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The Retail Motor Industry Organisation (RMI) applaud the proactive stance being taken by the National Consumer Commission (NCC) to protect consumer rights.
Prudence Moilwa, Head of Complaints and Investigations at the NCC was recently interviewed on the latest tribunal ruling where two used car dealers were fined and forced to refund their customers cash paid for inaccurately representing the status of the vehicle sold. Moilwa said the NCC would be stepping up their efforts to root out the sale of defective second-hand vehicles.
Commenting on the announcement, Ipeleng Mabusela, CEO Strategy and Corporate Support for the Retail Motor Industry Organisation (RMI), said this complemented the strong lobbying both RMI and the South African Motor Body Repairers’ Association (SAMBRA), had been doing for some years now to create a safer car parc and reduce the unacceptably high level of fatalities on our roads each year.
“We have a zero tolerance to any intentional misrepresentation but,” Mabusela noted, “this requires complete disclosure of the correct information at the correct time to the relevant body in the value chain - whether that be a bank, insurer, motor body repairer, dealer and/or end customer. We are concerned that the Commission is only focusing on one element of the value chain and should also be looking closer to the source so informed decisions can be made and a full life history of a vehicle can be checked. It is for this reason that we have recently appealed to the Transport ministry to consider adding legislation to define and legislate the Code status of vehicles on the electronic national administration traffic information system (NaTIS),” he says.
The critical problem facing South African consumers and motor body repairers (MBR’s) is that cars that are still classified as Used (Code 2) on the NaTIS documentation can certainly have been severely accident damaged or declared uneconomical to repair, or “written-off” as commonly referred to. “We can see that there is a common thread occurring. Most of these vehicles end up on online sales portals. Unsuspecting consumers search the web for a vehicle in a specific price range and are directed to vehicles which may not end up being what they appear to be online.”
Brandon Cohen, National Chairperson of the National Automobile Dealers’ Association, (NADA) says the lack of information impacts the entire value chain from the banks financing the vehicles to the companies selling online to the professional dealers who trade-in vehicles for sale in their used vehicle departments. “Without access to all the information, a dealer cannot be expected to know everything about every car,” he says.
Julian Pillay, National Director of the Vehicle Testing Association (VTA), agrees saying that even a roadworthy check is not a comprehensive safeguard. “We only check for visible signs of damage, but if sub-standard repairs to a car is well concealed, it is difficult to detect accident damage within the scope and equipment constraints of a roadworthy inspection. The 174 printouts which help correlate the information physically from the vehicle (engine and chassis number) from NaTIS also do not include the status Code of the vehicle so we can only look for things like jig marks, gaps in body panel adjustment, evidence of welding and repairs by heating, among others,” says Pillay.
He says there is no reason for rejection of Code 3 or accident damaged vehicles if it complies with current scope of roadworthy testing and is well repaired. Examiners however have no access to the Code status of the vehicle and the equipment used in the test stations is geared to roadworthiness and not accident damage, unless visible.
He says even a motor dealer trading in a vehicle may be unable to detect well concealed accident damage and could unknowingly sell a vehicle which was previously in an accident. This makes dealers equally vulnerable in the value chain.
The RMI believe it is time we look to synchronise the NaTIS with the salvage codes and aim to integrate the vehicle salvage data base with NaTIS too. Transparency is key so the vehicle status code should always appear. In addition, the Code 2 spectrum should be broadened to distinguish between normal Code 2 (used vehicles) and Code to vehicles which have been in an accident. Authorities need to enforce the national SANS 10047 standard regarding welds. In addition, for vehicles repaired after any accident, post inspections should only be carried out by independent and skilled experts. In most other parts of the world, there is a system of Periodic Technical Inspection (PTI) after a reported accident and the vehicle code is reclassified.
NaTIS can then offer users and consumers a VIN lookup to see the coding status of a vehicle.
Mabusela says it is also key to note that in South Africa only 30% of the car parc is actually insured so this makes the problem even bigger. “We need a level playing field for the many accredited repairers and dealers in the country; a watchdog to route out the unscrupulous players; a legal requirement to transparently reflect the code status of a vehicle and whether any ‘safety critical’ parts have been compromised in an accident as is done in other parts of the world; more regular and comprehensive vehicle testing, and widespread consumer education to advise motorists of their rights. We look forward to having the opportunity to unpack this approach further,” he concludes.