Han Ximin
SHENZHEN, along with 21 other member cities of the China Consumer Alliance, issued a notice yesterday, calling for car dealers to cancel their additional charges in sales of their most popular cars.
The notice said the additional charge violated China s pricing rules and infringed on the rights of consumers.
Car dealers generally charge a certain amount of money to those buyers who don t want to queue for the delivery according to orders and get their vehicles ahead of others.
The additional charges could be regarded as a compensation for the buyers who wait for the delivery of their cars rather than the income of car dealers, Shenzhen Consumer Council said in a release yesterday, International Consumers Day.
The dealers violating the rules can be fined 5,000 yuan (US$760) and they are suspected of evading taxes as they often don t offer receipts to buyers.
The release was made following a punishment given to a car dealer in Luohu which amassed 1.4 million yuan through adding additional costs by withholding sales of 55 Audi Q5.
The Luohu market supervision authority imposed such a fine after nearly a one-year investigation over the car dealer which was authorized to sell Audi vehicles.
The car dealer charged the buyers an additional 20,000-60,000 yuan for Q5, one of the bestsellers, if the drivers don t want to wait several months for delivery.
Investigations showed the car dealer didn t offer receipts for the additional charges and didn t accept POS and bank transactions. The cash was used for the company s daily expenses and employee bonuses.
