Finance Network Auto News, on February 10, the Consumer Rights Protection Bureau of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission issued a notice stating that Mercedes-Benz Auto Finance Co., Ltd. has promotional materials that do not clearly state that the loan product provider and service price information disclosure does not meet the requirements, the format terms for the authorization of consumer information fail to follow the principles of legality, legitimateness and necessity, and the consumer rights protection review and implementation is inadequate. It infringes on consumers' legitimate rights and interests, infringes on consumers' right to know and independent choice, and has hidden risks of consumer information security. The notice stated that Mercedes-Benz Auto Finance has made rectifications in accordance with regulatory requirements.
February 11, Finance Network Auto learned from the official that Mercedes-Benz Automobile responded to the "Notice on Mercedes-Benz Automobile Finance Co., Ltd.'s infringement of the Legal Rights and Interests of Consumers" released by China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission , saying that in March 2021, the regulatory authorities conducted a routine on-site inspection of Mercedes-Benz Financial Company and pointed out some shortcomings in the company's operations. The company has completed rectification last year in accordance with relevant measures.
According to China News Service , Mercedes-Benz stated that complying with laws and regulations and protecting the legitimate rights and interests of customers is the company's basic principle. In the future, the company will continue to fulfill its consumer rights protection responsibilities and further improve the working mechanism for consumer rights protection to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of financial consumers.
Finance Network Auto entered the homepage of the official website of Mercedes-Benz Auto Finance Co., Ltd. and found that the second point of infringement involved in Mercedes-Benz Finance was previously "the disclosure of service price information does not meet the requirements". According to , when the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission pointed out, when Mercedes-Benz Auto Finance disclosed relevant charging items on the official website, the specific path is: car purchase support - financial services - compliance publicity. The final result is listed in the third level directory of the official website, and the service price information is not disclosed in the prominent position of the website homepage. The company has made adjustments and the price announcement has been placed on the homepage.
However, most services are marked as "free" in the price list announced by Mercedes-Benz Auto Finance, and early repayment requires payment of early repayment of the loan principal × 3%, and the overdue annual interest rate is: the annual interest rate of the loan before subsidy + 50% the annual interest rate of the loan before subsidy, that is, 1.5 times the annual interest rate of the loan before subsidy.
Mercedes-Benz Finance official website shows that the company's loan and car purchase services are divided into four types, among which the "Enjoy first and then choose-Star Zhixiang" plan and the "Exclusive to Old Customers-Star Zhixiang" plan are provided by Mercedes-Benz Leasing Co., Ltd.; the financial loan plan and the " Xingshidai " plan are provided by Mercedes-Benz Finance, and the annual interest rate is calculated using the single interest method. In the absence of preferential financial loan policies, the standard annual interest rate of the financial loan plan is 12.78% (12-60 periods). Taking the A180L priced at 212,800 yuan as an example, the financial loan plan should be down payment 20%, and it is paid in 36 periods, with repayment of 5,149 yuan per period, loan of 171,840 yuan, total interest amount of 13,339 yuan, and annual interest rate of 4.99%. Xingzhixiang has a down payment of 0 yuan, a monthly payment of 4,088 yuan, a financing cost of 21,480 yuan, and a final payment of 95,865 yuan. Compared with this, it seems that Xingzhixiang is more cost-effective.
It is worth noting that Xingzhixiang belongs to a financial leasing service. After the owner purchases the car, the vehicle ownership belongs to Mercedes-Benz car rental. Consumers only have the right to use it and must pay the final payment to obtain the vehicle property rights after the lease period is over. However, if an overdue occurs, financial leasing company has the right to deal with the vehicle. In actual car purchase and loan business, if the loan service is not explicitly stated, the real interest rate is not distinguished from loan purchase and financial leasing, disputes are prone to occur.
Automotive industry analyst Zhang Xiang said that Mercedes-Benz Finance mixes auto finance products with car rental products, which can easily confuse consumers. Some dealers confuse consumers by making financial packaging more complicated. Consumers who buy luxury cars generally believe that the handling fees and service fees that sales consultants ask them to pay are the right ones.
According to Beijing News , in addition to this notice, Mercedes-Benz Auto Finance also received two fines issued by the Beijing Banking and Insurance Regulatory Bureau with a total amount of 1.2 million yuan on September 11, 2019 and December 3, 2021 respectively.Especially two years ago, in September 2019, Mercedes-Benz Auto Finance was imposed an administrative penalty of 800,000 yuan by the Beijing Banking and Insurance Regulatory Bureau for "serious shortcomings in management of outsourcing activities". This is also the fine received by Mercedes-Benz Auto Finance after the female car owner's rights protection triggered the "Xi'an Mercedes-Benz Incident".
Mercedes-Benz Auto Finance's core business is mainly to provide retail credit services to individuals and customers with all retail credit services for Mercedes-Benz and Daimler brand auto purchase loan services, which is also the main source of income for Mercedes-Benz Auto Finance. Since 2019, due to the impact of the "Mercedes-Benz Xi'an incident", the sales of Mercedes-Benz brand cars have declined, resulting in a decline in the scale of its retail credit business.
Affected by the fluctuations in the scale of retail credit business, the interest income of Mercedes-Benz Auto Finance retail credit business has shown a downward trend. From 2018 to 2020, the retail credit business achieved interest income of 6.66 billion yuan, 6.271 billion yuan and 5.707 billion yuan respectively. As of the end of 2020, according to United Credit Disclosure, Mercedes-Benz Auto Finance achieved total revenue of 4.105 billion yuan and net profit of 1.805 billion yuan, but a year-on-year decrease of about 16.78% from 2.169 billion yuan in the same period in 2019.
Automotive industry analyst Zhang Xiang said that dealers have always had many tricks to sell auto financial products, but they will not be put on the table. The actual automobile finance process is relatively simple. Through auto finance company , banks and dealers, loans are given to consumers. Consumers pay a certain down payment and then pay handling fees, service fees and interest on the mortgage. Generally, dealers make a fuss about service fees or handling fees.
Nowadays, dealers are not making money by selling cars, and the competition is fierce. Their main source of profit is to rely on the maintenance of automobile finance and the automotive aftermarket, so the relevant departments also turn a blind eye. Because if the dealer bankrupts, the impact on the automobile industry has a great impact, and the proportion of automobiles to the national economy has a great impact on local fiscal revenue and employment. Most sales consultants want to earn more service fees or handling fees when selling cars, because they involve the interests of consumers and are expressed verbally, but this mistake made by Mercedes-Benz Finance is more obvious.
In addition, if the auto finance company does too much in this regard, it may be revoked. Now first- and second-tier auto companies have basically established their own auto finance companies, which is an important auxiliary to automobile sales. If they lose their own auto finance companies, it will have a great impact on their sales business. This mistake made by Mercedes-Benz Finance is relatively rare, and most financial companies of auto companies will not make such low-level mistakes.
