Car dealer fined for misleading customers

A CAR dealership and its managing director has been ordered to pay nearly £18,000 in fines and costs for unfair trading and misleading advertising.

Motor Depot Ltd of Clarence Street, Hull, was taken to court by the city council’s trading standards team.

One offence concerned a customer, who bought a Mercedes with a “56 plate” thinking it still had the remainder of a three year warranty, but when he started having problems with it, found it had been imported and only had two years’ cover, which had expired.

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Motor Depot was also found to operate two separate pricing systems for the same cars, with one price on the company’s website and another via its “interestfree4cars.com” website.

Officers found an Audi TT car for sale on The Motor Depot website for £18,490, and the same car priced at £23,195 on the interestfree4cars.com site.

Motor Depot was fined £3,500 for each offence and a further fine of £1,000 for not displaying all the required information on the “interestfree4cars.com” website.

Managing director Philip Wilkinson, 36, and the company were found guilty of the three offences by Hull magistrates. His share of the total penalty was £1,390.

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City trading standards manager Chris Wilson said: “Following a complaint we were monitoring the site and finding that the cars offered on the interest free site were being offered for less within the Motor Depot group. They were inflating the cash price so customers weren’t seeing the benefit of the interest free offer.”

Solicitor for Motor Depot, George Coyle, said they were likely to appeal: “Motor Depot and Mr Wilkinson defended the proceedings because they considered that the adverts were neither misleading nor a breach of regulations.”

Mr Coyle said they felt they had been “unfairly targeted” adding that the council had omitted to mention the 39 offences they were forced to dismiss, with the court awarding legal costs for the 39 to public funds.

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