Part 5 - The Document “Crisis”
- Xoxowos
- Sep 10, 2019
- 6 min read
Updated: Sep 15, 2019
As we were wrapping up our business abroad and getting ready to travel back to Germany to pick up our motorhome, our first order of business was to register the vehicle and get our license plate. We decided to register her in Germany with the help of a very good friend of mine living there.
In order to register our motorhome under a company (legal entity) in Germany, we needed the following documents:
Good standing certificate from the city chamber of commerce where the company is registered (Handelsregisterauszug)
Photo ID or passport of the company director
SEPA letter authorizing automatic withdrawal of registration charges from our bank account
Power of Attorney - as we are using an agent for the process
EVB number (an insurance policy number issued by the insurance company)
Vehicle's identification documents (Zulassungsbescheinigung Teil II - ZBII)
Vehicle's Certificate of Conformity (CoC) documents
This list includes registration documents that were required in our case. These docs may vary from case to case. Further information may be found here
In the list above, we were responsible to provide items 1 thru 5. Documents on items 6 and 7 needed to be provided -as originals- by Morelo.
Wrong documents
We emailed Morelo asking them to scan us a copy of both documents (item 6 & 7) and received their reply promptly. After carefully checking their contents, we noticed that the Vehicle Indentification Number on the CoC did not match the one on the ZBII. In other words, the CoC belonged to one vehicle, the ZBII belonged to another. Being glad we caught this before the German registration office, we immediately emailed Morelo again asking to scan us correct versions.
Wrong address
As the registration office required originals of these documents (CoC and ZBII), we emailed Morelo asking whether they could send these documents asap by express courrier to an address that we will specify. Once we would have received their confirmation, we were going to provide them with our agent's address in Germany. A couple days have past without any reply from Morelo, we sent a chaser email message. They replied the same day with a parcel tracking number!
Where were the documents sent to? They were sent to our home address in UK.
Why did Morelo send these documents to our home address? Most probably this was the only address on their file and asking for a simple confirmation before sending the envelope would have meant writing an email (+in English) and receiving/processing its reply. Isn’t it much easier to send it to the address on file and get it over with at once?
Lesson learned?
For the sake of avoiding a misinterpretation, on our initial email message, we should have clearly specified NOT to mail out the documents until further instructions are provided. We wrongly assumed that Morelo was first going to answer our question and eventually ask which address we want the documents courriered to.
For 11 days, not a word from Morelo
20th of August was the last time we heard from Morelo. Since then, we lost contact. Emailed 5 chasers, but still not a word. We tried to reach the factory by phone but with no avail. It seemed they were closed due to Dusseldorf show.
Unable to register the motorhome without documents
As we were traveling and away from home, the envelope containing original vehicle documents obviously could not be delivered to our home address, thus had been returned to Morelo. Someone from the factory should now receive the returned envelope and mail it out to our agent in Germany so as he could start the registration process. Unfortunately, we could not get ahold of anyone from Morelo and decided to give another shot sending our 6th chaser, this time to the private email address of our sales rep, both in English and Google translated German. Fortunately, he replied to our email apologizing about the delay and explaining that the factory is now closed due to summer holidays, that the whole sales team is currently at the Dusseldorf show, and that the person responsible for deliveries will return on the 2nd of September.
Piecing the puzzle together
Seemingly 20th of August (last day we have been in touch with the person responsible for incoming/outgoing courriers) was her last workday. We would have appreciated at the very least a simple email message stating that she will be leaving for holidays and that she would take care of the matter upon her return. But instead, the very same person who scanned us wrong documents and then sent the envelope to a wrong address preferred to let us deal with the situation.
At the end, we had nothing left to do except twiddling our thumbs waiting for her "majesty" to come back from her holidays!
Come 2nd of September: Still nothing
According to both our sales rep and to the auto-reply we have received to one of our chasers, Monday 2nd of September was supposed to be her "majesty's" first day at work but unfortunately we have not heard from her. The next day, we have decided to send our 7th chaser. We received an (updated) automated reply within a few minutes this time reading that she we will be back on the 5th of September.
Back to thumb twiddling!
Update: 6th of September - Finally a short update following our 13th reminder!
After twiddling our thumbs for another 4 days, we still had not received any sort of update from Morelo. We've sent a few reminder emails in the meantime as we could not reach anybody from factory via telephone.
We've sent our last (13th) reminder in the morning of 6th of September. Only 1 minute later, person responsible replied saying that she was waiting for the returned documents to reach the factory. Obviously, not being able to mail out an envelope which doesn't exist is perfectly normal and justifiable. But how about not asking for the envelope to be returned back? We'll come to that shortly...
Have the original documents gone missing?
We know from parcel tracking information that the envelope was attempted to be delivered on the 20th of August. Since 17 days, we have not had any news. This could have only suggested that either the envelope had gone missing, or it got stuck somewhere. The online tracking did not provide any useful information.
We therefore asked Morelo (as the sender of the envelope) to contact the carrier and ask for an update on its location. As always, we have not received any sort of reply or acknowledgment.
We located the envelope!
We finally understood that Morelo was determined not to lift another finger for us. Anything related to this case was going to be considered an aftersales matter. We therefore decided to roll up our sleeves to intervene and asked our agent to call the carrier's call center in Germany and follow up the matter. He finally got ahold of the envelope's location. It was sitting at the carrier's delivery station since the 20th of August. In other words, in the past 17 days, no one called the carrier to query the status of the parcel or instruct them to return the envelope back to sender! Anyways, our agent placed a request for the envelope to be returned back to Morelo and got informed that it should be back at the sender in 3 business days. Fingers crossed!
Why on earth would Morelo not lift a finger to help its customer?
We could certainly come up with countless theories as to why a 360.000 EUR customer was being treated this way, ranging from political/historical matters all the way up to a simple "rotten apple in the barrel" case.
Was being a "foreigner" a factor? I guess we'll never know...
Whatever the underlying reasons might be, the facts are crystal clear: Once paid off, you most certainly become an aftersales case, just another client number waiting to be served. After all, we are all familiar with car dealers and their philosophy, aren't we?
Update: 10th of September - Morelo staff looking the other way?
By now, it should come to no one’s surprize that not receiving a reply from Morelo has become a norm. But we kept on trying.
As we have not received a reply to our email sent on the 6th, we have forwarded it again to remind ourselves, and included (as always): Person responsible for incoming-outgoing mail, Sales Manager, Sales Representative, contact email for factory, and few other email addresses.
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