Trickery by car dealership

On March 4 two salesmen from PT Armada Auto Tara, a car dealership located on Jl. Tanah Abang II in Central Jakarta, came to my office in Pondok Pinang, South Jakarta, because I wanted to buy a new Isuzu pickup truck.

After they gave me and my husband details of the transaction, we accepted the salesmen's offer to buy an Isuzu pickup for Rp 84.7 million after a discount of about Rp 4.3 million. It was agreed that the vehicle would be paid for in installments over four years.

Under the agreement, the down payment of about Rp 9,700,000 was to be paid after my purchase application was approved by a leasing company.

However, when dealing with our purchase application, the two salesmen, identified as Rony and Propana, asked me to pay a Rp 1 million transaction fee that would later be included in the down payment.

We then gave them a check for Rp 1 million after the two salesmen assured us that the money would be returned if either we or Armada Auto Tara canceled the deal at anytime.

But the car dealership broke its promise by refusing to return the Rp 1 million when we decided to cancel the deal two days after it was made.

The two salesmen and their marketing supervisor, identified as Mimi, said that based on the company's regulations, the Rp 1 million paid for the transaction fee could not be returned because it was me, not the company, who unilaterally canceled the deal.

It was utterly deceitful that the two salesmen never told me and my husband about this regulation when we signed the deal with them. Such trickery is detrimental to prospective buyers like me.

But the dealership eventually heeded our demand on March 31, after weeks of persistent debate, during which my husband called up the company's general manager, Wawan, to vigorously convince him that the company had to return the transaction money because the salesmen promised us that it would be returned if we canceled the deal at anytime.

IDAWATI, Jakarta