Gov't to hold hearings on Bigmotor over excessive car repair fees

Let’s see some criminal charges, not another panel discussion

Japan's transport ministry said Monday it will conduct hearings with major used car dealer Bigmotor Co over the company being suspected of charging excessive vehicle repair fees and making alleged fraudulent insurance claims, which may have affected several hundreds of thousands of vehicles.

Milquetoast headline about a massive criminal enterprise as even shown on the major networks.

Clearly top down and endemic.

Masakazu Tokura, chairman of the Japan Business Federation, the country's biggest business lobby, rebuked the car dealer at a press conference last week, saying, "It's fraud. This should not be happening."

And does happen across Japanese business.

Because the penalties are often suspended sentences, minor fines for business, expressions of regret and deep bows.

move them out of business...for good

move them out of business...for good

And How UBS ?

Lawyers have said the company set a quota for each factory of about 140,000 yen in gross profit per repair,

That sounds a lot. Presumably anyone with a one million yen or more repair bill to be put on a guilty party's insurance will push for their car to be written off, so actual high value repairs won't be done that often. Repair companies mostly repair bodywork and replace doors, they are not realigning suspensions or anything likely to affect the running of the car.

The whole car insurance industry here is collusive.

A small - I mean really small incident with another car - must be reported to the police, who then come usually in twos and spend a lot of time and paper getting every detail, then the insurance companies become involved and negotiate a settlement, then the favored car repair shops become involved and give inflated quotes, then the persons involved "accept" this as "well the insurance is paying it anyway.

My wife's 12 year old cars bumper (plastic) was scraped / scratched by a guy renting an adjoining parking space. Private land so no police. His Insurance company agreed to all costs at their body shop. I thought they'd just fill in the very minor dent and re-spray (common grey). But no!. A new bumper was sourced and fitted. My wife asked when the fixed car was brought back "BTW how much did that cost?" ￥230,000 all up. Cars value is about ￥100,000 at the most. Just give us the money and we'll drive around with the scratch.

Everyone gets a penny or two out of the system except we the consumers / citizens pay for it all in our premiums and taxes.

There is a similar scheme running in China, where a huge repair dealership, in hand with most car makers, over charge or damage vehicles, then milk the customer out of their money.

I think every garage screws customers to some degree. It was done to me at a Honda dealer. I knew they screwed me, but I had no choice.

Tip of the iceberg.

Car Convini Club, Autobacs, Yellow Hat, JMs and branded dealers get up to the same shenanigans. But Big Motor were so confident in their fraudulent antics that they even typed a staff manual of how to inflate an invoice!

BTW always, ALWAYS, make the mechanic show you the parts removed from your car any time something is "replaced". Better still, watch them do it.

Why there is there so much corruption in Japan?

Is it endemic?

It just doesn’t fit with the image of the polite and well mannered Japanese that foreigners hold