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Long-term partner for Renault?

Selling good? Happy with Renault business? Do not worry, it might be over soon!

They call You as a family member, when they sign Your contract, but You will turn into a stranger or even enemy as soon as You refuse to play their  games...

Mr. Andrej Cieslinsky participates and held the speech on inauguration of Info-Auto Tartu. Renault Polska said to court, that Info-Auto was never autorized to sell in Tartu.

Info-Auto was the best Renault dealer overall in Baltic region. Renault Polska said to the court that Info-Auto had poor sales. Renault Polska intentionally dimished the market share of Info-Auto.

Be carefull with correspondence from Renault. They may sent your employee the car operating manual and they may claim afterwards this was important legal document to you.

They will do it in 7 steps!
  1. They will deliver to You cars You never ordered and they will finance those cars from Your customers' prepayments for some other cars. They will mess up all deliveries to You.
  2. They will authorize the companies and persons with the criminal background to compete with You, so You have to think about Your own and Your family's security.
  3. They will cut Your territory (originally stated by contract) and give monopoly on a part of it to such dealers to compete with You.
  4. As soon as You have trained your Renault management and after-sales employees, they become absolutely non-suitable from Renault's perspective. As soon as they work for a competing Renault dealer, they become fully accepted by Renault.
  5. They will present wrong information, especially wrong market-shares and wrong sales statistics to their superiors in order to get the green light for termination of Your contract. .
  6. They will send You the congratulation letters for excellent sales results and encourage You to invest heavily into marketing and sales premises just a few months or even few days before they will terminate Your contract.
  7. They leave unpaid invoices behind, after they terminate your contract.

Info Auto Ltd represented Renault in Estonia as a dealer for 10 years, established a fairly good market for Renault and turned this unknown make for Estonian people to a well-known one. To avoid forthcoming European automotive legislation, Renault S.A. decided to conduct business in the Baltic states via their non-European hub, Renault Polska according to non-EU Swiss legislation. Even Estonia adopted EU legislation 2 years before actual joining with EU in May 2004, this legislation was not accepted by European largest vehicle manufacturer, Renault S.A.

Renault Polska terminated the contract with Info-Auto in May 2002 stated, that this contract is terminated without any reasons. Article 16 of the new non-European contract provided such possibility: contract might be terminated without any reason and without any compensation, provided that 6 month before termination the written notice will be sent via registered mail. Renault Polska failed to send notice and sent termination letter with immidiate effect instead. Renault Polska was caught on a lie, that this termination letter was not sent via DHL as they said, among 0,5 kilo of documents addressed to dealer's Renault sales secretary.It turned out instead, that package sent via DHL contained just homologation documents for car register and persons who sent and who recieved those documets were never in a position nor authorized of exchanging termination letters. However, Renault Polska refused to pay most of the bills left behind and any compensations after such termination. Parties had to resolve this problem in Swiss Arbitration Court (ICC with their office in Paris), where arbitrator Mario Nicolella, (also situated in Paris) decided in 2006, that most of invoices for marketing, presented by Info-Auto Ltd, are related to Renault expenses and therefore should be compensated by Renault Polska, but as the final outcome just 1/8 of those presented invoices were compensated in fact.

During the arbitration process Renault Polska came out with the idea, that the contract was never terminated without any reasons. They said there were two reasons:

The discovery process has been phenomenal. Info-Auto presented to the court photos of the representative of Renault Polska, Mr Andrzej Cieslinski addressing with an inauguration speech at Info-Auto's premises in Tartu. Info Auto presented sales- and registration statistics, where it came clearly out, that Info Auto was not just the best Renault dealer in Estonia but also the best in the Baltic states. Info Auto presented also the congratulation letter from the president of Renault Polska, Mr Jombart, for excellent sales, which was sent just 5 month before termination.It turns out during the arbitration, that representatives of Renault Polska have systematically lied to their superiors, Renault in Paris, to justify switching dealers.Finally it turns out Polish representative has presented to Renault Paris that Renault market share in Estonia was 3.1% in 1998, whereas we clearly showed it was almost 50% more, 4.7% ( sold practically just by Info Auto since the other dealers had insignificant sales), making Renault the 5th largest car brand in Estonia.

Arbitrator Mario Nicolella finally decided in 2006, that Info-Auto had good sales results indeed and were absolutely authorised to perform the sales on entire Estonian territory and of course in the city if Tartu, which is part of Estonia, as well..

It also came out during arbitration process and were never denied by Renault, that they systematically authorized companies and persons with criminal background, as the dealers for Renault in Estonia. Info Auto pointed out several times to Renault, that such companies uses unfair business menthods and they might use even bomb explosions against their competitors.

So, why was the contract with Info Auto terminated? As soon as Info-Auto assumed, that in behaviour of Renault Polska's representatives might be "some other interests or benefits involved", we informed Renault HQ in Paris about that.The termination of the contract followed shortly.

To see, how Renault might be dishonest..
See, how they might cheat You and Your customers.

Renault has a great brand that requires significant marketing expenditure. However, there are some disputed marketing methods, which Renault Baltic area-managers proposed to use: The idea was to have traffic police stop a vehicle but then, as a relief, a Renault salesman would step out of the police car and hand over an invitation to a sales event...

The average speed of polish delivery trucks was about 3km an hour. Whereas earlier the cars were delivered from a distance of 1200km in 36 hours, after the switch to Polish distributors it took 9 days on average. There were cases when truck drivers were found sleeping in petrol stations for days but also going home half way through the route to water plants, etc, etc. Such sleeping truckdriver was discovered by a customer, who desperately waited delivery of his ordered Renault Laguna, who recognized his car on the upper level of "sleeping truck" in a local petrol station. The delivery of a schoolbus for tiny Estonian village took 6 month longer, then Renault took obligation while they won the state-tender and the bus were delivered not for the autumn, when school started but just before the summer holidays.

You must pay special attention to the parcels You recieve from Renault and You must register all what they contain, since Renault has the practice to tell afterwards, that some of the parcels (DHL parcel for example), which was addressed and sent from logistics to logistics and contained cars homologation data only, contained also vey important correspondence, like termination letter, which terminates Your contract entirely.