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EBay and Craigslist in North America may be flooded with advertisements for used Volkswagen parts as unhappy owners affected by the ‘Dieselgate’ catastrophe ‘double-dip’ on the German giant’s compulsory buy-back scheme.
Under the $US 14.7-billion program, Volkswagen is obliged to buy-back nearly 500,000 TDI-powered cars from customers in North America and, according to the Environmental Protection Agency order, those cars must be ‘operable’ (so customers whose cars have been crashed and written-off or are otherwise not roadworthy can’t stake a bogus claim from the German giant).
But stripping a few parts from a roadworthy Volkswagen is turning into a lucrative sideline for some of the unhappy customers.
So items like, say, the seats, spare wheels, headlights, tail-lights, jacks, exterior mirrors, sun-visors, audio systems, door inner panels, grilles, carpets and even the Volkswagen badge can easily be removed, advertised for sale on numerous websites and then Volkswagen must still pay top dollars for what’s left of the car.
The threads are popping-up on sites like Reddit and TDI Owners Club and it seems - apart from vehicles which have been bought from a scrap yard - as long as the Volkswagen in question can drive under its own power the company is required to pay the owner the full entitlement.
“A nice little earner,” as Arthur Daly from the TV classic Minder would say.
Image, top of page, via Jalopnik
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