Has your car got a known safety problem? What now?

There is no Government agency which supervises vehicle technical error discovery and car recall campaigns, and so far it’s not clear what the owner of an auto with a known safety problem should do, reports Nguoi Lao Dong.

After Toyota announced it will recall 8.5 million of its vehicles for modifications to solve an accelerator pedal problem, a number of other automobile manufacturers also discovered problems in their products.   Tens of millions of cars are being recalled worldwide.

However, no car in Vietnam has yet been recalled even though many models on the ‘blacklist’ have been imported.

In 2009 alone, 79,859 automobiles were imported as complete built units (CBU) by 1716 enterprises.   However, to date, no Government agency has come forward to specify which cars must be recalled and serviced as per the policy of their manufacturers.

On March 1, the Vietnam Auto Registration Authority (VRA) issued Dispatch No 218, requiring car importers to contact manufacturers or their agents to check if the cars they imported ought to be recalled to fix problems.   In the case of such automobiles, enterprises must inform their buyers about the errors and the work that need to be done to correct them.

To date, no such report has been sent to VRA.

The Prime Minister’s Office has also released a document on the Government’s decision on the issue. Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai has assigned the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) to join forces with the Ministry of Transport and other interested agencies.   They are set up a task force to review which vehicle models should be recalled, and verify the measures to settle the problem.

From March 1, 2010, VRA has suspended issuance of technical and environment registration certificates to 31 cars imported to Vietnam. All of them are Toyotas.

Who should take responsibility?

Du Quoc Thinh, Secretary General of the Society of Automobile Engineers, says that under international practice, the agency that should stand between manufacturer and consumer is the national transport safety council.

However, in Vietnam, no Government agency supervises the vehicle technical error discovery and recall campaign. Most of car importing companies are not authorized agents of the manufacturers. Therefore, they have denied any   responsibility to contact manufacturers or arrange compensation to clients in case problems occur.

No one has come forward to advise Vietnamese customers where they should apply to fix problems of Toyota cars, or of other brands that are reported to have safety problems.

Thinh, the engineer, thinks that the Ministry of Transport ought to release the list of cars that need to be recalled, so that customers can know exactly about the situation of their cars. Such a step would put pressure on importers and force them to take responsibility for every car sold. The importers also will not be able to deliberately to import defective products when the list is clear.

When asked who customers should contact to receive necessary support, Dr. Vu Thi Bach Nga, Head of MoIT’s Customer Protection Division, said owners should take their cars back to where they bought them, and insist that the sellers check the cars and fix errors if necessary.   In case the manufacturers or agents refuse to fix known safety problems, customers can complain to competent agencies.