In July 2024, consumer Ms. Wan negotiated an electric vehicle rental deal with an employee from a repair station via WeChat. The employee explicitly promised: "The car can be rented starting from four months, and if you rent it for ten months, it will be yours for free—the vehicle will be yours." Lured by this "free car" promise, Ms. Wan signed a "Lease Agreement" with the repair station through the platform that same day. Following the employee's instructions, she also separately signed a battery rental agreement with a third-party company.
Over the following ten months, Ms. Wan fulfilled her contractual obligations by promptly and fully paying the rental fees of 3,000 yuan for the frame and 3,069 yuan for the battery as agreed. However, upon the lease expiration, when Ms. Wan went to the repair station to claim the promised benefit, she was informed that "free delivery" only applied to the frame, while the battery would still require continued rental or separate purchase.
Ms. Wan believed that the behavior of the repair station constituted fraud and filed a lawsuit with the Yanfeng District People's Court in Hengyang City, Hunan Province, demanding that the repair station compensate three times the battery related fees, return the additional 300 yuan collected, and compensate for mental damages.
After the court's trial, it was found that the defendant's maintenance station employee's promise of "renting for ten months and delivering the car" before the contract was the key reason that prompted the plaintiff to enter into the contract, and this promise has legal binding force on the defendant. According to daily understanding and trading habits, "delivering a car" should refer to delivering a complete electric vehicle that can be used normally, and the battery, as the core component, should be included. The defendant, knowing that the battery needs to be leased separately and that this arrangement clearly conflicts with the promise of "delivering the car", failed to fulfill the obligation of fully reminding and clearly explaining to consumers, which is a clear fault, resulting in the plaintiff's inability to achieve the purpose of the contract. Based on this, the court ruled that the defendant shall deliver a complete and usable electric vehicle (including battery) to the plaintiff. If unable to deliver, the defendant shall pay an equivalent amount of 3500 yuan for the battery and return the unfounded charge of 300 yuan.
After the first instance verdict, both parties appealed, and the second instance court upheld the original verdict.
The contract integrity is more important than Taishan, and the standard terms cannot be "signed". This case clarifies that verbal promises made by operators are legally binding. In the consumer field, verbal promises made by operators to facilitate transactions are an important basis for consumers to form reasonable trust and conduct transactions based on them. Even if they are not written into a written contract, they cannot be arbitrarily reneged on or have negative effects. When there is a clear contradiction between verbal commitments and standard contract agreements, the operator has a higher obligation to prompt, explain, and clarify, and shall not evade their responsibilities on the grounds that the standard terms are not agreed upon.
The judge hereby reminds that when facing new consumption models such as "renting and purchasing on behalf of others", consumers must carefully check the terms of the contract, and try to retain evidence such as chat records and recordings of verbal promises made to the merchant, or request that they be written into a written contract. Business operators should adhere to the bottom line of honest operation, comprehensively, truthfully, and accurately disclose important transaction information related to consumer core interests, eliminate vague propaganda and post buck passing, and create a safe, reassuring, and fair consumption environment.
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