Car sold without disclosing prior billing to another buyer; Mercedes, dealer fined Rs 10 lakh
NEW DELHI: A Delhi consumer commission has ordered Mercedes-Benz India and its authorised dealer, T&T Motors, to jointly pay compensation to a buyer after finding that they failed to disclose the vehicle’s purchase history and continued to show an earlier purchase date in their records. The commission held that both the manufacturer and the dealer had engaged in unfair trade practices by not informing the buyer that the car had earlier been billed to another customer and by failing to correct the purchase date in the manufacturer’s software.Why did the Mercedes-Benz buyer move the consumer commission?According to the commission’s order, the complainant purchased a new Mercedes-Benz E220d from T&T Motors on December 12, 2018, for over Rs 50.72 lakh. He also purchased an extended warranty and was assured that the standard warranty would run until December 11, 2021.However, when the car was sent for servicing in 2020, the service records showed that its first registration date was July 25, 2018, which was almost five months before the buyer had actually purchased it. When he sought an clarification, the buyer came to know that the vehicle had earlier been billed to another customer whose booking was later cancelled. He alleged that this fact had never been disclosed to him before the sale of the vehicle.However, the dealer argued that the vehicle was a fresh stock car and not a demo vehicle. It said the earlier billing had been cancelled and that the purchase date in the manufacturer’s software could not be changed because it was a non-editable. Mercedes-Benz India, meanwhile, argued that it had sold the vehicle to the dealer and was not responsible for the dealer’s transactions with customers.“OP-2 in its reply submitted that the vehicle in question was purchased by a commercial organisation and the complainant is not a consumer under the Consumer Protecting Act, 2019. OP2 further states that this commission does not have territorial jurisdiction to entertain this complaint,” the court order reads.What did the commission say about the hidden purchase history?The bench comprising President Monika Aggarwal Srivastava and members Rajender Dhar and Ritu Garodia found that while the complainant had purchased the Mercedes-Benz in December 2018, the dealer had already generated an invoice for the same vehicle in July 2018 in the name of another customer whose booking was later cancelled. However, neither the dealer nor the manufacturer informed the complainant that their records continued to reflect the earlier purchase date.“It is surprising to note that the complainant was never apprised of this fact that the date of purchase had been recorded as July 2018 in the records of the OPs and that the said entry was incapable of being altered at the time of sale by OP-1 and OP-2 both. The warranty was extended though the date of the purchase was reflected in OP-2’s software as July, 2018,” the bench noted.The commission also noted that the buyer had repeatedly asked both the dealer and the manufacturer to correct the purchase date in their records, but no satisfactory explanation was given. Instead, each party blamed the other for this.“No proper reason has been provided by either of the OPs in their reply before this Commission. As a matter of fact both OP-1 and OP-2 are engaged in shifting the blame to one another,” the court observed.Holding that the conduct amounted to unfair trade practice, the commission ruled that the dealer had concealed the vehicle’s purchase history and issued an incorrect invoice, while the manufacturer failed to correct the purchase date in its software or inform the buyer about the discrepancy.“Hence, we find OP-1 guilty of unfair trade practice by not informing the complainant about the date of purchase reflected in the software of OP-2 manufacturer and issuing a false invoice in July 2018… We find OP-2 guilty of unfair trade practice for not editing the date of purchase in its own software and not informing the complainant about the date of purchase,” it further observed.The commission directed T&T Motors to pay Rs 5 lakh in compensation and Mercedes-Benz India to pay another Rs 5 lakh. It also ordered the manufacturer to make the necessary changes in its software to correctly reflect the vehicle’s purchase date.
