Car Dealer Failing to send on Vehicle Reg. Cert

shayg1971

I bought a used car from a crowd called the Internet Car Company based in Meath. A month later after repeated efforts and several different bulls**t stories from them, they have not forwarded the reg cert to the DoE. Worse still, they are really winding me up by never returning a call and giving me a different excuse every time I get through to them. I saw some similar issues with them on the Motoring thread, but thought it was worth posting here. I'm wondering about my best line of attack. I'm thinking of doing a 'self declaration' of ownership, which you can do on a form from the DoE. But there are some expenses involved like a commissioner of oaths signature witness and a verification from a main dealer that the VIN is correct. Also expenses related to getting to and from these places. I wonder if I could do all that then hit them for expenses through the small claims court? Any better ideas?

In the meantime, I'd advise to steer clear of this lot.

shoegirl

To be honest it might be easier to do it yourself and then try to claim it back via the small claims court.

gerrycollins

small claims court proceedings normally bring muppets like this to their senses

TempestSabre

What exactly would you be claiming for from the small claims?

Personally I'd return the car on site, hand them a letter requesting a refund of your money, and send them a duplicate in the post. Then I'd get a solicitors letter to them, and at the same time post a letter asking about the situation to every publication you can.

Oryx

Last time I checked the cost of having one of those forms witnessed by a solicitor, they asked for a fiver Also check they definitely want the vin checked. Perhaps your receipt would do?

shayg1971

TempestSabre wrote:

What exactly would you be claiming for from the small claims?

Local solicitor charges €20 to witness a signature. Main Dealer must verify the VIN number. It's a BMW, and they may or may not do that for free. They don't know me, so that depends on whether they see it as an investment in my future business. Main dealer is 20KM away. That's petrol. Plus it needs to be during the working day, so that's time off work. My time is not cheap, and it's certainly not free. Itemizing for the claim, I can easily demonstrate what my hourly rate is, and therfore exactly what that time is worth.

I've done the itemization. I've also filled out the small claims form, so my next move is to ask the dealer if he wants to 'pay me off' to do the leg work on this thing and just cut me a cheque. If not, he can present his defence in court. I'm sure he doesn't need that.

Internet Car Co

Hi,
I am a representative with the Internet Car Company and am disgusted with what you guys are saying about our company.
We have absolutely no control over tax books being sent from Shannon.
All we can do is send the tax books to Shannon and the customer really is at the their mercy.Without trying to make an excuse I do know that there were delays of up to 3 weeks before customers received the documentation.
I can guarantee that everybody who has bought a car from us has received all docs at this point.

N.B
Also, any car we sell is from our premises!We would greatly appreciate any info regarding meeting car salesmen in car parks under our company guise.Please phone us immediately if you experienced meeting anybody in a car park on 01-8240870.

I would just like to finish my post by saying that we are a young company who have expanded greatly in the last year from the refferals we received from "Very Satisfied" customers.

We are certainly not a "dodgy dealer" and have invested huge sums in both our premises and staff to get to where we are today.

We are the envy of most dealers around the country because we are constantly taking business away from them!


MOD EDIT: Deleted the advertising stuff at the end of the message.

TempestSabre

This thread is 5 months old. :eek:

No offense but, the OP said hes been trying for a month and you don't return calls his calls. Nothing about car parks. If you are referring to another thread, you should respond on that one, as it make no sense here. He also claimed at that the form, had not been sent to the DoE, not that the Tax office were late in sending it back. So two different stories.

Theres an opportunity here to clear this up, and turn bad press into good press. Or correct a misunderstanding if thats what it is. So it would be nice if it that could be done assuming that is possible. :cool:

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

There was a few reports of the Internet Car Co post above. I've deleted the advertising bit at the end of the the message, but the rest of the message should stand.

We always welcome when someone is willing to come onto boards and offer their side of a situation. I've pm'd the OP to notify him/her of the response.

WhiteWashMan

Internet Car Co wrote:

Hi,
I am a representative with the Internet Car Company and am disgusted with what you guys are saying about our company.

ok, first off, lets get our facts straight.
one personhas had a bad service, has detailed the treatment he received, and has advised people not to use your company.

so, its not guys, its guy.
secondly, i dont see how you can be disgusted by his actions.

Internet Car Co wrote:

We have absolutely no control over tax books being sent from Shannon.
All we can do is send the tax books to Shannon and the customer really is at the their mercy.Without trying to make an excuse I do know that there were delays of up to 3 weeks before customers received the documentation.
I can guarantee that everybody who has bought a car from us has received all docs at this point.

in that case, what you need to do is inform the customer, instead of ignoring calls, and manage their expectations.
ignoring someone and then expecting them to pass on favourable word of mouth reports seems naive to me.
the issue for me falls into that unfavourable catagory - things that arent your fault, but are your problem. its a tough one, but it has to be dealt with.

Internet Car Co wrote:

H
N.B
Also, any car we sell is from our premises!We would greatly appreciate any info regarding meeting car salesmen in car parks under our company guise.Please phone us immediately if you experienced meeting anybody in a car park on 01-8240870.

this is whats called a pink elephant. no one knew you had an issue with this until you mentioned it.
i would advise you not to go about tellingpeople you have problems not only with your registration, but with dodgy salespeople.
its up to you police your car park. not the public.

