1. Guy's mom pays off his car loan
2. Dealer says we installed a remote immobilizer to protect our loan
3. Dealer demands $200 to remove the device since the loan is paid off now
4. Guy understandably refuses
5. Dealer immobilizes car
I think this sort of behavior should mean the end of your dealership. I cannot quantify/identify the actual wrongdoing here but I'm pretty sure there is something illegal.
A lawyer might or might not use fancier words like "coercion" or "extortion," couldn't say.
They are asserting that it's their property, but they want to charge to get it back, and will punish you if you don't pay. Man, I love car dealerships.
You changed tense there, from present to past-tense. They charge $200 prior to removing it in order to remove it. There's no contradiction here.
In Canada, criminal law is under jurisdiction of federal government. Thus it is the same across the country, and crossing provincial borders does not change anything about the laws applying to the crime or how they are prosecuted.
> Iny said Lallier's case is a good example of the conditions faced by borrowers with bad credit.
> "Immobilizers are most often seen in cases of sub-prime borrowers with questionable credit," he said. "The devices are very effective at keeping people on time with their payments."
EDIT: getting a lot of heat. Oh well, I guess I should've linked to 5 articles supporting what people in the industry already know.
If Dodge was bottom tier, there never would have been an $85,000 Dodge Viper.
And plenty of people would buy a Maxima before they would buy a Taurus.
The Korean automakers (Kia and Hyundai) both entered the US market on the bottom, but they have comparatively high quality at the price points they started at, price points that other automakers sell plenty of vehicles at.
The Dodge Viper is a notable exception but even FCA realized that it hurt sales and spun it off as a separate brand: SRT, which they discontinued this year, and with it, the Viper is dead. [2]
EDIT: down voting doesn't change the facts I stated above.
[1] http://www.autonews.com/article/20170508/RETAIL01/305089965/... [2] http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/future-cars/news/a29664...
They're essentially loan sharks handing out cars instead of cash. They make a lot in interest, but they really make a lot by selling the same car again and again through very quick reposession (they do not mess around, weekly payments are standard). The same lot will sell many different makes, even higher end sometimes.
Depreciation tells only one part of the story, and actually Kias are very high within their segment. Try comparing something like a Toyota Camry vs. Kia Optima - it's night and day difference.
Also a good way to figure out what used shitbox you should buy next if you want cheap parts. :)
They also represent the brand to the public, and (good) manufacturers care deeply about this perception and spend a lot of time and money tuning the dealership experience.
He's correct that Dodge and Nissan have low scores in these studies/surveys, but Hyundai and Kia [0] have improved their vehicle quality SIGNIFICANTLY in the last few years, and score at or near the top of these studies now.
However, Kia still has a reputation for terrible dealership experience. I don't have a link that shows this, so take that with a large grain of salt.
0. Hyundai owns 34% of Kia, but they have a strong internal rivalry
Disclaimer - I work for GM
The issue here is more about how the dealership attempted to recover their property and the fee that he claims wasn't mentioned in the contract, not whether or not they actually owned the immobilizer.
uh what.