Judges Joaquín Ferrer and Claudia Zalazar, of the 5th Civil and Commercial Appeals Chamber of Córdoba, unanimously rejected the appeal filed by a concessionaire, the company that manages an autoplan and the automotive manufacturer of a car so that the subscriber of an autoplan cancel a balance of your debt.
Ferrer and Zalazar thus endorsed the ruling by the multi-law judge of Jesús María, Luis Edgar Beltzky, who had jointly and severally sentenced the three parties for violating the consumer rights law and the right to information once morest the subscriber of a Autoplan of a Chevrolet brand vehicle.
The sentence ordered in this case by the 5th Chamber questions the autoplan marketing system regarding the controversies generated by the updates of the value of quotas to expire.
It happens that, in most cases, a subscriber signs a contract for the acquisition of a certain model of vehicle that, in the process of canceling the plan, is no longer manufactured and the value of a new model is taken as a reference value. that has better benefits and another market value, generally higher.
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But, in addition, the administrator of the autoplan rarely functions as agent of those who sign the contract and form a group and, therefore, ends up breaching the mandate contract that requires it to look following the interests of the principals.
A different demand
The lawsuit was initiated in Jesús María by the saver PDB following seeking, unsuccessfully, for the administrator to offer him a different alternative to the payment of the balance of installments that grew excessively, according to his proposal, starting in 2018 with the devaluation of the dollar.
The outstanding installments, according to the saver, began to increase month by month and with the aggravating circumstance that, since the car was on fire, he ran the risk of losing it in case of default on payments.
The first complaint came because the contract did not provide for any exit clause and savers were held hostage to a plan that was becoming unpayable. In 2019 and through a precautionary measure, PDB was able to roll back the payment of the outstanding installments to 2018, but without the substantive claim being resolved.
Both the judge of the first conviction and now the prosecutor of the Chamber Ana Elisa Kuznitzky warned of “a flagrant and ostensible breach of decent treatment of the consumer” and verified “reprehensible and deliberate conduct of the defendants”, issues that the 5th Chamber also had. into account in its ruling 161, dated December 27, 2022.
“The companies are in the power of contractual superiority over the consumer, and the administrator is constituted as agent, despite the existence of a conflict of interest, which in my view constitutes an abusive practice to the detriment of the interests of the consumers”, highlighted Judge Ferrer in the sentence.
“The defendants –marked the magistrate- violated consumer confidence and did not provide an adequate solution to the impossibility of payment that occurred. In this sense, they never gave a concrete response and satisfied their rights but, on the contrary, they maintained a denialist conduct, and ultimately, of undignified treatment and violating the economic rights of PDB”.
little background
The lawsuit was sponsored by lawyers Javier Foresi and Ignacio Noves and has little precedent in Córdoba. In principle, one of the reasons for the speed in the resolution was that they attacked the defendants for breaching the Consumer Defense Law and for breaching the mandate contract.
In another order, the collective action “Acosta, Nora Inés and others v. Volkswagen Argentina SA – Precautionary Measures” is still pending resolution, which seeks the annulment of the contractual clause that provides that the value of the monthly installment must be calculated from the current moving value. In other words, if the price of the car increases, the value of the quota increases and that increase is generated unilaterally by the automaker.
More information
- A judge ordered the dealership and the automaker to compensate the subscriber of an autoplan
