Dealership employees use my personal vehicle for business/joy ride

[MJP]

Common place or not, it’s not the right thing to do. They have their own vehicles to use for business.

The paper I signed states employees can “operate the vehicle described on streets, highways or elsewhere for the purpose of testing and/or inspection”
These 2 employees did not operate my vehicle to test it or inspection. They voided the agreement I signed.

I am by no means saying it’s acceptable because it’s common I just meant it happens all the time. It’s Complete BS for sure.

 

[Pe2n3d1]

I am by no means saying it’s acceptable because it’s common I just meant it happens all the time. It’s Complete BS for sure.

I don’t mind speaking up because this BS is unacceptable. I wish more people would do the same and stop accepting the wrong things because it’s “common” or “normal”. It becomes normal because people for whatever reason don’t speak up.

 

[airgas1998]

on your side all the way...I'd try to tarnish them any way I could. however who knows maybe they'll come back at you with defamation of character and try to sue you...realistically you're probably limited to negative reviews and never stepping foot in their again...

 

[Pe2n3d1]

on your side all the way...I'd try to tarnish them any way I could. however who knows maybe they'll come back at you with defamation of character and try to sue you...realistically you're probably limited to negative reviews and never stepping foot in their again...

Working on the negative reviews right now!

 

[LM42]

I am going to weigh in with a possibly unpopular stance. And its funny, because I have a Corvette Z06 also and on those forums something similar recently happened. On those forums some were calling for police involvement. Here, people are talking about suing. Are we really that high on ourselves that something this simple calls for absolute maximum response? I just don't get it. Now, full disclosure I am a service advisor for a luxury brand. I have been in the car business for the better part of 20 years. Technicians and or dealer personnel should never operate a clients vehicle outside of the parameters of a necessary pre or post repair test drive. With the Corvette owner the tech actually broke the speed limit, by a lot. He should lose his job. No question. He was also given an extended warranty by the dealer which was super fair. Here, other than being incredibly annoyed by what happened was there any other harm? Now the dealer should still make solid effort to gain the trust back of the client and give them some compensation. Possibly a free detail also, in light of all this Covid stuff. But as far as reviews go, I hate them. I hate them for food, I hate them for hotels, etc. One thing people never keep in mind is that when you slam a business with a Yelp or Google review, and ESPECIALLY with factory service surveys, you may be taking a poop on and greatly affecting an employee who had absolutely nothing to do with what happened. Even reviewing that dealer as a whole entity is wrong here. The owner had nothing to do with what happened, and neither did 99% of the other employees. But if you hammer them with a poop review, you are affecting ALL of them. Just my $.02

 

[Pe2n3d1]

I am going to weigh in with a possibly unpopular stance. And its funny, because I have a Corvette Z06 also and on those forums something similar recently happened. On those forums some were calling for police involvement. Here, people are talking about suing. Are we really that high on ourselves that something this simple calls for absolute maximum response? I just don't get it. Now, full disclosure I am a service advisor for a luxury brand. I have been in the car business for the better part of 20 years. Technicians and or dealer personnel should never operate a clients vehicle outside of the parameters of a necessary pre or post repair test drive. With the Corvette owner the tech actually broke the speed limit, by a lot. He should lose his job. No question. He was also given an extended warranty by the dealer which was super fair. Here, other than being incredibly annoyed by what happened was there any other harm? Now the dealer should still make solid effort to gain the trust back of the client and give them some compensation. Possibly a free detail also, in light of all this Covid stuff. But as far as reviews go, I hate them. I hate them for food, I hate them for hotels, etc. One thing people never keep in mind is that when you slam a business with a Yelp or Google review, and ESPECIALLY with factory service surveys, you may be taking a poop on and greatly affecting an employee who had absolutely nothing to do with what happened. Even reviewing that dealer as a whole entity is wrong here. The owner had nothing to do with what happened, and neither did 99% of the other employees. But if you hammer them with a poop review, you are affecting ALL of them. Just my $.02

You don’t have to get it and you’re entitled to your opinion. That’s another $.02 for my pocket.

 

[duke2001]

Let me change the direction of this thread for just a second. You said you had a problem with a parasitic drain on your battery and the dealer diagnosed and replaced the etorque. I have read a lot of comments on this forum about dash cams causing battery drains if not installed properly. I assume you are aware of this and ruled it out as a possible cause of your battery drain?

 

[Richard320]

I'm with LM42. I really doubt that joyriding is allowed by company policy. Odds are, some porter just got fired for it. The idiot service manager was probably dumbfounded by it, hence the poor response.

