fee. "I went outside and tested my car, and it wouldn't work at all...and I got angry," Lallier said.
Lallier had finally started a new job and was headed to work, according to the CBC. The president of the Automobile Protection Association says the dealership's action was clearly illegal, since once the balance is paid off, "it's not your car anymore."
Lallier said there was no mention of the removal fee in the contract and he disputed having to pay it."I just find it absurd that over $13,000 was spent on this vehicle and we still have to pay $200 more to have their device removed," he told CBC. After Lallier refused to pay the fee, a mechanic notified him by text message that his car was being remotely disabled until the dealership recovered the device and $200 fee. "I went outside and tested my car, and it wouldn't work at all...and I got angry," Lallier said.
Lallier had finally started a new job and was headed to work, according to the CBC. The president of the Automobile Protection Association says the dealership's action was clearly illegal, since once the balance is paid off, "it's not your car anymore."
But he didn't agree. That's kind of the point. Also, once you sell a vehicle to someone else, it should be your responsibility to recover any items you may have left in it at the time of transfer. Trying to force the buyer into paying to return property he didn't even know he had is repulsive. The dealership should be sued into insolvency just for trying.
You missed several points. The biggest one is ownership. Until you pay the car off, the dealership is the actual owner, so it is perfectly legal to disable THEIR car whenever they like. In this case, all agreed that the car was paid off. That means the dealership was illegally disabling someone else's car.
Next up, the first mention of the devices existence was when the dealer demanded a $200 fee to remove it. Nobody had agreed to anything about it at that point.
If they share the same address, the "3rd party" is probably just another division of the same company.
You missed several points. The biggest one is ownership. Until you pay the car off, the dealership is the actual owner
That is not how it works at all! At least not in the US and I doubt it works that way anywhere else in the world. When you purchase a car, even if the manufacturer loans you the money, the car is yours. You do not own it free and clear. There is a lien against it, and that can be used to repossess the car, but it is yours until such time that you default on the loan and a court with proper jurisdiction authorizes the repossession of the vehicle. Now in this case, the vehicle was a lease and they may have additional rights prior to the purchase of the leased vehicle due to the fact that the dealership or manufacturer does own the vehicle in this case.
However, once they transferred ownership to him, with the GPS tracker installed, HE became the owner of the GPS tracker. The law is pretty clear that anything that is permanently mounted to the vehicle (as in you couldn't just detach it and walk away with it immediately) is the property of the new owner. So if it really is so integrated into the car that it takes $200 worth of labor to remove it, the tracker is his. Perhaps the dealership ought to have removed their property prior to handing the vehicle's ownership over to him.