This is definitely one big milestone for the Thailand where Consumers rarely wins a case against the companies
The American auto major is facing troubled times as Thailand Court has ordered to pay a huge fine amount of $720,000 (Rs. 5.19 Crore) to the 291 customers who were sold cars with a faulty transmission. The verdict was given at Bangkok’s South Civil Court yesterday.
The Thai court has ordered Ford to buy back all the faulty cars from the customers and pay 600 million Thai baht ($18.5 million) in damages. They were also given a choice to appeal the ruling within the next 30 Days.
Most of the people who brought a case against Ford in the class action suit will receive a payment of $800 to $8,000 individually depending on the number of times and also the length of time their cars took to be repaired. However, there were 12 such cases where the owners were denied the payment because their cars were modified before they were repaired.
Ford Motors in a statement issued in Thai said, “We apologize for the inconvenience caused by the Powershift transmission problems and we reiterate that we will work earnestly to take responsibility for fixing them according to our customer service procedures,”
This case win against Ford was also a milestone for Thailand because in this country consumers rarely win any case made against a high profile company. The civil law of this country was set up to allow class action litigation for the first time, which allowed the consumers to take action against the manufacturers or company for any kind of complaint.
For your information, this was not the first time Ford was fined for their faulty mechanicals. Earlier the Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford’s Australian subsidiary was also fined a lump sum of 10 million Australian dollars ($7.6 million) for mishandling the complaints about the faulty transmissions which affected thousands of cars.