Additional costs with purchase
Those who have selected their next used car are often faced with additional costs in the form of delivery packages. The prices are often not attractive and many parts of it you might have expected as a matter of course. Cigar from your own box? We asked the Consumers’ Association and the Bovag.
Imagine: you buy a young used car from the dealer of the brand, a car that is three and a half years old and with just over 30,000 kilometers on the counter. Then you can expect that the car is in tip-top shape and that you can use it for many more trouble-free years and miles? Maybe not, because dealers today offer all kinds of complicated pre-owned delivery packages, all of which have one thing in common: they are expensive.
We take a look at the occasion delivery package from a large Renault dealer. It comes in four variants. Free (or better: without additional payment) you get a cleaning, mileage guarantee, registration and indemnity certificate, at least six months MOT, for €25 in fuel, six months Bovag warranty and Bovag exchange guarantee. This service is what this dealer calls Basic. If you pay €295 extra, you get Comfort (provided the car is not older than two years and has not driven more than 30,000 km). That is good for an A service, at least three millimeters of profile on the tires and a one-year mobility guarantee. If you choose Premium, you will also receive a fresh MOT for €695, replacement of worn parts and preventive maintenance and – if necessary – a new timing belt. Finally, you can go for Excellent (provided the car is not older than five years and 75,000 kilometers) and then the air conditioning is topped up and you actually get a full tank. That package costs €1,192. Now we know that a full tank is now an expensive jewel, but that is a very expensive refueling.
Naturally?
Now we see quite a few things in these packages that you would expect to be highly obvious for a young used car from the brand dealer, but apparently this car company sees it differently. A customer we spoke to was highly recommended the Excellent package on the just over four-year-old Captur (30,000 km) she bought.
They recognize that image at the Consumers’ Association, says car expert Gerard Kroon. “We always distinguish between costs that are avoidable and costs that are unavoidable,” he says. “That was also the biggest pain point that formed the basis of the discussion about delivery costs at the time (see box; ed.). I also see unavoidable costs in these packages and they should simply be included in the price. Unavoidable are, for example, registration costs, which are included in the price here, but also a full MOT. You know as well as I do: whether an MOT is still good for three months or twelve months, an MOT should simply be valid for a year with a used car. It is utter nonsense that an MOT of twelve months costs an additional cost here. You have to include unavoidable costs in the price you advertise,” says Kroon. And according to him, VAT is also often a cause for confusion: “There are still car companies, including brand dealers, who continue to advertise excluding VAT to consumers, especially for electric cars. That is simply not allowed.”
You can also expect a timing belt on a car of that age to last longer than a year or 15,000 kilometers. However, in our example, that part is only part of the Premium and Excellent packages. “Under consumer law, you can expect a product to function as it should within the warranty period,” says Kroon. “So if such a belt needs to be replaced within the warranty period, I think you can argue that it should be replaced at the seller’s expense. These are often debatable points,” he puts into perspective.
It’s a game
Debatable or not, the Consumers’ Association has this sort of thing in their sights, says Kroon. “Certainly cases like you describe with that Captur with such a ridiculously expensive delivery package; we get a lot of questions about that. Our general answer then is: it is a game between seller and buyer and the seller is not forbidden to ask a lot. Yes, those packages are a choice, but they are sometimes delivered as if they are mandatory and that is of course absolutely not allowed. It should always be clearly stated that you can take it, but that you don’t have to. Again: unavoidable costs, whether or not required by law, must simply be included in the total price. Things around them, avoidable costs, you can talk about that in the negotiations: do you want them and are you willing to pay what the dealer charges?”
Kroon summarizes the message from the Consumers’ Association: “In the end, it’s about the amount at the bottom right,” he says. “People are too often blind to the trade-in value of their old car, which is offered on it. But then they forget what they have to pay for the new car. Ultimately, it is only about the difference in trade-in value of the old car and the sales value of the new car: you have to try to get that as low as possible. Go through all those cost items in the quote, then look at the amount at the bottom right and start talking about it.”
Gerard ten Buuren, chairman of Bovag Independent Automobile Companies, will speak to us on behalf of the car industry. “We as Bovag want to see the inclusive price, the price for which you can take the car with you. There are just as many proponents of this in the Netherlands as there are opponents,” he says. “So you sometimes see deviations in that. At Viabovag you always see the inclusive price. But there are companies that advertise with some sort of base price. You can indeed buy all kinds of packages there. This includes different types of services, which differ per car company. Everyone puts their own spin on it.”
But can’t you expect a new MOT in this price range? “Well, some companies do indeed add a new MOT as standard,” says Ten Buuren. “Others stick with a valid MOT or half a year of MOT and still others do the next MOT for free. This immediately offers the advantage that the customer comes back again. It’s kind of how the company interprets it. We see the advantage of an all-inclusive price. Then the customer knows where he stands and you don’t have a discussion. On the other hand, in the Netherlands it appears again and again that many people are very sensitive to the lowest price and therefore look for it.” According to Ten Buuren, it is mainly what the consumer wants. “There are people who say: if it’s washed, I’m fine with it and I’ll see. However, there are also people who do not want to run a risk for a longer period of time. In principle, it should be the case that a car company delivers the car properly and that the customer knows exactly where he stands. Ultimately, car companies respond to what consumers want.”
To trust
You might expect fixed, uniform packages per brand, but according to Ten Buuren this is not the case in practice. “Brands would like that, but it often differs per car company. Everyone does it at their own discretion. Yet in principle it is often the same, but one says ‘we always give the car a major service’, the other says ‘we don’t deliver it without that service’. That’s what the company stands for and what its customers ask for. People often think about it in a generalist way and I don’t think that’s entirely justified. We try to put ourselves in the consumer’s seat. He also sometimes says that he doesn’t need a delivery package at all or that he trusts the company anyway. Conversely, it is sometimes said that it is extra margin. Sure, every business is trying to make money. One does it with such a price structure, the other with a somewhat higher all-in price. I think you’ll find just as many pros and cons to both views. And on Viabovag.nl the Bovag guarantee is in any case included in the price. As Bovag, we are in favor of transparency, so all-in prices, but we don’t have full control over that either, because car companies can advertise in all kinds of places and ways.”
This article previously appeared in this year’s AutoWeek occasion special.
.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl