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The Consumer Dispute Settlement Commission (CDSC) of the Korea Consumer Agency (Chair: Young-seen Kim) has given a mediation decision of replacement for a new vehicle if a car has broken down five times with an engine stall defect during travelling within one year after the car came out of the factory.
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【Outline of the Case】
Consumer A based in Gyeonggi-do purchased an Automatic 2010 Diesel Hyundai Tucson, a compact crossover SUV, on Oct. 23rd, 2009. But the Consumer had to receive repair service five times due to an engine stop while driving and a cause of the engine failure has been elusive. By mutual consent, D-Logger was installed to the vehicle to find the cause of the defect. Yet, again on April 20, 2011, the car stopped while driving on Seoul Outer Ring Expressway. On this, the Consumer made a request for replacement of the vehicle to the car manufacturer and argued that the Consumer was too nervous to drive the defective car once again.
※ D-Logger (database logger) is…
It is an apparatus that analyzes a cause of the problem by monitoring data of an electronic control unit, which controls internal movement of the engine, on a real time basis.
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Meanwhile, Hyundai Motor Company argued that they were able to ascertain whether engine stall actually happened in only two out of five times of repair service in total. And, for the rest three times of service, they exchanged or inspected parts of the vehicle as a preventive repair service. The car maker continued to say that the case was not applied to a standard (occurrence of an identical defect for four times) for new car replacement under the Regulations on Consumer Dispute Resolution, specially factoring that error code did not appear even with the D-Logger installed.
Against this backdrop, the CDSC made a judgment that D-Logger alone cannot confirm the engine stop. Also, it mentioned that the engine stop during traveling was serious defect directly connected to a driver’s safety and continued to acknowledge that it is highly probable that the car in dispute had a manufacturing defect, considering that 1) repair service for five times was related to incurrence of engine stall or engine start failure; and 2) the Consumer made requests for emergency roadside service or towing service.
Against this backdrop, the CDSC made a mediation decision for the car maker to exchange the vehicle in question for a new car replacement for the same model based on the following information that 1) it has been within 12 months since the car came out of the shop; and 2) the engine stall incurred even after four times of repair service for the same serious defect.
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l A mediation decision by the CDSC has the same force as a judicial compromise.
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Date of News Report Release : June 15, 2011
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Supplementary Coverage
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Chang-eun Cho, Chief Secretariat for the CDSC Secretariat
(☎ 02-3460-3240)
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Heung-wook Oh, Deputy Director for the CDSC Secretariat
(☎ 02-3460-3243)
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