The car was submerged in water when it should have had no accident history… “Sloppy handling and astonishing excuses” by the victim who is in court with Big Motor.
Big Motor claims that “all cars have no accident history. However, it was suspected that the company was not only selling cars that had been involved in accidents, but also submerged cars.
I bought a Honda hybrid car from Big Motor for 3.5 million yen in total, but after about a year and a half of driving it, it broke down. I had it looked at by another repair company, and to my surprise, it was a submerged car. It was under warranty, so naturally I thought they would repair it. ……”
Mr. A runs a company in Gunma Prefecture. He purchased a Honda Shuttle Hybrid at Big Motor Tatebayashi in January 2007.
I was looking for a station wagon with good fuel economy because my job requires me to carry luggage and products around in my car. When I asked the Tatebayashi store to check out Big Motor’s inventory of vehicles, this used Honda car fit my needs perfectly. Of course, it had no accident history and the mileage was only 1500 km, so it was in like-new condition. Big Motor is a major company that advertises on TV commercials, and the salesperson in charge of the car told me that they offer a more reliable maintenance service than other companies and a warranty of ‘up to 10 years or 100,000 km,’ so I thought I could drive the car for a long time with peace of mind, so I bought it.
However, in October 2008, he was involved in a minor accident in which the driver’s side door was hit by a car backing out of a parking lot. He took the car to a sheet metal shop to have the door repaired, but about two weeks later, he received a call from the sheet metal shop saying, “For some reason, I can no longer back up.
The sheet metal shop couldn’t figure out the cause, so I took it to a Honda dealer in Ota City to have it checked out. As a result, we found out that the car had been submerged in water in the past and had stopped working due to corrosion leakage of electrical components. This is a common symptom of Honda hybrids that have been submerged in water for one and a half to two and a half years.
However, Mr. A also had a 10-year/100,000 km warranty. We asked Big Motor to repair the car, but the person in charge at the Tatebayashi branch just talked ambiguously, saying, “I will ask the head office what they want to do,” or “I will check with the previous owner. The car was left there for two months without being repaired. At the final meeting with the Tatebayashi store, Mr. A was told the following.
He said, “‘I don’t know who submerged the car since it has been over a year and a half since I bought it,’ and he insisted that either I or the sheet metal shop had submerged the car. What impressed me the most at that time was when they said, ‘Honda cars can be submerged and still run. He also said something else that made no sense: “This car is a semi-submerged car because only the front part of the car is submerged. I thought, ‘This is not a serious company.
In the end, Big Motor made the following offer as a final proposal.
They said, “We will trade in the car as a submerged car and buy a new one. They wouldn’t give me a specific price, but they said, ‘We’ll put a ‘color’ on it.
Since the trade-in value of the submerged car was likely to be about 300,000 yen, Mr. A continued to appeal for repair or cancellation of the contract, but he could not get anywhere. He had no choice but to file a lawsuit against Big Motor in September 2009. The trial is still ongoing.
The key question in this case is who submerged the car? The question is, who submerged the car? This magazine inquired about the submergence of the car to the person who drove the car before Mr. A. The person told us that the car was submerged in water, and that he was not the owner. He replied, “It was during a guerrilla downpour,
He said, “During a guerrilla downpour, I went through a deep puddle of water, and when I looked at it later, I saw that the driver’s seat was damp at the foot of the seat. I wiped it off with a towel and put a newspaper in it.
He told us. He also said that Big Motor had contacted him with an inquiry.
Considering these circumstances, it was almost certain that the previous user had submerged the car in water, and that Big Motor was aware of this fact. Nevertheless, Big Motor had continued to “bite the hand that feeds” for nearly three years, claiming that Mr. A had submerged the car in the water. Then, he contacted Big Motor.
The fact that they sold a car that had been involved in an accident, despite claiming that it had been involved in zero accidents.
The fact that they did not repair the vehicles despite offering a 10-year/100,000 km warranty.
The company’s insincere attitude toward its customers.
The company said, “We apologize for the inconvenience, but there is a pending case,
When we inquired about these matters, we received a response from the public relations department that “We are sorry, but we will refrain from responding to pending cases.
The PR department responded, “We are sorry, but we will not be able to give you a response regarding the pending case.
Mr. A is truly disappointed with Big Motor, saying, “I wondered when they were going to fix it, and now three years have passed.
We can only hope that there are no other victims other than Mr. A, who was grabbed by Big Motor and told “I don’t know” by the company.