Appearances charmed a prospective car buyer (but not in a good way, mind you) in Jakarta. The woman’s claim about being duped by a not-so-legitimate salesman has become yet another cautionary tale in Indonesia.
Yunita Sari took to social media to share the story about how she lost millions of rupiah to a sneaky car salesman.
According to Yunita, she went to an official Honda dealer in South Jakarta to buy a Brio. There, she was attended by a man who looked spiffy in his Honda salesman uniform, complete with an ID and a business card.
After settling on a car, the man asked Yunita to wire the booking fee, amounting to IDR47 million (US$3,266), to the personal bank account of someone he said was his supervisor. He told her that the car booking process would be prolonged if she wired the money to the dealer.
“With the proof of payment that I received, I was under the impression that wiring money to salesmen’s personal accounts was possible,” she said.
In the following days, she wired what she thought was the outstanding fee for the car, IDR134 million (US$9,312), to the dealer. However, she never got the car she ordered, and her salesman had gone AWOL.
Yunita then demanded an explanation from the Honda dealer, who came clean that the salesman was not an employee, but had only been in training for two weeks. He also allegedly printed his own ID and business cards.
“In my case, I fully realize that I lost IDR47 million due to my own stupidity in wiring the money to a personal bank account. But I did all of that in the premises of an official dealer, with an official salesman who wore the Honda uniform,” Yunita said.
With police involved in the case, Honda refunded Yunita IDR134 million, but not the IDR47 million, as that was deemed lost as a result of her negligence. Honda Prospect Motor (HPM), the Indonesian subsidiary of the Japanese automaker, issued a public statement reminding buyers to only make transactions through official channels.
The dealer says it’s helping authorities pursue the salesman, but soon learned that he had given them a fake address for their records.
The Indonesia Consumer Community (KKI) said this MO for car dealership fraud actually has precedents, having received at least five similar complaints in the past. The group called on Honda to exert greater accountability in Yunita’s case, especially as her transaction took place in the dealership’s premises.
