Mount Maunganui car dealer Alan Spiers and his finance company MAC Warranties have today been fined a total of $65,000 in the Auckland District Court.

Spiers was individually fined a total of $22,750 after earlier admitting to 11 breaches of the Fair Trading Act for providing misleading and false claims about cars sold from his Mount Auto Court yard.

Alan Spiers and finance company MAC Warranties have been fined a total of $65,000.

His finance company, MAC Warranties, was also fined $42,250 for 17 breaches of the Act.

MAC has also agreed to provide $182,000 compensation to affected customers.

The charges, laid by the Commerce Commission, related to misleading claims made between 2008 and 2011 when Spiers' finance company MAC repossessed and sold 79 vehicles used as security for its loans.

Under repossession laws, MAC was required to make all reasonable efforts to obtain the best price when it sold the vehicles.

But after repossessing each vehicle, MAC sold the car to its sister company Mount Autos Limited, of which Spiers was also a director, implying to its customers that it had taken reasonable steps to get the best price, when it had not.

MAC either sold the vehicles to Mount Autos at a price it had set itself, or simply used a third party valuation, when other steps were available to get the best price.

MAC also sold 29 of these vehicles to Mount Autos before it had the right to do so.

Under repossession laws, MAC could not sell those vehicles until at least 15 days after debtors had been served with a post-possession notice. This 15 day period gives debtors the chance to catch up on outstanding payments and get the vehicle back. In each case MAC sold the vehicles to Mount Autos within the 15 day period. In two cases MAC repossessed customer's vehicles on the basis they were 'wrecks”, or had been sold to the wreckers, when they were not. They had instead been sold to Mount Autos which reconditioned the vehicles and on-sold them.

In one case, a car repossessed from a George Raharui was said to have been sold to wreckers for $300.

In fact MAC Warranties sold it to Mount Autos, which resold it for $6995 after spending about $700 on it, the court heard.

Spiers then gained notoriety when he assaulted Fair Go reporter Gordon Harcourt outside his Totara Street car yard during the television show's investigations into the dealings in 2011.

Harcourt suffered a black eye, a bleeding nose and a suspected concussion. Spiers was convicted and ordered to pay $1573 to the reporter.

In sentencing today, Judge Philippa Cunningham described the offending as overall showing a 'moderate degree of recklessness”.

She says the number of incidents shows a degree of 'recklessness” and the misrepresentations are important as they typically relate to customers who used finance as they were on low incomes.

'This sort of recklessness will not be tolerated by the courts.”

The judge made allowances for the fact Spiers had developed a compensation package for affected customers and pleaded guilty to the charges.

'In my view, the development of a compensation package was both responsible and appropriate and should be given a 15 per cent discount.

'The fact that there was a guilty plea not only is appropriate, but it signifies an acceptance of responsibility as well as an acknowledgement that the actions of the defendants were false and misleading.”

Harcourt told SunLive after the sentencing that he believes the impact on victims is more than 'moderate”.

'The judge said it was a moderate degree of recklessness - well the victims I've spoken to have suffered a real degree of harm.”

The Fair Go reporter says Keni Rudolph paid $15,000 over three years for a vehicle and ended up with nothing.

'She's had no car for four years, and she was taking a sick kid to hospital – two buses there, two buses back.

'I think there are a lot of people in the Bay who should take notice of how Alan Spiers was doing business.”

Tomorrow night Fair Go will feature a story on Papamoa woman Keni Rudolph. Her car was described as a wreck worth $800, re-sold by Mount Autos for $6995 after claimed reconditioning costs of about $3000.

Commerce Commission Consumer Manager Stuart Wallace says the dealings were unacceptable business practice.

'The credit repossession laws are intended to ensure that businesses that seize property do so in strict compliance with the law and recognising debtor's rights. The conduct of MAC and Mr Spiers fell well short of what was required by law.”

'Making matters worse, many of MAC's customers were beneficiaries or on low incomes. They may not have known their rights or have been a position to exercise them.

"They would have been heavily dependent on the accuracy of the information provided by MAC, when it was not correct in a number of respects.

'In some cases this became a vehicle-go-round. Mt Autos sold cars to people who took funding from MAC. When MAC repossessed those vehicles they were sold back to Mt Autos and then resold to another customer, again financed by MAC.”

The Commerce Commission says if any of MAC's customers are uncertain as to whether or not their vehicle was one of the 79 to which the prosecution related, they can contact the Commerce Commission Contact Centre: [email protected] or 0800 943 600.