Over the past week, we have received a couple of communications from BYD at Indooroopilly asking us to firstly complete and sign a contract, then provide a image of both sides of my driver’s licence. Then on Friday came the big one. No prizes for guessing why this was held up until Friday. Maybe it was because they wanted to ensure that the sales numbers all pointed to September figures rather than spreading them over August and September.
Regardless, we received our email on Friday with the documents being sent via a system called Docusign. We are customer 1041. I wonder it that means we were the forty-first order they received. This is the first time I have used Docusign and except for having to sign on the iPhone screen with my finger, it all worked well. I signed up for an account on the Docusign website and when I completed the document it was sent back to Docusign and stored there waiting for someone from BYD (Andrew Keatley) to sign it.
The first document in the bundle was a Letter of Authority for Dealer to sign on behalf of individuals provided by the Queensland Government and I was able to fill most of it out using the iPhone keyboard. Not totally easy but it happened.
The second document was an invoice headed as below:
Austral Pty Ltd acting as agent for EVDealer Group Pty Ltd
ABN 89 009 662 202 DLN 1604384
Level 3/322 Moggill Road Indooroopilly QLD 4068
In an earlier communication we asked for the tinted windows option to be included and were a bit surprised to see that that option turned out to cost $659, obviously somewhat more that we expected. It turns out that it was BYD Ceramic Window Film, the important word in that title being Ceramic. Hopefully Ceramic tint works as well at keeping the heat out as the YouTube people say it does. It will be interesting to see whether they do the sun roof. I see also that there is also a clear ceramic film that can be affixed to the windscreen which will also keep the heat out. Might be useful during the summer heat of Gayndah but I suspect that won’t be included.
Things were about to get a little more interesting. Lorraine set out to make the first of two bank transfers. She had been to the local bank to be assured that she was able to transfer funds at that level and was told that the maximum she could send at one time was $40,000. So she set about to do that, prepared to transfer the rest the following day.
It wasn’t long before she received an email from the bank advising that the account had been locked given that such a transaction was out of character for that account. They included a phone number and Friday night she sat by the phone for over an hour (until her phone went flat). So Saturday morning, tried again and sat by the phone for over an hour before getting a response. Although it was all very frustrating, the lady was very helpful, obviously looking after our interests (and the banks). She insisted that we make phone contact with BYD Automotive to confirm the account details that were supplied in the invoice. She explained how scammers were intercepting emails and changing account details while leaving the invoice looking real. So after over half an hour with her, she suggested that we phone the company and confirm the bank account details. We should then phone back and if positive, she would release the money.
The next issue was finding a phone number for BYD Automotive. There was no number associated with the invoice and nothing associated with BYD Indooroopilly. We found a 1300 number and phoned there and were able to confirm the details with the Customer Care lady. All very good but now Lorraine had to get on the phone to the bank and have the money released. That required another one hour wait but we were assured that that had been arranged.
