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SoCal Car Dealership Accused of Cheating APA Customers

Wondries Toyota car dealership in Alhambra, Calif.

By Ji Hyun Lim | AsianWeek Staff Writer

The Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC) and Public Counsel — the largest pro-bono law firm in the nation — announced that they would be filing a lawsuit against the Wondries Toyota in Alhambra, Calif., for discriminating and defrauding five customers.

The five monolingual clients are alleging that sales agents at Wondries Toyota car dealership sold them cars with high interest rates and persuaded them to sign sales contracts for cars they only wanted to lease. According to Manjari Chawla, attorney for APALC, Wondries Toyota advertised that their dealers would assist clients and conduct transactions in Mandarin in the local Chinese media. This drew many customers, in a city comprised of 47 percent Chinese Americans.

The five clients visited the dealership, hoping to purchase cars, but later discovered that sales agents failed to provide accurate information about the need for credit histories and defrauded customers into purchasing cars at interest rates that were triple the amount that banks later quoted.

On Dec. 10, APALC and Public Counsel held a press conference where two of the clients spoke about the unfair negotiations with Wondries. Hua Bai and Zheng Rong Li told stories of how Wondries Toyota lead them to believe that their credit history would force them to accept the interest rate of 19.6 percent, rather than the average of 3 to 5 percent. After purchasing the cars, the clients went to their banks and re-financed their cars at 6.5 percent — a third of the amount Wondries charged.

APALC began receiving phone calls from a handful of Wondries customers telling similar stories in May 2001. Other Wondries clients alleged that they were defrauded into believing that they had to lease cars for six months in order to improve their credit. When the clients returned their cars, they discovered that they had actually signed up for a purchase contract and received bills and late notices.

APALC and Public Counsel responded to the claims of five customers by sending a letter to Wondries in October of this year, but received no response and filed a lawsuit in December.

APALC and Public Counsel claim that Wondries Toyota deliberately targeted monolingual clients who were vulnerable to trusting Mandarin-speaking sales associates. According to Herman Vera, consumer rights attorney and project director of Public Counsel, Wondries blatantly defrauded customers. He rules out the possibility of miscommunication during the transactions because all of the salespeople spoke fluent Mandarin.

Said Vera: “They were lead to believe that they can trust [the salespeople]. In some cases, they were even told that they were family.”

APALC and Public Counsel suspect that many other Wondries customers have also been defrauded but are hesitant to speak out. The plaintiffs of the lawsuit, Hua Bai, Li Gang Yao, Shirley Zhang, Zheng Rong Li and Zhi Wu, all claimed that translations of contracts were not provided and that the salespeople made frequent references to common ancestry. As a result, the lawsuit alleges that Wondries engaged in a pattern of national origin discrimination against Chinese customers.

Vera underscores the need for accuracy and honesty in reporting credit scores. He argues that dealerships have the discretion to negotiate a fair interest rate — however, tricking the clients into believing they have bad credit is a gross injustice. He proposes that dealers show the credit report in writing and hopes that there will be outside monitoring to make dealers accountable for unfair reporting.

Vera points out that certain communities have legal means to protect themselves from fraud. For Latino customers, there is a civil code that requires a translation to be provided if negotiations are conducted in Spanish. In other communities, this is not required and many monolingual communities are susceptible to misrepresentation and fraud.

Said Vera: “Immigrants and communities of color are taken advantage of because there isn’t an awareness of what credit means. Part of what we hope to do is to make sure that people can get the information to be informed consumers and not be taken in by those tactics.”

Reach Ji Hyun Lim at jlim@asianweek.com.