Growing Complaints About Car-sharing and Vehicle Safety among Consumers

- Consumers have no options in using repair centers and complain about repair cost -

Car-sharing service has gained popularity among consumers with no cars because they can use cars whenever they need.

* A car located near your place has a different time slot. You can chose the time for using a car by the hour(by the minute)

However, after looking into car-sharing service by the Korea Consumer Agency(President Han, Kyeon-pyo), some cars have problems with lighting systems or tires and consumers have restrictions on using repair centers. In addition, consumers with no driver’s licenses or under the age of 20 use the service, which requires appropriate measures to be dealt with.

□ Complains about repair costs growing last year

There are 237 cases of consumer complaint counseling regarding “Car-sharing” reported to 1372 Consumer Counseling Network. 119 cases were reported last year, which went up by 85.9% year-on-year.

More specifically, there are 70 cases(29.5%) of excessive repair cost, followed by 40 cases(16.9%) of problems with notification, 38 cases(16.0%) of unfair plenties, 36 cases(15.2%) of rent-related problems and 28 cases(11.8%) of poor car management.

□ One out of four failed safety tests

After examining 30 cars from 4 different local service businesses based on the ？Automobile Management Act？, 7 cars(23.3%) were given a poor score. In particular, 5 cars with less than 50,000km mileage had problems. The main reason would be that cars can easily break down or are poorly managed and maintained considering that many and unspecified individuals use the service.

□ Some terms are not in favor of consumers such as limited options for repair

After analysis of terms and conditions of 4 major car-sharing businesses and *car-rental terms, consumers should use only designated repair centers if cars need repair. Penalties will be imposed automatically if consumers don’t comply with vehicle management guidelines unilaterally decided by businesses.

* (Membership)Terms and condition and car-rental terms on Green Car, So Car, Easy Go, People Car(As of 3 April, 2017)

□ Non face-to-face car rental causes illegal problems

Consumers use car-sharing service with smart phone applications without having to meet businesses face-to-face. Thus, more and more people without driver’s licenses or who are under the age of 20 use information of others for illegal car rental.

Information of membership, driver’s license and credit card have caused identity theft. Recently, Green Car(4.18) and So Car(4.19) have introduced “Mobile phone identification service” but they have failed to prevent illegal car-rental because of opening cell phones by using identity theft.

The Korea Consumer Agency has called on related departments to ▲improve car-sharing service terms which are currently not favor of consumers. It also asked car-sharing businesses for ▲introducing additional identification service and managing vehicles for safety thoroughly to prevent consumer damage.