Mock funeral staged for brand-new car - The Nation

PATHUM THANI - A civil servant was so frustrated by problems with a brand-new Toyota car she had bought that as a protest she staged a mock funeral with some 200 guests in black in front of a showroom in Pathum Thani's Thanyaburi district Saturday.

Klong Luang district clerk Kantarat Roemsungnoen, 40, and 200 protesters took her new Toyota Camry decorated with two wreaths to the front of a Toyota showroom on Rangsit-Nakhon Nayok Road Saturday at 10 am. She also had Buddhist monks chant before they burned wooden flowers - a common feature of Thai cremation ceremonies - for the car. The staged funeral attracted passing motorists' curiosity and created a traffic jam nearly 10 kilometres long.

Recalling that she had bought the car six months ago with a down payment of Bt650,000 and the promise of instalments of Bt11,232 per month for 12 months, Kantarat said the car had so many problems she had had to leave it with the service centre most of the time. A month after the purchase, she noticed a noise as if air was leaking from a tyre, but mechanics insisted nothing was wrong until the noise grew louder.

As many subsequent attempts to repair that failed, she said she had hardly had a chance to drive her new car. Kantarat late last month took the car out of the centre but found the noise was still there, so she videotaped the car's condition. The centre then said it was only in her head.

"If it's only my imagination, why do they change so many parts of the car as if it is broken?" she wondered.

After her request for a new car in exchange was turned down, she figured she had to engage Buddhist monks to chant and rid the car of evil before she took the case to the Consumer Protection Board.

The Klong Song branch showroom's manager for after-sales service and spares, Thawat Hanpreechasawat, said the noise might just be a normal engine sound and the centre had changed parts for her in order to make her feel better. He said he could not make a decision in the case, which was the authority of the company headquarters.

Hearing the manager's comment, Kantarat appeared very upset and placed the wreaths in front of the showroom before going home. She said she would be complaining to the Consumer Protection Board.

The Nation

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