How do you deal with an irate customer who believes you've been negligent?

by Jack
(Chile)

I run a retail tire dealership. Recently, I've had the husband of a customer, make a thinly disguised threat to sue me, or cause a public scandal, if I didn't compensate him for the fact that a wheel came off of the vehicle his wife had brought to our shop to install new tires which she had purchased somewhere else.

The facts are: The tires were new, but purchased elsewhere. The vehicle was left the shop at 5 in the afternoon and made a trip to the owners home, about 6 km distance over a rough gravel road. It returned to town the next day and on the second trip back to the home apparently lost it's wheel. We received a phone call from a friend to advise us of the problem and he insisted on driving one of our employees to the site to resolve the problem. When the employee arrived at the site of the vehicle without the wheel, he proceeded to replace the wheel using one nut from each of the other wheels to temporarily secure the other wheel and he drove the vehicle back to the shop to finalize the work. There was no damage to the vehicle and no one suffered any injuries. The friend, who had driven the employee to the site, took photos of the entire process beginning as soon as they arrived at the vehicle. We also learned later, that this friend was the person who had sold the tires to the lady.

At our expense we replaced all the lost wheel nuts, and took the vehicle to a mechanic chosen by the lady to determine whether there had been any damages to the vehicle. He determined that there was no damage, but commented that the studs which held the wheels were too short for the wheels (which were not original equipment) and advised the lady to change them.

At this stage the lady, went on her way.

I believe that because of the distance and type of road on which the vehicle traveled and the fact that the wheel lugs did not have as much length to hold the wheels as would have been the case if standard wheels were used that this accident might not have been due to negligence on our part. However, the husband, is threatening to "take legal measures" if I don't pay several thousand dollars in compensation.

How would you deal with this situation?

Answer
Date: July 13th, 2008.

Jack, I'd never do something out of fear. It's one thing to say "I sue you", a second to actually follow through.

You are probably more looking for legal advice, not service advice, but I'll give it a go anyway. Just take into account that I'm not a lawyer.

There is some kind of causal effect. The wheel came of. Was it because your firm wasn't careful enough when re-attaching the wheels (is that the correct term? I'm not a garage man)? Could be.

But more likely is that selecting the wrong set of wheels for that type of car is the real reason for the wheel to come of. So, from where I stand, the friend that sold the wheels is liable, not you.

But justice isn't always pointing to the right place, so sometimes you choose to fight, and sometimes you just cave. But to me this doesn't look like you need to cave.

Again, I'm not a lawyer.

From a service point of view I think it's clear that the safety of your customers must be on your mind. Hence my question: when you attached the wheels, was it clear (or could you have known) that the wheels were wrong for that car? Then, for the safety of your customer, you would have to refuse to do the job.

Now you know why. If anything happens, people often just go one click deep, looking to blame.

Please let us know how this ended? Thanks.

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How do you deal with an irate customer who believes you've been negligent?

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Jul 14, 2008

Resolution of Complaint
by: Jack

I agreed to meet with the husband to hear him out.

Prior to meeting him, I learned that he had a reputation in the town of being a conflictive, difficult person and also that he had previously tried to sue a reporter for broadcasting a video that he had provided her when she interviewed him about an animal shelter which he ran. The film was not "his" but he still wanted extensive compensation for it having been broadcast. The case was thrown out of court and the Cable company was contemplating a counter-suit against him.

This cast a very distinct light on his character to me.

I would have been prepared to give him a token compensation and even paid a monetary penalty to some charity or cause in which he had no personal involvement, but at the meeting he skirted around the question of how we could solve this until he finally -- flatly stated he wanted several thousand dollars.

I simply thanked him for meeting with me, got up an bid him good day and walked out of the meeting.

Almost a year has passed by, I've never heard from the person again and there have been no letters to the editor, or any other type of negative publicity anywhere.

The man, it seems, was an opportunist, hoping to take advantage of a situation.

Internally, we did a complete review and revision of our inspection and delivery procedures to insure that the possibility of this kind of event would not occur again, and formulated a policy of refusing to work on "non-standard" equipment (such as wheels which were not correctly matched to a vehicle), without a customer signing a release that accepted the potential risk that was not within our control.

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