Full disclosure: I used to work as a dealer tech. Sometimes you have to take a fairly long drive in order to get the vehicle to run all the monitors to confirm your repair was successful. I have, a time or two, gone through a drive-through on the ride. Eat in the car? Never. Smoke? Never. But if I had to drop someone else off somewhere and I was already going out, why not? But if I didn't have to drive the thing, I wouldn't, because they don't pay as well for diagnosis as they do for an easy-to-quantify mechanical repair. There's no money in test drives nor taking it through the carwash.

The porter (valet) has no business driving the vehicle anywhere but from the service driveway to the work line and from the finished line to the customer pickup area. I suspect he will pay for this mistake.

A horrible review DOES affect everyone, even the innocent. The writeup may have been quick and flawless, the work could be done ahead of schedule and under budget, but the porter moves the seat and changes the radio station and leaves it blasting and everyone gets a zero. And low scores can and do cost people bonuses and even jobs. Not the porter -- he gets his minimum wage no matter what, and there's no record of him on any of the paperwork.

A lawsuit will get settled out of court and only the lawyer will get anything out of it. Don't bother.
But you probably could shake the dealership down for a full detail, and most likely they'd give it priority and kiss your butt the whole time you're waiting.

 

[Pe2n3d1]

Let me change the direction of this thread for just a second. You said you had a problem with a parasitic drain on your battery and the dealer diagnosed and replaced the etorque. I have read a lot of comments on this forum about dash cams causing battery drains if not installed properly. I assume you are aware of this and ruled it out as a possible cause of your battery drain?

Your assumption is right. The dash cam was ruled out and wasn’t the cause. I don’t have the cameras directly plugged into the car battery. I use a separate battery pack (Cell Link Neo) placed under the front passenger seat in order to not put any strain on the car battery. I have the same setup on my wife’s Pacifica and no problems there either with the dash cam/battery. I did want to mention (because I believe I saw this in another post) that the overhead console that controls the panoramic sunroof/shade/etc stopped working when the truck completely died on April 9th. I didn’t discover this until I picked up the truck on April 10th and picked it up from the dealer. It was working flawlessly before that. Anyways, I’m gonna park the truck for a week to see if the Etorque was truly the problem.

 

[Pe2n3d1]

I'm with LM42. I really doubt that joyriding is allowed by company policy. Odds are, some porter just got fired for it. The idiot service manager was probably dumbfounded by it, hence the poor response.

Full disclosure: I used to work as a dealer tech. Sometimes you have to take a fairly long drive in order to get the vehicle to run all the monitors to confirm your repair was successful. I have, a time or two, gone through a drive-through on the ride. Eat in the car? Never. Smoke? Never. But if I had to drop someone else off somewhere and I was already going out, why not? But if I didn't have to drive the thing, I wouldn't, because they don't pay as well for diagnosis as they do for an easy-to-quantify mechanical repair. There's no money in test drives nor taking it through the carwash.

The porter (valet) has no business driving the vehicle anywhere but from the service driveway to the work line and from the finished line to the customer pickup area. I suspect he will pay for this mistake.

A horrible review DOES affect everyone, even the innocent. The writeup may have been quick and flawless, the work could be done ahead of schedule and under budget, but the porter moves the seat and changes the radio station and leaves it blasting and everyone gets a zero. And low scores can and do cost people bonuses and even jobs. Not the porter -- he gets his minimum wage no matter what, and there's no record of him on any of the paperwork.

A lawsuit will get settled out of court and only the lawyer will get anything out of it. Don't bother.
But you probably could shake the dealership down for a full detail, and most likely they'd give it priority and kiss your butt the whole time you're waiting.

I appreciate your feedback and perspective as a dealer tech.

 

[MJP]

I don’t mind speaking up because this BS is unacceptable. I wish more people would do the same and stop accepting the wrong things because it’s “common” or “normal”. It becomes normal because people for whatever reason don’t speak up.


Agreed. Did you speak to the dealership GM? Maybe he/she will give you some other form of compensation. For now unfortunately, your only recourse is negative reviews.

 

[Jack Whitefield]

At 25 seconds, the passenger says, "You saw the man that was on the corner? He's the owner. He was looking at the car." The driver responds, "The white one, this truck? Oh well."

 

[Pe2n3d1]

I’m going to type up an email to the GM tonight when my mind is clear and I get out of work.

 

[Pe2n3d1]

At 25 seconds, the passenger says, "You saw the man that was on the corner? He's the owner. He was looking at the car." The driver responds, "The white one, this truck? Oh well."

Exactly. I have other video clips as well where they admitted to knowing I was waiting for my truck. It’s ridiculous. I literally made eye contact with the passenger and he knew who I was. I was there yesterday for over 4 hours.

 

[LM42]

I’m going to type up an email to the GM tonight when my mind is clear and I get out of work.

