The Polo Bluemotion turned out to be just a dirty car, while VW praised it as ‘clean’ in the brochure. The consumer association is taking VW to court.
It won’t get much more Dutch than the Volkswagen Polo Bluemotion. That is a neat Polo that had to be able to achieve almost impossible consumption figures by means of a castrated three-cylinder humming top. Um, yes.
That went a bit wrong. Cars such as the Fiat Punto, Ford Fiesta and Citroen DS3 could achieve the same values as the Polo with a much finer four-cylinder. Not only that, they could also do it ‘in real life’, Volkswagen had special cheating software for the Polo.
Consumers’ Association is taking VW to court
There is a court case in Groningen on Wednesday. Then the Volkswagen Group Diesel Efficiency Foundation (yes, that’s their name) and the consumer association Volkswagen to sue. They believe that Volkswagen should pay compensation.
Customers bought the Polos in 2011 because of their environmentally friendly nature. Partly because of this, you did not have to pay road tax and the addition was only 7 percent. It ensured that the whole of the Netherlands drove a Polo Bluemotion. The perfect car for next to your Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV.
Well, people bought the car for the wrong reasons. The Polo BlueMotion even turned out to be quite bad for the environment through the cheating software. The customer has been fooled by this. That is why the consumer association is taking VW to court, together with the VGDES.
According to the VGDES (otherwise we have to type Stichting Volkswagen Group Diesel Efficiency every time) the compensation must be the purchase value minus the residual value. So 17,290 euros minus the 2 grand the car is still worth in the trade. So a total of 15,290 euros.
Is something going to happen?
Whether that will happen remains to be seen, but the Consumers’ Association and the VGDES (that is, the Volkswagen Group Diesel Efficiency Club Foundation) want the court not to let Volkswagen get away with this kind of practice. In the US, VW TDI customers were amply compensated. In the Netherlands you received a software update that made the Polo BlueMotion even slower.
Volkswagen itself is of course not too keen on it. Last year, the Car Claim Foundation successfully enforced compensation from VW, but the Germans appealed.
According to Volkswagen, the owners of Volkswagens with cheating software have not suffered any financial damage. The latter, incidentally, is debatable. Since that dieselgate scandal, diesels have fallen out of favor and have turned out to be almost unsaleable.
Through: General Journal
This article Consumers’ Association takes VW to court first appeared on Autoblog.nl.
#Consumers #Association #takes #court