Buying a car can be one of the most exciting but one of the more expensive purchases you can make if you don’t do your homework properly.
With the plethora of online portals now available to buyers, buying a car has never been easier, but the South African Motor Body Repairers’ Association (SAMBRA), a proud association of the Retail Motor Industry Organisation (RMI), says they are increasingly hearing the tragic experiences of buyers who have either bought a car online - ‘sight unseen’ - or without asking for a comprehensive independent assessment.
“The reality is that something that looks too good to be true is probably just that,” says Dev Moodley, Chairman of SAMBRA. There is a persistent practice of unfit and unsafe vehicles being put back on the road and second-hand car buyers need to be particularly vigilant. He cites a recent case of an 84-year old man who bought a car -a 2021 Suzuki Brezza with just 28 525 km on the clock for R230 000. What looked like a dream car at the initial physical inspection in Johannesburg, has been found, on subsequent inspection, not only to be a code 2 vehicle which was previously written off, but literally a rolling deathtrap on wheels. Fast forward three months later and the online portal he bought the car from has confirmed that the dealership that was registered with them and provided the car has now cancelled their contract and is ‘no longer operating’ so they cannot accept any liability. “As part of RMI we have tried as far as possible to assist the owner with his escalation to the Motor Industry Ombudsman (MIOSA) as well as widely publicising the story, but unfortunately the owners appear to have gone underground now and MIOSA is struggling with a backlog in excess of 12 000 claims. The next step is lodging with the National Competition Commission but this takes time and needs a judgement first from MIOSA.”
Moodley says losing R230 000 is a huge amount for anyone, particularly if you are an 84-year-old pensioner. This case is just one of the many reasons that SAMBRA has been strongly advocating for an open and transparent Vehicle Salvage Database for the last four years. “We feel it is time to legislate this issue as how many more consumers are going to be duped while we wait for the South African Insurance Association (SAIA) to disclose the Code 2 list,” he says,
SAMBRA provides all second-hand buyers with the following advice:
