[tj123]

This is slightly off topic but is in sync with the customer rant theme...!

Man delivers 300,000 pennies to DMV

A Virginia man used 300,000 pennies to pay sales tax on two cars at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

The Bristol Herald Courier reports that Nick Stafford delivered five wheelbarrows full of change, mostly pennies, at the DMW office in Lebanon, Virginia, on Wednesday. The coins weighed in at 1,600 pounds.

Stafford said he paid in coins to “inconvenience” the DMV.
Stafford was upset because he was unable to find out the direct number to the Lebanon DMV until filing a Freedom of Information Act request. He later sued the state because he says he was denied direct phone numbers to other DMV offices in his area.

Stafford ended up filing three lawsuits, which were dismissed Tuesday.

Source -http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-w...ennies-to-dmv/

[vivee90]

I am on the side of the customers doing this. One logic is that may be they thought reducing the car's weight will improve emissions for the drive back to dealer

Am glad, they cannot send these cars to Africa or some yet-to-develop country and resell it like they do with old electronics.

Before thinking of partial treatment to fellow customers in India, also think of those customers in Europe who also get nothing but a magical fix(?).Had the enforcement agencies been lax or not funded by them, VW wouldn't have bothered to compensate US customers too.

Secondly, I wonder what the engine is designed for if it couldn't even pass the tests of Indian standards.

[CarJunki]

Customers who bought the cars were cheated deliberately by VW. Those people paid a lot of tax and insurance that still will count as losses. Taking parts off those cheats is one good way of recovering the losses.

[vivee90]

While I was browsing more on this topic, I found that VW has appealed to court to warn customers of such behaviour. It looks like many customers felt the need to do so, which in my opinion is a completely sane behavior.

Here is the link with more info,

http://www.autoblog.com/2016/12/23/j...stripping-car/

[sgiitk]

Human nature is the same everywhere. So the tendency to strip out cars will be there. As for a man delivering cash, I heard of a bank first refusing to give the 2.5lakh for a wedding, and then disbursing it in small change. The lady had to get a rickshaw to cart it home.

[Czarcarsm]

Originally Posted by 7heaven

So the people of USA are teaching a great lesson to VW, Now in our country the Govt's reaction can best be understood by the way the Bhopal tragedy has been treated till to date by the successive govts. So public, environment etc. is all secondary here. Here VW walks free with their tale of software update etc.

Shame on you VW, for betraying on the trust we had on your cars, values and brand.

Fully agree on inaction part. But a few points to note..
- I am thinking that VW even in USA is basically providing a software update as well with possible modifications to exhaust after-treatment, because typically for emissions improvement you need to change 3 basic mechanical things - Turbo, Piston (bowl geometry), cam profile. Then additionally you need to change SW.

- Mechanical changes would need much more development time than SW due to extensive validation, supplier process qualification, productionizing etc. SW typically is out in 3-6 months with latest development tools

- So I am thinking that both in USA and in India, the new emission compliant VW will be performance compromised and would be in line with Japanese.

- One caveat: US EPA standards may be higher than Bharat stage for new implementation/recall. May be a SW update alone is good enough for India

- Eventually VW might come up with validated mechanical changes with better performance.

Having said these. Do all of you really think that the Indian OEMs are meeting the current Indian emissions standards through out the emission test cycle ? Its called cycle beating, same as VW did. How do you know VW is not doing cycle beating again in India with latest updated SW.

Too many skeletons in our closet to go after VW alone.

[ACM]

A thought would be that these parts would then go to the ebay etc as refurbished parts for sale.

This would drop the prices of VW Spares (used spares i.e.) But encourage old genuine parts being sold rather than duplicate new ones. That would actually be good.

Also what was VW going to do with all the cars it would receive. It cannot sell these cars or refurbished parts on it's own. VW would have to scrape the cars by weight for metal. Yes a bit of metal value is lost with doors etc removed but not much relatively.

So while the owners may be doing this to spite VW and it should not be allowed. Yet not much harm is being done either.