My adventures in buying a new car – Part II

In my last column (see DNA of February 10, 2015) I wrote about my adventures in obtaining an insurance policy for my new car. You will recollect that I had bought a new SUV and was trying to get the insurance done myself with the premium calculated net of the no claim bonus that I was entitled to. I finally obtained the policy on January 12, 2015, and heaved a sigh of relief after sending it off to the dealer so that he could complete the registration formalities. The dealer's sales person assured me that the registration formalities would be over in a couple of days at most and that I could expect the car in the next few days.

I did not hear from the dealer for the next 3-4 days and when I called the dealer he informed the RTO wanted extra documents as I was registering the vehicle at the address of my weekend home in Vasai. I gave him all the papers like electricity bill, society bill and a copy of the agreement with the builder. He came back two days later saying the RTO required a photo identity proof of that address. All my photo ID proof such as passport, election card and Aadhar card were from my Mumbai address so I expressed my inability to provide such documents. At this stage the dealer said it would cost more money (I was already paying him "registration charges" extra) to get the registration done. I flatly refused to pay anything over and above what I had agreed. This was the time that I started suspecting something was amiss. That's when the dealer played his final card. He told me about a "strike" call by touts who had reportedly been banned from entering the RTO premises. This was reportedly in pursuance of the government's objective to reduce corruption. The dealer claimed that the touts were preventing the entry of dealers' authorised representatives into the RTO premises. I read the newspaper reports on the issue and also spoke to other industry people who told me that though there was a problem but still the time being taken by the dealer for registration was inordinately long.

I then turned to social media and mentioned the tweeter handle of the chairman of the auto company (who is an avid tweeter with more than 1.6 million followers) as well as the tweeter handle of the auto company itself. I did receive a call from the company who made a soft promise to provide a temporary replacement vehicle but who afterwards became unavailable. All attempts to reach him later were unsuccessful. Meanwhile, the dealer kept asking for more time given the "strike" at the RTO. Eventually I decided to give up on my hopes of getting the new car before the wedding and borrowed a vehicle from my friend. A few days after the wedding was over the dealer called to say that the registration formalities were over and I could take delivery of the vehicle. I eventually took delivery of the vehicle in the first week of February. It was a good 20 days after I had submitted all necessary papers for the registration.

The entire episode left me with plenty of unanswered questions. Firstly, the whole process at RTO itself needs to be questioned. The touts can be eliminated only if the processes that gave rise to them are modified and taken online. In this age of networks why does the RTO need to physically inspect the vehicle? Even if he does, why can't all other papers be filed and approved online and a registration number granted subject to the physical verification by the RTO? This will eliminate the need to visit the RTO office multiple times and reduce the scope for touts to operate. More thought is clearly needed to re-engineer processes at the RTO's office so that this process is frictionless and does not require the consumer to pay "registration charges".