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Korean automakers are willing to offer free repairs for recalled cars that are required by law, but are reluctant to provide needed quality improvements not required by law, according to a survey by the Korea Consumer Agency. The survey found that Korean car companies have saved a whopping W500 billion (US$1=W1,030) over the last eight years by not properly providing free repairs.
The KCA on Sunday released the results of a survey on recall and quality improvement practices by five Korean car companies from 2000 to 2007. The survey found that the automakers performed 80 percent of recalls that require them to inform customers of flaws, while voluntarily performing only 25.2 percent of quality improvements.
With only 25 percent of quality improvements done voluntarily, that means that three fourths of owners of flawed cars paid for repairs without knowing that the car makers are responsible for them. It's estimated that such repairs amounted to over W500 billion.
For the eight years from 2000 to 2007, recalled cars accounted for 14 percent (728,626 cars) of the total number of cars with flaws entitled to free repairs, while the other 86 percent needed quality improvements. This means that automakers tended to issue quality improvements rather than recalls, but were not active in repairing the quality improvement flaws.
By company, Daewoo GM was the least willing to perform quality improvements with 14.5 percent, meaning that it freely repaired only 14 out of every 100 cars eligible for quality improvements that the company itself recognized. Hyundai Motor came in second with 18.9 percent, followed by Renault Samsung (21.3 percent), Kia Motors (28 percent), and Ssangyong Motor (69.2 percent).
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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