John Parrish of Burlington, NC, is proud of his 2016 Chevrolet Corvette Z06. Factory stock with 650 horsepower and 650 lb-ft of torque, it eats up pavement pretty quickly. In his words, the combination of the white exterior and red interior “just does it for me.”
However, the Corvette developed a minor running problem. Parrish took the car to a nearby dealer, Modern Chevrolet, which had sold him the car. The problem was diagnosed as a bad injector. Parrish left the car with the dealer for about four weeks before the repair was complete. Although that seems like a long time just to replace a fuel injector, slow service turnaround wound up being the least of his concerns.
When he picked up his car, Parrish noticed that the sunglasses he had left in the it were missing. Unable to find them, he assumed someone at the dealership had taken them. He thought if he watched the footage on his dash cam he might be able to identify the culprit. In a story first reported by the CBS-affiliate WFMY in Greensboro, NC, Parrish says he was “startled” to see that two different Modern Chevrolet employees had taken his Corvette on two separate joyrides during its stay at the dealership.
Boss gets dibs
The initial joyride, caught fully on the dash cam, was taken by none other than the shop supervisor. At one point he gets on the gas, in what appears to be second gear, and the rear tires break loose, the rear end wiggles, and the Z06 crosses the centerline before he gets it back in the proper lane. You can hear him in the video, exclaiming, “Oh my God! Whee-ooh! This thing is fast!”
Parrish was quite irritated by the excessive speed and lack of driving skill, speculating that the Z06 exceeded 100 mph in a 45-mile speed zone.
Then, astonishingly, the driver stops to pick up a female passenger. She soon notices the dash cam and points out that it is probably recording everything they do. That at least keeps the speeds low as the driver takes the woman back home and the Corvette back to the shop.
It didn’t, however, keep another dealership employee from taking the Z06 out a couple of weeks later. This joyride was a bit more sedate than the first one, although the speed limit was definitely exceeded and you can hear the driver say, “That’s scary-fast!”
Dealer reaction
Parrish was pretty upset about this and shared it on social media. His fiancée took the dash-cam video to the dealership and complained to the service manager about it. At first, the service manager was “visibly annoyed,” according to Parrish. But he soon said he didn’t have any real issue with how the car had been driven, although he was unhappy with the fact that the first driver picked up a passenger.
The dealership responded to WFMY by stating that they had “investigated all the facts, been in personal contact with the customer, and taken prompt and appropriate corrective action,” adding it would make no further comment on the matter. Parrish was nonplussed. He says the “corrective action” it took was to replace at no charge a part that had been broken during the service work.
What really got Parrish going was when he spoke to a lawyer and learned that if anything bad had happened during these joy rides, his insurance could have been on the hook for the damages.
Not uncommon
No doubt, anyone in this situation would feel violated by the unauthorized use of their car. But a quick internet search will produce many more examples of the same sort. Owners leave their cars at shops for repairs and sometimes shop employees see an opportunity to have some fun with someone else’s expensive car. These joyrides can end with crashes that make the situation far worse than what Parrish experienced.
In fairness to the shops, techs often have to drive the cars to confirm that the repairs have been successful. Speaking from experience, when I take a car into the shop, the worst thing is picking it up and finding that the problem didn’t get fixed, necessitating another appointment. When I drop off the car, I often tell the mechanic to drive it home a couple of times to confirm the problem — and then again to verify the repair. When they test-drive the car, it doesn’t do any good if they just poke along at under 2,500 rpm. I suspect that many of these unauthorized joy rides are actually the mechanics doing their job. But not all, of course.
Little legal recourse
If your shop does take your car for a true joyride, what can you do about it? Other than finding another shop, not much. Parrish’s car was taken for a few full-throttle runs through the gearbox, but there was no damage done. Even if the car was driven much harder than Parrish would drive it, the car is designed to take it. With no actual damage suffered here, there is nothing for the law to compensate.
Parrish was justified in being alarmed when he learned that his insurance policy could have been on the hook had something gone wrong. In the U.S., insurance follows the car. Your policy protects you, other family members, and anyone else who is a permissive user of your car. When you leave your car with a shop, knowing that the shop’s personnel may need to drive the car, they become permissive users and your policy covers them and any damages they may cause.
There is no way around this. You can’t negotiate this with the shop and insist that its insurance cover any mishaps. You can’t deny their employees the benefit of your insurance policy, as they — or an injured third party — can make a claim against your policy without you.
On the bright side, your policy being on the hook does not mean that you are. Your insurance policy is, because of the way it is written. You are not personally liable because you did not do anything wrong.
However, there are ways that you could be held at fault on account of your own negligence. One example would be giving your keys to a visibly intoxicated shop employee. Another would be failing to warn the shop about a dangerous condition with your car. For instance, say you drop it off for an oil-change service and fail to warn the shop that the brakes don’t work. ♦
John Draneas is an attorney in Oregon and has been SCM’s “Legal Files” columnist since 2003. His recently published book The Best of Legal Files can be purchased on our website. John can be contacted at [email protected]. His comments are general in nature and are not intended to substitute for consultation with an attorney.
Had a similar experience years ago with an independent shop I used and liked. I had a 944 Turbo S I used on the street and track. As I approached the shop I noticed the odometer turn 25,000 miles exactly. When I picked it that afternoon it had 25,050 miles. The shop owner was not in that day and there was just one employee. When I told him I noticed the mileage, he became very nervous and offered to not charge me for the work done. I said that wasn’t fair to the owner, paid and left figuring it wouldn’t happen again. I was not going to mention it to the owner but the employee did, without mentioning how many miles he’d driven.
The next time I was in the owner mentioned the incident and said the employee told him had just gone for parts. I said “Fifty miles?” He said “Fifty! He never mentioned that.” He was not happy. Not sure what happened from there but I was pretty sure this would not happen again.