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A West Auckland caryard was fined $15,000 after the Waitakere District Court ruled it misled customers by getting them to sign away rights to warranties on their new cars.
Dealers at Park 2 Sell in New Lynn gave some customers lower prices if they signed a "tender" form, exempting the cars from after-sales service and guarantees.
True tenders are exempt from the Consumer Guarantees Act. But the court ruled that the company was not really tendering the vehicles to the customers at all, as the prices had already been decided before the agreements were signed.
The company faced two individual charges and one representative charge related to 15 customers who bought its cars between November 2004 and June 2005.
The Commerce Commission's director of fair trading, Deborah Battell, said the company might have thought it had found a legal loophole by selling cars through a so-called tender process. "Such a loophole does not exist."
- NZPA
