For Immediate Release
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Contact: Rosemary Shahan, CARS, 530-7590-9440
Consumer Groups: Send Car Buyers Bill of Rights
Back for Repairs
Dubbing California’s Car Buyers Bill of Rights a “Bittersweet Deal for Consumers,” consumer groups called for state lawmakers to repeal or fix the provision that allows consumers to return vehicles during a two-day window after purchase. Consumer advocates also urged the DMV to issue regulations the agency drafted over a year ago to make the return option workable. Without the regulations, dealers may not even have to provide a receipt when consumers return a vehicle under the new law.
The non-profits also warned consumers about dealers that are going out of business, leaving their customers in the lurch and causing millions of dollars in losses, as the auto market softens.
Consumers from Los Angeles, Lafayette, and Woodland described their sour auto deals, including Oscar Fuentes, whose truck had been in two severe collisions before it was sold to him. He asked the salesman if it had ever been in a crash, and the salesman told him it had not. He paid $23,500 in cash for the truck. But a CARFAX report and a close inspection of the truck revealed major damage. The repairs were shoddy, leaving the truck very unsafe. He tried to return the truck the next day, but the dealer refused to accept the return. That dealership is now closed.
“Auto dealers have drastically diluted California’s recipe for auto lemon-aid,” said Rosemary Shahan, President of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety (CARS), a non-profit auto safety and consumer advocacy organization. The law that passed is a watered-down version of an initiative drafted by CARS that was undercut when lawmakers reached a compromise with auto dealers and the Governor. CARS has cautioned other states against viewing California’s law as a model, citing numerous weaknesses in the law.
Today CARS issued a major report on the Car Buyers Bill of Rights, which took effect July 1 last year, based on responses to Public Records Act requests, as well as a statewide survey of auto fraud experts and non-profits that provide assistance to car buyers, and input from other government and private agencies and individual car buyers.
The consumer advocates described cases where consumers were discouraged from getting the return option, or misled about how much extra dealers are permitted to charge for the option. In some cases, non-English speaking car buyers were induced to sign a form in English giving up the right to a no-hassle return, even when the deal was negotiated in another language and the buyer did not read English—let alone English legalese. California law requires dealers to provide filled-out documents in the language used to negotiate the deal.
"Even if consumers manage to get the return option, auto dealers have devised a form that gives them sole discretion over whether a vehicle is eligible for return," said Norma Garcia, Senior Attorney for Consumers Union. "This totally defeats the purpose of that provision in the law." The law was supposed to empower consumers to reject faulty vehicles without a hassle, by paying a restocking fee, minus any charge for the return option.
“Consumers are complaining about being tricked into declining the return option, including being misled about how much extra dealers can charge,” said Joe Ridout, Consumer Services Manager at Consumer Action, which provides a hotline to assist consumers and leads the nation in providing outreach to consumers in multiple languages. He referred to cases where consumers were stuck with faulty cars, after attempting to return them within a day or two after purchase.
“We’ve noticed a pattern of complaints where non-English speaking consumers are being misled about the return option,” said Henry Martin, Attorney at the non-profit Watsonville Law Center.
"The Car Buyer's Bill of Rights could use a tune up. The two-day return policy is not working. By charging for the option, car dealers are putting up a road block for a whole segment of consumers who would want it,” said Pedro Morillas, Legislative Advocate, CALPIRG.
The groups called on the Department of Consumer Affairs and DMV to do more to educate the public about the Car Buyers Bill of Rights and also to warn consumers about how to avoid dealers that are going out of business, failing to pay off liens on traded-in cars and failing to pay for cars they sell on consignment.
Tips for consumers and more information about the Car Buyers Bill of Rights, in multiple languages, are posted at: http://www.carconsumers.com/CBBR_summary.html and at http://www.consumer-action.org/
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