An Irish Times Motors reader was the first to raise the issue, when he wrote to the paper recounting that Mercedes-Benz UK had declined to sell him a car because he was from Ireland. Apparently, the distributor is no longer allowing their nine group-owned Retail Used Cars outlets to sell new or used cars to foreign markets.
When the reader asked why he could not buy a car from them, he was told that it is due to a new policy being operated by M-B UK halting sales for export to countries outside of the United Kingdom.
A Mercedes-Benz UK spokesman said that the policy was compliant with all rules and EU regulations on the sale of cars.
He is quoted as saying: "The company will not sell a used car when it is known it's going to be bought for export. This is a group decision and so would apply across all Mercedes-Benz Retail Group used car centres, which are all owned by the same company."
A Competition Authority spokeswoman in Ireland said: "In principle if Mercedes-Benz UK has decided not to allow its authorised distributors to sell into Ireland, this could be a breach of European competition rules."
Nonetheless, she also remarked that "agreements of this sort would have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis, in their economic context".
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