Slashdot Mirror
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."
If you leave your property within an item you transfer to someone else, you should pay, not be paid, to recover said item. The dealership should be sued for extortion.
He should sue them:
As this is Slashdot, I feel obliged to say my first action would be to find that device and attempt to remove it myself. I would keep that box as a trophy.
Actually, according to the documents I have on my new car, once I have paid at least 50% of the balance, it's mine and they can't take it from me. If they want to recover from there, they can only pursue me as per a normal debt.
After 50%, it literally states that it's legally my property. Sure, if I refuse to pay, they know I should have a car, but they can't just repossess it immediately. Before 50%, if I refused to make payments, they could disable it, recover it, just walk up to it with a manufacturer's key and take it - it's still theirs.
And it counts the deposit and the finance, so you actually own the car earlier than halfway through the payment term.
Now, it's a bog-standard personal car purchase, so I imagine that that's pretty standard for the UK/EU or that it's a statutory ruling that they have to abide by and tell you.
Fucking brilliant plan. You fall behind on payments and they remove your ability to move around and have a hope of making the money. I bet they charge you for the privilege too.
Of course. And repo the car and sell/lease it again to someone else they hope can't keep up with the payments so they can do it again. And again... John Oliver did a good piece on the practice. IIRC one car had been sold 80+ times... A search for something like 'John Oliver car loans' on Youtube will probably find it.
That's just it they keeping lowering the entry credit scores to increase sales. Home sales are down to 1% down payments to increase sales of homes. The problem is with normal life debt the average salary of $50k a year isn't enough to purchase the average home price of $200k. So the banks and realtors are doing tricks to keep their sales up. Again. Except this generation has so much college debt in order to get a salaryabove $50k a year that they can't buy a home until they are 40 under the smart 20% down payment.
The same reason is why trade jobs are struggling. Trade jobs basically top out at 50-60k a year and that is just barely above poverty level in major cities and lower middle class elsewhere. We need a huge salary bump. Not a minimum wage bump but a median wage bump. That is something that hasn't happened in 40 years. And it is starting to drag the economy down.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I know, I will turn in my card later...
The fee wasn't in the docs. The dealership asked for it after they sold the vehicle to him. The guy's mother (is he a Slashdot reader?) settled it with the dealership. The dealership removed the device at no additional cost.
I am guessing they forgot to remove their property and saw that the subcontractor (many times the service behind the hardware is someone else) would charge them ~$200 so they decided the pass on the charge. At this point, tough luck, deal was done. The user doesn't even need to return the GPS (service can be turned off), it kind of was sold with the car. The dealership should have asked nicely and gone to pick up their stuff.