General Motors India Asked to Replace Defective Vehicle or Pay Rs. 8 lakh

GM India has been asked by a consumer forum to either replace a defective Opel Astra car with a new one or to pay the compensation to the owner. A New Delhi based advocate filed a complain against a GM dealer from where he bought the Astra back in 2000, and he has demanded to either refund Rs eight lakh (cost of the car) or give him a new vehicle.

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The dealer has been asked to pay Rs. 3.67 lakh as compensation to the owner who alleged to have taken the car to service centre for more than 20 times, ever since he bought the vehicle to rectify the defects. "From the record, it is observed the vehicle in question was repaired by the opposite party 2 (dealer) on more than 20 occasions...According to us, the continuous recurrence of the problems in the vehicle was very serious matter and should not have been taken casually.  "We come to the conclusion that the vehicle in question is having some manufacturing defects due to which it continuously gave problems and lastly stopped working," a bench presided by Narendra Kumar said. 

The forum announced this decision on the complaint filed by Lalit Bhasin (advocate) who had bought an Opel Astra Club in 2000 from General Motors' authorised dealer. Bhasin had said that the car had to be taken to workshop for repairs within a month of its purchase and till the year 2008, it had been giving problems constantly. He further says that despite the car was being taken for repairs many times, the defects were not rectified completely and finally it stopped working in the year 2008-09, he had alleged. He also complained that every time he took the vehicle for repairs, the workshop charged undue money.

Defending the claim, General Motors said that there was no manufacturing defect in the vehicle. However, the forum rejected the defence saying that the problems arose in the car were of unusual nature, which could only arise due to some serious manufacturing defect.

Source: ET