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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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
On they Facebook panic button "We assume you are leaving a negative review because of the recent news coverage concerning Mr. Lallier. It would be important to understand that the CBC has unfortunately mis-identified Kia Sherbrooke as the seller. The car was in fact sold by a third party. If, indeed you are leaving your review because of this subject, we ask you to please remove your review as Kia Sherbrooke is not implicated in the sale. We simply share the same adresse as the third party. We are sorry for the confusion this has caused. We are currently in contact with CBC to clarify the situation."
CA = Califoria.
C Eh = Canada.
Sorry.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.