Definitely a BS situation, and should not be accepted as normal. But approaching the GM with a clear head but firm stance is the right move. Coming in guns blazing just shuts people down.

 

[Pe2n3d1]

Definitely a BS situation, and should not be accepted as normal. But approaching the GM with a clear head but firm stance is the right move. Coming in guns blazing just shuts people down.

Thanks.

 

[Rick J]

I am going to weigh in with a possibly unpopular stance. And its funny, because I have a Corvette Z06 also and on those forums something similar recently happened. On those forums some were calling for police involvement. Here, people are talking about suing. Are we really that high on ourselves that something this simple calls for absolute maximum response? I just don't get it. Now, full disclosure I am a service advisor for a luxury brand. I have been in the car business for the better part of 20 years. Technicians and or dealer personnel should never operate a clients vehicle outside of the parameters of a necessary pre or post repair test drive. With the Corvette owner the tech actually broke the speed limit, by a lot. He should lose his job. No question. He was also given an extended warranty by the dealer which was super fair. Here, other than being incredibly annoyed by what happened was there any other harm? Now the dealer should still make solid effort to gain the trust back of the client and give them some compensation. Possibly a free detail also, in light of all this Covid stuff. But as far as reviews go, I hate them. I hate them for food, I hate them for hotels, etc. One thing people never keep in mind is that when you slam a business with a Yelp or Google review, and ESPECIALLY with factory service surveys, you may be taking a poop on and greatly affecting an employee who had absolutely nothing to do with what happened. Even reviewing that dealer as a whole entity is wrong here. The owner had nothing to do with what happened, and neither did 99% of the other employees. But if you hammer them with a poop review, you are affecting ALL of them. Just my $.02

With all due respect, I disagree The ones who "pooped" all over the rest of the employees were the ones that took the truck and the service manager for not doing anything about it. What is the OP to do, just ignore the problem. He didn't get any satisfaction out of the service department when he complained other than we'll buy you gas. I didn't read anything about an apology or that they would address it with the employee(s). The impact to the other employees will be lack of business because of the way the service department treats their customers. Would I want to take my truck there, NO. And I would be thankful for being informed about their service practices. JMHO

 

[Pe2n3d1]

With all due respect, I disagree The ones who "pooped" all over the rest of the employees were the ones that took the truck and the service manager for not doing anything about it. What is the OP to do, just ignore the problem. He didn't get any satisfaction out of the service department when he complained other than we'll buy you gas. I didn't read anything about an apology or that they would address it with the employee(s). The impact to the other employees will be lack of business because of the way the service department treats their customers. Would I want to take my truck there, NO. And I would be thankful for being informed about their service practices. JMHO

Thank you.

 

[Gs72174]

The first thing I would do is to write the GM as you are doing. If you don’t get the resolution you’re hoping for, then I’d go online and do a review. I wouldn’t listen to other people saying not to post a review because it will affect the negatively dealership. If the dealership truly cares about their customers, they would welcome both negative and positive reviews. It’s all to improve the business.

 

[Scott_65]

I am going to weigh in with a possibly unpopular stance. And its funny, because I have a Corvette Z06 also and on those forums something similar recently happened. On those forums some were calling for police involvement. Here, people are talking about suing. Are we really that high on ourselves that something this simple calls for absolute maximum response? I just don't get it. Now, full disclosure I am a service advisor for a luxury brand. I have been in the car business for the better part of 20 years. Technicians and or dealer personnel should never operate a clients vehicle outside of the parameters of a necessary pre or post repair test drive. With the Corvette owner the tech actually broke the speed limit, by a lot. He should lose his job. No question. He was also given an extended warranty by the dealer which was super fair. Here, other than being incredibly annoyed by what happened was there any other harm? Now the dealer should still make solid effort to gain the trust back of the client and give them some compensation. Possibly a free detail also, in light of all this Covid stuff. But as far as reviews go, I hate them. I hate them for food, I hate them for hotels, etc. One thing people never keep in mind is that when you slam a business with a Yelp or Google review, and ESPECIALLY with factory service surveys, you may be taking a poop on and greatly affecting an employee who had absolutely nothing to do with what happened. Even reviewing that dealer as a whole entity is wrong here. The owner had nothing to do with what happened, and neither did 99% of the other employees. But if you hammer them with a poop review, you are affecting ALL of them. Just my $.02

Sorry but I have to disagree with you, the owner/GM have everything to do with it as they’re allowing their employees to think this type of behavior is acceptable. Sure the good employee’s get caught in the crossfire with the negative reviews and such but obviously the business as a whole is mismanaged mess with a poor customer satisfaction culture being promoted. Just my .02