Did The Dealership Damage Your Car? Here's What You Should Do Next

Let's paint two scenarios. You've just bought a car and are excited to get behind the wheel and drive it home after the dealership finishes detailing it and giving it a full tank of gas. On the drive back to the front of the showroom, your brand new car clips a dumpster in the parking lot, leaving a nasty scrape. Or, you take your car to the dealership for a fresh set of tires, and it comes back with a hefty chunk of metal taken out of the face of your meticulously maintained wheels. Either scenario, the dealership has damaged your car. What are your next steps? 

Well, I have worked at a dealership, and I have damaged a customer's car. Here's what happened. While navigating a very narrow parking lot, I scraped the side of a customer's new Chevy Traverse High Country. I was honest with my manager and the customer, who was, justifiably, upset. Since it was clearly my fault, my manager and I worked with the customer to fix the scrape for free and compensate the customer for their lost time. Fortunately, the customer was very understanding, and everyone went home happy. Accidents happen, and it behooves everyone to keep a cool head.

However, we have all heard horror stories and know that a fortuitous ending like my customer experienced is not always how it pans out. Here are a few steps you can take before and after you interact with a dealership. First, take many detailed photos of your car either right as you buy it, or right before you take it to the dealer for service. That way, you can document the condition of the car. That's easy for anyone to do. If, worst case scenario, the dealership isn't honest and you know it damaged your car, and managers and the service department aren't budging, you have a few steps of recourse before getting lawyers involved.

As petty as it may sound, leave a bad review of the dealership online. Avoid hyperbole, stick to the facts, and be specific. Dealerships thrive on reputation, and a bad review speaks very loudly. The dealership might be forced to help you out and fix your car to avoid a bad reputation. You can also file a complaint with your state's consumer protection division. The law doesn't take kindly to shady dealerships, and even the fact that the complaint was filed could scare the dealership into doing the right thing.

Lastly, and most annoyingly, get a lawyer. Although I am not authorized to hand out legal advice, sometimes simply getting the legal machine's wheels turning is enough to get the desired outcome of fixing your car. It might be the nuclear option and, in my experience, it's pretty rare that a proper dealership doesn't make things right. But sometimes a lawsuit (or even the threat of a lawsuit) is what is needed.