Internet Car Co wrote:

I would just like to finish my post by saying that we are a young company who have expanded greatly in the last year from the refferals we received from "Very Satisfied" customers.

im sure you have many good reports.
i'll be honest, i dont like people sticking up posts slagging off companies. i do like people putting up posts complaining, and explaining why they are complaining.
that has been done here. there has been an issue. im sure its resolved by now, but you are in business, and you are going to have to learn how to deal with issues like this. its called customer service and satisfaction. its incredibly important, and that one person you manage to piss off, which may or may not be your fault, may be the one person that says the right thing to the worng person.

Internet Car Co wrote:

We are certainly not a "dodgy dealer" and have invested huge sums in both our premises and staff to get to where we are today.

We are the envy of most dealers around the country because we are constantly taking business away from them!


MOD EDIT: Deleted the advertising stuff at the end of the message.

i havent seen anyone call you a 'dodgy dealer', but then my eyes are old...
you do not have to explain yourself to me or anyone else how you run your business, but as i said before, you piss of a customer, you are going to have to expect that they may not be pleased and may say it to someone else.

im certainly glad your business is thriving,and i wish you all the well. the only thing i would say is to take from this incident a lesson that you will learn from.

tempestsabre wrote:

This thread is 5 months old

i think a business is entitled to have its say back, no matter what amount of time has passed. to me it would appear there were legitamate reasons for the delay here, although customer management was poor.



with regards the advertising bit, thanks rt2 for deleting that back.
this is a discussion forum, and as mentioned, we are very happy for people to have a discussion, and im quite pleased that a company has come back and responded. thanks you for that. at the same time, we do not allow advertising. im sure if someone wants to check you out they will find your website

my own personal thoughts on this, and based only on this thread, i havent read any others, is that there was a legitamate reason for the delay, but it was handled very badly. but it is a learning process. if a company can admit that and tries to change its proceedures to ensure that it doesnt happen again, then thats a positive thing. of course, i know nothing about car sales, but i am in sales, and im not going to tell you how to suck eggs. im sure you already know this.

ircoha

WWM: nice post, I hope they appriciate it:)

www.internetcarcompany.ie
leaves a lot to be desired.

as does
www.internetcarcompany.webzone.ie/

The fone number in the post rings out

Cork

Internet Car Co wrote:

We have absolutely no control over tax books being sent from Shannon.
All we can do is send the tax books to Shannon and the customer really is at the their mercy..

Give the registeration book to the buyer & let the buyer sent it off or bring in to their Motor Tax Office.

Sully

WWM: Excellent post. Couldnt of put it better myself.

Oryx

Cork wrote:

Give the registeration book to the buyer & let the buyer sent it off or bring in to their Motor Tax Office.

No.... cos if they dont, its still internetcarcompany property in the eyes of the motor tax people. And i assume theyd get the fines.... I dont know many dealers who would be happy to do this regularly (unless it was exceptional circumstances)

WhiteWashMan

Cork wrote:

Give the registeration book to the buyer & let the buyer sent it off or bring in to their Motor Tax Office.

the seller is the open to be defrauded by the person that took the car, so probably not a good option.

i think the issue was that they didnt have the registration books anyway, so bit of a mute point.

shayg1971

Good lord. I can't believe my thread is back to life. Notice The Internet Car Company have 2 posts! The other was to paste an identical response into an identical complaint on the Motors board. (http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=291478). Since these issues pop up on the 1st search results screen on Google.ie, I'm not surprised they eventually caught wind of the complaints. Consumer power at work at last.

I should have posted how this ended at the time. Here it is for completeness.

5 weeks in, I made a final call to the DoE to check they had no Cert and that they were not backlogged. The very helpful person there (those guys were great) said the backlog was 4 days, and went to check the 'Scanner' which was right up to date.

Armed with this, back I went to the ICC. This time left a message suggesting I would take 'action' if I did not get a call. Bingo. That did the trick. This time the sales guy got extremely defensive. To compond things, one of those people who will never let you finish a statement - always jumping in to assume they can finish it for you. I explained that I am in fact a manager in the European Customer Services organization for a large multinational company. As part of that I manage complaints and issues from customers who have multi-million dollar contracts. And that if he stopped talking for a second, he might actually learn someting about customer care. Also, to demonstrate that I was not just going to go away!

Clearly the Customer Care lessons are not being learned. Golden Rule #2, once the bad publicity has died down, fix it or leave it, don't reopen the sore!

Anyway, I don't know which bit of the above finally worked, but when I called the DoE 4 days later the paperwork had 'magically' arrived just the day before. Who knows why they couldn't just have sorted this on day 1. Maybe it was a genuine admin error on behalf of ICC and they did discover they had not forwarded the paperwork maybe.... Well who knows, they certainly never called me back with any kind of explaination. Which would have garnered them maximum respect from me, and some repeat custom, and a graceful close to this thread. I would have posted if the outcome was positive.

So come on ICC - here's your chance for a little redemption. Post a reply explaining what you're doing in an on-going manner to improve administrative quality assurance, and convince the readers that you're listening to feedback and acting - not looking for a 3rd party to apportion blame to. (A third party, by the way, that has been nothing but efficient, cortious and professional when I've had to deal with them), a far cry from your good selves.

Now that your defensive attempts have reopened this discussion and moved the threads back up to #6 on google.ie's search results, it would do you nothing but good! Now yer talkin'

Bluehair

Thanks for posting the follow-up. Having heard the conclusion i, for one, would not be doing business with them in the future. Cheers for the warning.