Home News General StoryVolks Auto case: 2 cars now with another dealerKok Xing Hui | The Straits Times | Wednesday, Dec 24, 2014
Two cars that were in the showroom of a dealer which allegedly cheated car buyers of more than $3 million have surfaced at another dealership in Sin Ming Road.
Mr Lawrence Tan, director of Zion Auto Gallery, said his firm had taken back the two cars - a Bentley and a Mercedes-Benz - from Volks Auto shortly before it made the headlines last week.
As of yesterday, there were 107 people claiming to have paid a total of $3.5 million to Volks. None has received his car from the shuttered dealer.
Mr Tan told The Straits Times the two cars were on consignment to Volks - a common practice in the industry, he added.
This means Volks had paid a deposit for them, and was supposed to pay monthly service fees. The cars should be paid for in full if and when they are sold, but there is also the option of returning unsold cars to get the deposit back.
Mr Tan said Volks had failed to pay its monthly service fees, therefore the cars were taken back right before news broke that Volks' doors had been shuttered.
He said he was unable to provide details on how much the deposits and service fees were, as the agreement was between his sister company and Volks.
Mr Tan said he had called many times to ask for the service fees and to make an inspection at Volks' showroom to check if the cars were still there, but either his calls went unanswered or he was told the boss, Mr Alvin Loo, was not in.
He added that the consignment was done through a middleman, and he does not know Mr Loo. Title documents for the cars do not belong to Volks but to
Zion Auto Gallery's sister company, which he declined to name.
While each of Volks' victims had paid an average of $20,000 to $30,000 in deposit - with at least one buyer paying for a car in full - Mr Tan said it was not common to pay that much upfront in the parallel import industry.
He said he collects only $15,000 in total when he gets a car order - $5,000 for the car and $10,000 for the certificate of entitlement bidding.
A check on the chassis number of the Mercedes C200 at Zion Auto Gallery showed that it was the same car promised to businessman Richard Lee, 61, in a sales agreement issued by Volks.But Volks never went about paying Zion Auto Gallery in full for the consigned car, despite having collected $37,000 from Mr Lee on Oct 25 and promising to deliver it at the end of last month.
Mr Lee made a police report regarding this latest development yesterday morning and said he had earlier sent e-mail messages to MPs to ask for help.
Source:
http://transport.asiaone.com/news/general/story/volks-auto-case-2-cars-now-another-dealer-0#sthash.xJCbkjVB.dpuf
