Import of a car

Cband · December 26, 2020

Greetings for the seasons,

I am a long reader of the Autolanka but I have not startup an topic yet.

My wife wanted to import a vehicle and she made advance on 9th March 2020 to a car importer who has show room at Thalahena. They (sales guys and manager of the show room) were in agreements to give us Chassis number within a month and we had to open LC once the chassis number was given by them. They agreed to clear from the custom and register the vehicle under my wife's name once it reach to Hambantota. They said within three months whole process would over and we would receive a vehicle. All of sudden COVID 19 hit the country in March 220 and government decided to not to import vehicles from May 2020. As agreed the car sale was not given us the chassis number within the time period and hence we could not open the LC. We thought that for importation of permit cars for newly appointed MP's would be started after the budget and the same time we too get opportunity to open LC.

Now a days we are struggling to get our money back. Manager and staff of the car sale keep promise giving us a future dated chequ but so far not received. Any opinion from the expert (although it is not an issue with vehicle) for getting our money back?

Gummybr · December 27, 2020

On 12/26/2020 at 8:29 AM, Cband said:

Greetings for the seasons,

I am a long reader of the Autolanka but I have not startup an topic yet.

My wife wanted to import a vehicle and she made advance on 9th March 2020 to a car importer who has show room at Thalahena. They (sales guys and manager of the show room) were in agreements to give us Chassis number within a month and we had to open LC once the chassis number was given by them. They agreed to clear from the custom and register the vehicle under my wife's name once it reach to Hambantota. They said within three months whole process would over and we would receive a vehicle. All of sudden COVID 19 hit the country in March 220 and government decided to not to import vehicles from May 2020. As agreed the car sale was not given us the chassis number within the time period and hence we could not open the LC. We thought that for importation of permit cars for newly appointed MP's would be started after the budget and the same time we too get opportunity to open LC.

Now a days we are struggling to get our money back. Manager and staff of the car sale keep promise giving us a future dated chequ but so far not received. Any opinion from the expert (although it is not an issue with vehicle) for getting our money back?

Season greetings.

It's very bad of them to not refund your advance. I'm sure this car sale does a lot of buying and selling and they shouldn't have any issues refunding you as it's not going to be a big amount.

Do you have any document that has the conditions of sale and the receipt? When you pay an advance you should always have a document that outlines the agreement you have with the sale. It's your hard earned money that you are giving someone, and that document would legally bind you and the sale. This is something that you could take to courts, or you can tell them that you will take legal action based on the document.

I work for an automobile dealer and we had to refund our customers even though LC's were opened and vehicles being ready to be shipped out. Our document said that we will not refund the advance since the vehicles are built to customer specifications. But we decided to refund no matter.

This is one of the reasons that you should only go to trusted parties when you order vehicles, by trying to save a couple of bucks you might end up losing a lot more.