Milton, Ontario — Taking a customers’ vehicle home or out for a test drive is not out of the norm for auto technicians in order for them to assess issues within a vehicle. However, a 90 kilometre trip, late at night, traveling at speeds up to 148 kilometres per hour could be cause for concern.
Frank Statti took his 2018 Nissan Altima to a dealership for repair in March, according to Global News.
While the vehicle was being repaired, Statti said he checked his insurance company’s monitoring app one night and saw that his vehicle was far from the dealership, where he had dropped it off.
“My initial thought was maybe someone stole the thing,” he told Global News.
Statti had switched insurance providers and had decided to install a transponder that monitors his driving habits. He said he had even mentioned the monitoring app to the service advisor when he dropped off the car at Milton Nissan, the dealership where he purchased the car.
Statti said he was confused as to why his car was 90 kilometres from the dealership that evening. The tracking data showed his vehicle was driven above the speed limit for nearly all of its trip to Woodstock, Ont.
“It was driving at crazy speeds… up to 148 kilometres per hour,” Statti said. Adding there were several episodes of hard braking, he added.
Global News reviewed the tracking data provided by Statti’s app. It showed that the vehicle reached up to 148 km/h and was above the 100 km/h speed limit for most of the trip on the highway.
At first he assumed the vehicle was stolen and contacted the police, Statti said.
Later that night, it was revealed that Statti’s vehicle was being driven by a Milton Nissan technician.
“We had permission to take the vehicle home. We informed it was out of town and there are three witnesses to that,” Tim Hoogaars, the dealership’s operating partner, told Global News.
Hoogaars explained that it is very normal for auto repairers to take their customer’s vehicles home to look into issues.
“Sometimes if we can’t diagnose a vehicle, we will ask a consumer, ‘May we drive the vehicle home to see if we can diagnose it overnight?’ That is not uncommon in the automotive industry if you’re struggling to try to diagnose it,” Hoogaars said.
“Should we have got it in writing? Clearly yes, but we’ve never had an incident before where it’s been an issue.”
Statti told Global News he agreed to leave his vehicle there overnight, but did not give the dealership permission to take the vehicle out of town, late at night in order to assess the rear camera.
Another upsetting part of this experience for Statti was that the car was speeding and the data will be seen by his insurance provider.
He says he did not receive an apology from the dealership, and was asked to leave by the service manager when he came to talk about the event.
“He kicked me out of the office. He said he was going to call the police. He said I was tracking his employee illegally,” he said.
Statti also noted that the dealership also had not replaced the fuel consumed during the late night adventure.
Global News contacted Nissan Canada about the incident and the manufacturer said Statti’s car was “not used for personal travel” by the dealership’s employee.
Even two months after the ordeal, Statti’s backup camera is still not working properly, according to Global News.
However, Nissan Canada told Global News it is planning to have the vehicle’s camera checked at another dealership.
