Automotive Consumerism in Malaysia with Regard to Car Maintenance

This paper aims to review relevant legal framework, statistics, news reports and findings from the 'automotive ecosystem' study by MIROS relating to car maintenance issues in Malaysia. The automotive consumerism data mainly comes from the Road Transport Department (RTD), Ministry of Domestic Trade, Co-operatives and Consumerism (MD'TCC) and National Consumer Complaints Centre (NCCC), in addition to news articles via web search. In summary, there are several laws and legislations involving various authorities which can be utilised to safeguard automotive consumers ranging from before car registration, during car ownership up to de-registration of the car. Based on the statistics and news reports, car maintenance complaints mostly involved motor vehicle workshop and parts, accessories as well as vehicles. With respect to motor vehicle workshop, quality of repair received the highest number of complaints in NCCC report in 2015 (51.1%), while sales service and manufacturing defects were the main issues in the parts, accessories and vehicles category (22.5% and 21.4% respectively). In regard to car users' behaviour in Klang Valley (500 respondents) and Kuching (300 respondents), a majority of them chose to bring their cars for maintenance either to authorised service centre or general car workshops, instead of performing the maintenance themselves or alternating between the available options. Most car users' agreed on the importance of scheduled maintenance according to manufacturer recommendation and performing maintenance at general car workshops. However, they are unsure of the quality, in addition to maintenance and retrofitting behaviour.