Dealership Video-Responds To Customer's Hidden Camera Expose

Mark Hampton has posted a video response to his dealership getting totally snagged by a customer who stashed a hidden camera in his vehicle and caught mechanics doing some dirty deeds.

In the video, Mark, with the air of a man who made several local TV ads, reads a statement of the facts leading up to and following the taping. The statement was signed by the reader, Jason. Mark owns a pen, a pair of glasses, and a ficus. He provides a few new pieces of information: the videos were taped in June 2008, but Jason didn’t send the letter with the videos to Mark until May 2009. Mark then took Jason out to lunch, thanked him for brining the matter to his attention, offered a private apology, and offered a $2000 service contract as restitution. A month later Jason gave the videos to us.

Apparently, Mark’s private offer wasn’t good enough for Jason. He also wanted to get the word out about this dealership to other consumers.

On the one hand, that’s kind of a dick move. On the other, you have to wonder about a dealership that hires three sleazy mechanics and a look the other way service manager. In any event, it took balls to make this video. Though, nota bene, future corporate fuckups, it really should have been out Wednesday at the latest.

UPDATE: Jason sent this email in response to the Hampton video:

Just to clarify, when we met on Memorial Day, the warranty was mentioned, but not solid. This value of $2,000 didn’t come up until the local paper ran their article. I never heard a thing from them from that Memorial Day meeting until the local article ran. I didn’t get that “confirmation” that they were sending the warranty until the day after the article ran. It was just mentioned. The warranty wasn’t mailed by them until July 1st, which I can prove by the actual paperwork.

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