Not Happy...

[Iron Chef]

In this particular situation, the customer, unfortunately.

With the agents I normally use, if something like this happened (and in the many hundreds of cars I've imported, I can count on one hand the number of times it has) they would usually give me credit in Japan and I would then reimburse the customer.

Because this particular company hasn't dealt with me before, they may decide it's cheaper just to burn us off, rather than help out. I've already sent them an email so I'll wait for their response.

Edited September 30, 2008 by Iron Chef

[craig R33]

ahh i see.....

when im ready, ill def be in touch with you to source me a 34

[scandyflick]

speaking of...

pm sent iron dude

[mid life crisis]

i fail to see why the customer should be left to foot the bill for rust repairs it wasent his fault the wrong car was sent . i understand you as his agent was duped as well but i reckon your still getting your fee and maybe some of that should go to helping the guy out so the car is of a standed he paid for and was expecting .

i would be pretty pissed it my agent said here it is so sorry its not the car that you wanted but your up for the repairs

there is no way i would be accepting a sub standed car regardless of who duped who

[heslo]

There may be details to this story that we don't all have Dean, please give Kristian the benefit of the doubt. He's a trusted importer on here and many other board, I'm sure there's a reason

[rad100]

yeh maybe this should be sorted with importer and buyer.. i think there capible enough to do it!

if i was wiser when i bought mine i would have imported.... 32gtr hmmmmm....

[mid life crisis]

i was just going on by this statement here "In this particular situation, the customer, unfortunately. "

[Iron Chef]

Dean, in the end, my job is to import the car, not to sell it.

In the case of this car, because it was from a company I'd never dealt with before, I actually made a point of going to visit the exporter's yard when I was in Japan, and didn't have any luck finding it, wasting a couple of hours in Japan in the process.

In the end, I had to meet with their buyer at auction, who in broken English, told me about their company and about the car, and seemed quite genuine about it (it's very difficult to get auction access in Japan, and his ID was in the company name). I actually went to a fair deal of effort to make sure the car and the company existed because this specific car was the one that the Jenkk really wanted to buy, and even though I probably could've bought something similar at auction (and am now regretting I didn't, to be honest), I was keen to make sure he got the car he desired.

Given the amount of effort (and money) I spent trying to check the bona fides of the company, I hope you can understand why I'm also pretty pissed off about the situation.

If I have made a mistake whilst importing a car that has cost the customer money (scary to believe I make mistakes, but yes it does happen...lol) then I'm very quick to chip in to cover any extra costs I have incurred, even if those costs amount to more than my broker's fee. I don't think it's fair on me to have to pay for this mistakes of others too though.

In this situation, the blame lies fairly and squarely with the agent in Japan - where I use my normal agents to buy a car, I can use the threat of pulling my business from them to leverage a bit of cash for the customer, but like I've already said, I'm not very confident that I can do the same with this agent. It hasn't stopped me having a crack at it though.

I'm still in discussions with Jenkk about all this, so I'll see how he feels about the situation before posting any more on here.

[CRoNic...]

This is why some people opt out of importing and just cruise on down to their local Import Car Dealer to purchase a car, as they don't want to go through the hassle, or wait a few weeks/months.

Importing has alot of catches to it (car can get damaged on the ship, parts can go missing, compliance can go wrong, you're judging the quality by pictures and reports, you can't test drive the car, etc etc etc)

It's all risks that the customer takes.