Chennai: Car dealer to pay Rs 1.55 lakh to petitioner for loss of RC book
Chennai: The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum, Chennai (North), has directed a car dealer to pay Rs 1.55 lakh to a marine engineer for loss of the original RC book of his vehicle.
In the petition, marine engineer A.M. Ramachandran of Tondiarpet submitted that he normally works for six months in the vessels and six months he is on leave. He decided to purchase a vehicle for dropping his child to his school.
On February 27, 2015, he purchased Maruthi Swift VDI Car from Kapico Motors India (Pvt.) Ltd., Kilpauk, for Rs 6.57 lakh after exchange offer deducting for his old car.
The car was registered at RTO North East, Chennai. The dealer had assured him to hand over the original RC in 45 days. However, it was not handed over to him as per promise and as a result he faced hardship to use the vehicle without RC book.
The dealer sent only scanned copy of RC book through e-mail on June 10, 2015. He suspected that the dealer had lost the original RC book. Meanwhile, they sought him to apply for duplicate RC book.
He suffered mental agony due to the deficiency of service by the dealer. Hence, he sought direction to the dealer to take efforts in issuing either original RC book or its duplicate copy and a compensation of Rs 1 lakh.
In its reply, General Manager of Kapico Motors said the dealer was not able to contact Ramachandran for several months. The dealer moved the police to obtain non-traceable certificate for loss of original registration certificate.
As he had not produced the vehicle, the loss of registration certificate could not be processed to get the duplicate RC book copy. The duplicate RC book was not obtained as he had not produced the vehicle.
The bench comprising President K. Jayabalan and member M. Uyirroli Kannan held that the dealer had committed deficiency in service and furnished a duplicate RC book after a delay of 752 days.
There was no explanation given as to what happened to the original RC book.
Due to non-furnishing of original RC book, he faced hardship. If vehicle owner does not possess its original RC book, its value would depreciate in the market.
The bench directed the dealer to pay him Rs 1.55 lakh for causing mental agony and for depreciation value of the vehicle.
