The owner of used car supermarket Carcraft has been fined £91,000 after the company failed to monitor its staff selling £3m of Payment Protection Insurance (PPI).
The Financial Services Authority imposed the fine for Carcraft's failure to ensure that the advice its staff were giving to customers regarding PPI was suitable. The fine would have been £130,000 but the company was given a 30% reduction after agreeing to settle the case early on in the investigation.
Carcraft sold 8,260 PPI policies between April 2007 and September 2008, netting them more than £1.5m in gross income. Carcraft stopped selling PPI in 2010.
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This isn't the first time Carcraft has been in trouble.
Last November the supermarket was criticised by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for its pre- and post-sales service after some drivers found significant problems with their cars shortly after purchase.
The OFT found that the company misled its customers regarding its after-sales guarantee and failed to check cars properly before selling them.
Cavendish Elithorn of the OFT said of the matter:
"Carcraft promised customers that it aimed to help them 'find the perfect car with confidence', but we do not think its practices ensured that it always lived up to expectations or met its legal obligations."
