Dealer Employee Arrested After Taking Customer’s Mercedes to a Bar

Unbreakable Trust

The relationship between a dealer and an owner is special – one that’s built on trust. If the dealer earns the customers’ trust, it also gains their loyalty, ensuring that all service and repair work, as well as future model purchases, remain at the same place.

In the customer’s case, having a trustworthy dealer removes headaches when certain parts or repairs need to be addressed; the customer expects the dealer to return the same level of trust with proper repairs and zero shady business.

However, we can’t always say everything turns out well and good, as incidents put dealerships – particularly Mercedes-Benz of Collierville – in a bad light.

From Customer Car to Dealership Mobile

The incident was reported by WREG, in which a dealership employee used a customer’s personal Mercedes-Benz C-Class to go to a bar. This incident highlights two transgressions by the dealership: taking the car out without the owner’s permission and taking it to a bar. The car was in the dealership after being filled up with bad gas.

Kimberly Porter is the owner, and she said she found out about this through the GPS monitoring systems installed in cars nowadays. It alerted her that her C-class was being brought to a local bar past midnight. It all took place on the evening of January 16. She first received an alert that her car was on the go at 7 pm, then another at 8:30 pm showing the car at a restaurant, and finally the midnight alert showing the car in a bar.

It was after the last alert that Porter decided to take her loaner car to the bar, and that’s when she saw her own car parked in the lot. She called the police, thinking her car had been stolen from the dealership. When the cops arrived, they found Derrick Nguyen’s I.D., who works at the Mercedes-Benz dealership. They soon found Nguyen in the bar and spoke to him. He claims that he had permission to drive the car. It was soon refuted by Porter, who spoke with a dealership service manager who said the opposite.

Plot Twist

Nguyen was immediately arrested at the bar and taken to jail for theft of property. Adding insult to injury was the fact that WREG obtained records that showed Nguyen was intoxicated when he was brought in.

But wait, there’s more – the very next day, Porter was called by the dealership to say her car was ready (after a month of repairs). She says that the dealership was being aggressive and told her that if the loaner car wasn’t returned by 6 pm, they would report it stolen.

Furthermore, Porter claims that she was advised by a dealership executive to drop the case because Nguyen was a good kid. Lastly, the general sales manager said that she signed the repair orders, which allow technicians to drive the car to diagnose problems. Porter is holding strong and continues her civil suit against Nguyen and the dealership.