Beijing Toyota owners demanding fair treatment

Toyota has promised to compensate owners of recalled RAV4 vehicles in Zhejiang province, which has aroused anger among Beijing owners and their association, who feel they are being treated differently.

After two closed-door rounds of talks between a delegation from Toyota and local authorities in Zhejiang, Toyota promised to compensate recall owners in Zhejiang, step up the recalls, offer substitute vehicles and return purchase subscriptions, a first deal of its kind in China.

Zhejiang Provincial Administration for Industry and Commerce complained that Toyota "seriously discriminated against and treated differently " Chinese consumers, as it recalled more than six million units in the United States and 2.7 million units in Europe, but "only 75,000 units in China".

Qu Jianhui, deputy secretary-general of the Beijing Consumer Association, said Toyota should respect every consumer in China and appealed to the company to treat car owners in Beijing and other cities the same as Zhejiang province.

Qu said Zhejiang province won the concessions mainly due to its strong regulations on consumer protection.

"Vehicle sales were provided 'three guarantees' in 2000.

"Most provinces and cities haven't regulated vehicles into such regulations yet," he said.

"The 'three guarantees' refer to retail sales that warrant repairing, changing and refunding if the product has quality problems," he explained.

Qu said the Toyota issue might push legislators to write vehicle sales into the law and the capital then could put vehicles into local consumer protection regulations according to the new law.

Li Yunwei, president of the Beijing car owner association, told METRO Toyota's reputation would be damaged if it can't handle the recall in a satisfactory way.

"To common consumers who plan to buy their first family car, they will hardly consider purchasing Toyota with its current safety concerns," he said.

Several Toyota 4S shops in Beijing contacted by METRO said that so far they hadn't received any notice about compensating owners of RAV4s recalled for an accelerator pedal problem and had no idea "if there will be some relevant policy in the following days".

The biggest RAV4 owner forum on a popular vehicle themed portal xcar.com.cn has a special discussion forum about the recalls, with 7,138 posts as of Wednesday.

One of the most popular threads called on the city's RAV4 owners to unite to demand compensation over the recall. Toyota has reduced the prices of its Carolla, Camry and REIZ model recently. The "normally no discount" RAV4 has had its price reduced by 18,000 yuan in less than two months, according to China Business News.

(Source: Transport weekly)