dealer fees- this might work?

[Lewis]

Mr. Klaus Maier, President
Smart Corporation
2 Leibnizstrasse
D-71032
Boblingen
Germany


Dear Mr. Maier,

I am writing to inform you of unethical business practices being conducted by your subsidiary in the USA- Smart USA.

In anticipation of a tight market for your vehicles your subsidiary set up a reservation process to be fair to your customers. This contrasted markedly with your competitor Mini USA (BMW) who took advantage of the temporary shortage of their vehicles upon introduction to gouge their customers shamelessly. I think to many consumers in the US the Mini brand will be forever tarnished by this behavior.

Smart USA set up their process to ensure equity and in the process made the commitment to us that we would be able to buy these cars at list price. Unfortunately many of your new dealers (mine is Ray Catena in New Jersey) have introduced fake fees to cash in on the temporary shortage of these cars. We are assigned to dealers via Smart USA and are forced to buy from these dealers based on our geographic location so I now have the choice of either paying Catena $590 for these fake fees or give up my smartcar when it delivered in the next few weeks.

Your subsidiary in the USA could, if they choose to put an immediate stop to this shady practice by simply telling their dealers they will devise future vehicle allocations based on customer satisfaction as this is a clause in the contract they have with their dealers.

At this point despite the pleas of many reservation holders in the USA, Smart USA and Mr. Schembri has decided to take no action to protect your customers. As is the practice in the US car industry quick and sleazy profit has taken priority over long term brand building and enduring customer relationships.

I do believe that you might see the long term interest of your company differently than your subsidiary so I thought you might actually be grateful to be informed about this unfortunate turn of events.

Mr. Maier - I want to request you come to the aid of your Smart USA customer base and take the action Mr. Schembri has refused to take- and use the power of your position to insure that the promises made to your first and most loyal customers are fully met.

Thank you for your consideration of this request.

Yours truly,

[Fredvon4]

Sorry Lewis...while I understand your frustration I gotta bust on this a bit...

Too early to get MB involved... IMO


I think it too early to assume PAG is not reacting and doing something...

We have very good evidence that PAG prefers to not do much publically and this is no exception...We may/should never know about any private communications from PAG to specific dealers...

There may already be lawyers involved
Dealer contracts might not specifically prohibit these fees and PAG may not have any real recourse (worst case)
PAG may want to watch and see real customer survey post sale responses (internet rumors and reality have a strange way of being different)

I expect the most any of us will ever know, is a response from PAG saying "we know it is a concern and we are looking into it"...

I do recommend a lot of snail mail to PAG

Mine will be sent Tuesday