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A Respected Major Charity Takes Mercedes Benz to Court After Getting Stuck with Lemon and Spearheads Class Action Suit

FL (PRWEB) September 13, 2004

The Florida based charity organization; Instruments for the Youth and its director, Atlanta based Michael Malott have filed a lawsuit against the Mercedes Benz Corporation seeking damages for what they allege as negligence on behalf of Mercedes in Fulton County, Georgia.

Instruments for the Youth supplies free musical instruments, toys, schoolbooks and clothes to underprivileged and impoverished children. They have just launched their Children’s Rock N’ Dream Foundation which arranges for celebrity visits to children’s hospitals.

The charity has enjoyed the support of a long list of celebrity artists, and major companies including Keith Richards, No Doubt, Billy Joel, Christina Aguilera, Michelle Branch, Third Eye Blind, Backstreet Boys, The Tonight Show, Gladys Knight, Tom Jones and Amy Grant to name a few. The charity is supported by over 50 other major names.

The charities projects have been well publicized especially their Tosh Tribute Album featuring Eric Clapton, Sean Paul, Ben Harper and others. The charity has been featured by CNN Headline News, ABC World News, the Today Show, Rolling Stone, AOL News, MTV, and VH1 and over 100 other publications worldwide. They just released a successful jazz compilation CD featuring Andy Summers (The Police), Poncho Sanchez, Pat Martino, Craig Chaquico (Jefferson Starship) and others. The charity is currently working on a rock compilation CD as well due out in early 2005 and featuring major artists.

The lawsuit was filed as a result of the purchase of an older high mileage Mercedes 190E model car which was to be used by the charity. The charities director had put up the money for the purchase from what was supposed to be an “authorized Mercedes Benz resale dealer”. The dealer possessed all the credentials to support that claim including a recent Mercedes Benz sales award and an impressive Mercedes Benz Car Fax Report for the vehicle.

The charity agreed to purchase the car after the dealer, Anthony Riney and Car Works located in Decatur, Georgia agreed to pay one half the cost of repairing the vehicles blown head gasket. The vehicle was to be repaired by his associate who had a shop down the street and had just overhauled the cars transmission the month prior according to Riney.

That night Mercedes Benz was contacted by the charity and failed to identify the dealer as not actually being a Mercedes resale dealer. The representative only confirmed that Mercedes has a resale program.

The vehicle was picked up early the following evening and the dealer assured the charity that all the repairs had been performed.

The vehicle was then taken to another repair facility, Massey Automotive in metro Atlanta to have the work verified and the car looked over. None of the repairs that the dealer had represented to have made were actually made. The charities director then went into money he had been saving expecting his first child in October to pay an additional $ 2000 to have the cars engine repaired and the vehicle checked over. The repairs took over a month, stranding the charity without transportation. Finally the car was picked up from the repair facility and with less then 20 miles on it since its $ 2000 in repairs the transmission goes out and will require another $ 2500 in repairs that the charity could not afford.

So, the charity all of a sudden saw themselves out a total of $ 4500, defrauded by what was supposed to be a reputable Mercedes Benz resale dealer. Forty five hundred dollars which could have gone to provide presents for needy children this Christmas and an amount threatening the continued existence of the nearly year old charity.

However, after the matter was brought up during a local Atlanta AM talk show, the charity started to get contacted by people claiming that they had contacted Mercedes as far back as last year to report the misrepresentations being made by the bogus Mercedes resale dealer and Mercedes had negligently failed to take any action whatsoever to stop such misrepresentations and as a direct result of such negligence the charity alleges Mercedes to have liability for the losses they suffered.

But along the way the charity has found an abundance of dissatisfied Mercedes consumers, anti-Mercedes websites, and prior documented complaints and is looking at spearheading a class action suit against Mercedes.

Some of these websites were featured by Fortune Magazine and Automobile Magazine, who did a feature story on the extremely high customer dissatisfaction rates of Mercedes and Mercedes dramatically falling rating. In fact, according to Fortune Magazine, Mercedes was rated by J. D. Power & Assoc as much worse than average, in fact 26th place.

“If we would have known that there were that many unsatisfied Mercedes customers, we never would have even considered a Mercedes, we would have gone for a BMW “ states the charities director. He adds “We relied on what was supposed to be a dependable high mileage car”. The anti-Mercedes websites are all lined with people who made the same assumption and put their trust in the Mercedes name.

“We’ve uncovered evidence that Mercedes had prior knowledge that an individual who sold this charity a vehicle was misrepresenting his affiliation with Mercedes Benz as an authorized re-sale dealer” States Malott. Mercedes has claimed this is not the case. The charity alleges that Mercedes was negligent in failing to take the appropriate action which would have prevented the charity from being defrauded out of $ 4500. The charity simply wanted Mercedes Benz to repair their transmission.

The charities website can be found at http://www.instrumentsfortheyouth.org . The charity is recognized worldwide; and won several awards last year for its efforts and the charity has been commended by the likes of Nelson Mandela, the Prime Minister of Canada and the Prime Minister of Trinidad.

For further info, contact

Instruments for the Youth Public Relations        

(404) 405-6196

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