Dealer settles client's loan

MAIPATO Monyatsi could not contain her happiness when Nedbank told her that her car loan had been settled.

The car dealer Monyatsi had accused of selling her a rebuilt car had paid off the loan, the bank said.

Kagh Motors, trading as Dada's Motorland in Benoni, Gauteng, paid the bank R330,648 at the end of January.

Two weeks ago, Consumer Line published an article headlined "Old car sold as new", in which Monyatsi claimed that she was sold a rebuilt vehicle as new.

Monyatsi said that were it not for the latest technology, she would never have known that her car had previously been in an accident.

But Mohammed Iqbal-Buta, the principal dealer at Dada's Motorland, insisted that the vehicle had not been not rebuilt.

He admitted that it had previously been involved in an accident, which he described as a minor one, and added that he did not know whether his salesperson had revealed this information to Monyatsi at the time of the sale.

Buta also denied that the car's odometer was tampered with, saying it was sold to Monyatsi with a 60km reading, not zero, as Monyatsi had claimed.

A happy Monyatsi said she could now concentrate on her work.

"My frustration was starting to affect my work and I'm glad it's now over," Monyatsi said, with a sigh of relief.

Her nightmare started in June last year when her son needed a car to conduct research for his final-year studies.

Monyatsi decided to trade in her two vehicles and buy two others with manageable installments.

Monyatsi said she discovered in September, when she took her car in for insurance inspection, that she was sold a rebuilt car.

She could not prove this because the insurance assessor refused to give her a written statement of his findings.

She finally got a comprehensive report from Volkswagen in November, when a message prompting her to take her car in for a service kept appearing on the dashboard.

"It had not clocked the kilometres necessitating a service, Monyatsi said.

She took the car for a service and Volkswagen's report helped her confront her dealership for an explanation, she said.

The salesperson at Dada's Motorland could not explain the discrepancies and she cancelled the contract, Monyatsi said.

"But after taking the car keys, they started acting funny and offered to pay only a quarter of my loan, which I rejected," Monyatsi said.

They offered to pay R200000 of her R306000 loan, she said.

When checking Dada's invoice sent to Motor Finance Corporation, now a division of Nedbank, when applying for a loan on her behalf, Monyatsi discovered that they had added items such as a sunroof and a DVD, which the car did not have.

She said she was charged R27000 for this.

"They also charged me an on the road cost and licence and registration fee, which is one and the same thing," Monyatsi said.

When she asked why she had to pay R120,000, they allegedly told her it was a shortfall payable on the cars that she had traded in, she said.

"But I was never told this until I cancelled the contract," she said.

She said her deal was further complicated by Dada's salesman when he gave her a car that had already been sold to another client.

She was later asked to pick another car , she said.

The Golf VI was the third car she received.

"They gave me a defective BMW, then exchanged it with a Peugeot which they had already sold," Monyatsi said.

Realising that they had messed up, their salesmen offered to cancel the entire contract and start anew, Monyatsi said.

She was then sold the Golf VI, which had zero mileage when she drove off their premises and which later turned out to have been tampered with, she said.