Urgent Request for “Lemon Law” to Protect Consumers and Regulate the Manufacturers

‘The lemon law is a big stick. … And no one wants to get whacked by this big stick.’
—Phil Edmonston

According to Phil Edmonston, author of Lemon-Aids car guide, “the more high-tech cars become, the more lemons you see because there’s so much more to go wrong.” Electronics are especially sensitive to vibrations, extreme temperature fluctuations and moisture which are “what causes [a vehicle’s] lights to fail often or causes a vehicle to stall out.”

There are many cases of the sudden stalling of vehicles just after purchase. Not only is it dangerous, it causes mental stress for the consumers as well. Just a few months after purchase, my new Mini Cooper’s radio signal disappeared. It took the dealer two days just to find out the cause of the break down by running the computerized program. If it were a simpler car, I would have expected to get my car back within a lunch break.

The funny thing is that, when we buy any other electronics, there are manufacture warranties. If anything goes wrong, we can return it within the warranty period. Cars, which are considered much larger expenses, if deemed to be junks, the consumers have to shoulder all the costs? It is such an obvious loophole for our politicians to ponder. After all, it should be the big auto industries’ responsibility to produce safe, working cars for its consumers.

Canada, it is time to learn from our neighbour down south “to protect those who buy new cars that end up being defective” with the “lemon law.” What are we waiting for?

Full article- http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/10/04/f-lemon-cars-marketplace-law.html