Along with many others (infact all buyers who bought a car from Bhavana Ford Nerul over the past few years) I have been asked to pay 1% of the on road cost of the car as CESS. This is not the weird part the weird part is that:
We were never told of this at the time of purchase (in my case this is after 16 months of owning the car)
We were given fancy sounding discounts(dealer, insurance payout, corporate discount) at the time of sale, why was this cost not explained.
As per the dealers representatives handling the current situation "interest from date of sale @ 18% is also to be paid).... for an obvious mistake of the dealer why should all customers pay the interest amount? (comes to around 2000INR for my car.... I’d rather buy the overpriced floor mats from the same ford dealership if I wanted to throw away the money)
I recently bought a Chevrolet vehicle, no I have had enough of Fords legendary "BAD" service, expensive spares and randomly developed processes to risk buying a Ford ever again, after having received the details of the extra money outstanding I called up the Chevy dealer and asked if the CESS on "that" car atleast is paid up? Seems the CESS is part of the registration process, part of the on road cost to me and has been paid up in full. I fail to understand how a dealer who is in a different district understands the laws of the place where I had them register my vehicle and the people at Bhavana Ford Nerul, who live, earn and operate in the same area(navi mumbai) do not understand the laws? Obviously this was a tactic to make the cost of vehicle look less than what it would have been with CESS added. In my dictionary that is "CHEATING".... plain and simple duping the customer, taking him for a ride.
Now I am informed that the CESS was paid by the dealer a few months back but they never raised a demand for it from the customer. This clearly means that it was part of the amount charged from the customer and now that the CESS officer of the local Municipality has asked for documents directly from the buyers these guys are trying to make a quick buck saying we will give you the payment certificate only if you pay that amount to Bhavana Ford! Something sounds very fishy here.
I argued about the interest on the payment and was benevolently told to not pay the interest just the principal...... as if "whatever we can make out of this situation we will make, anyways the customer is an idiot some more some less". I bought the car alongwith another friend so far his contact person at Bhavana Ford has maintained that he has to pay the 18% interest...... as I said earlier.... they goofed up then paid the CESS and now are trying to make the best of the situation by getting whatever they can from customers.
The analogy that comes to mind is that of visiting a restuarant, being presented with a bill, returning home, recieving a letter in the mail asking for VAT, and being asked for interest on the tax....... very shoddily and very unprofessionally done. I don’t mind paying CESS but I do mind having to keep going back and fixing stuff that these guys broke.... who knows next year we’ll have another similar notice saying registration was not paid for or some other "hidden cost of ownership"