Car buyers taken for ride, pay extra for registration

CHENNAI: After threatening to take a car dealer to the consumer court for misinformation and levying hidden charges on her, Durga Devi from Hasthinapuram has finally won a hard-fought battle against a fraudulent scheme to extract extra money from car buyers for registration of vehicles.
She said a car dealer in Velachery charged her 18,000 more than actual cost of registration and tax and failed to produce bills to account for the cash.Two days ago, the dealer repaid her the money. But it’s still unclear who was behind the swindle, Devi said, because in several cases like hers, car dealers blame “corrupt” staff at the regional transport offices (RTOs) and they in turn point fingers at the car dealers.
When RTOs temporarily stopped registration of big cars last Diwali, dealers said transport officials were trying to make a quick buck. Since then, customers say, corruption in the RTOs and deceptive accounting by car dealers have got out of hand.
Devi bought a mid-size car in February and the dealer asked her to pay 80,000 for road tax. “In their accounts, the tax and registration charges came to 80,428,” she said. “In bills I received from the Tambaram RTO the next day, it showed the total charges were 61,796.
When an angry Devi confronted the dealer about the discrepancy, he told her that his staff had to pay a bribe to RTO officials. She approached the NGO 5th Pillar, whose volunteers visited the RTO. “There were no boards with information on the rates. There were brokers all over the place and transactions were clearly not transparent,” said 5th Pillar president Vijay Anand.
RTO officials blame dealers for cheating the public and giving RTO staff a bad name. “All the rates and procedures are online. People should come to us directly for registrations,” an official said. “We will send inspectors to car dealers and find what is happening.”
But dealers like Popular Motors in Velachery insist that they have to pay a significant sum to RTO officials as “handling charges”. “RTO officials deliberately slow down the registration process to demand huge bribes,” a representative of Tamil Nadu Automobile Dealers Association said.