BANGKOK (AP) — A Thai court has ordered Ford Motor Co. to pay 291 customers a total of about $720,000 in compensation for selling cars equipped with faulty transmissions.

The Bangkok South Civil Court's decision was welcomed Friday as a victory in a country where consumers rarely win redress.

Most of the plaintiffs in the class action suit will get payments of $800 to $8,000 each depending on the number of times and length of time their cars took to be repaired. But 12 plaintiffs were denied compensation because their cars were modified before they were repaired.

Earlier, Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford's Australian subsidiary was fined 10 million Australian dollars ($7.6 million) for mishandling complaints about faulty transmissions in thousands of cars.

Faulty transmissions also have been targeted by consumer legal action in the U.S. and Canada.