Toppers Plus Inc

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2015/09/03) */
The customer had an appointment on Saturday 8/22/15 to have a bug shield and nerf bars installed on his 2015 Chev 1500. He dropped off his truck at 9:39pm Friday evening out front of our building and put the keys in the drop box. It was dark...

at that point and he was aware that we were not open for business. His truck sat outside unattended until we opened at 9am on Saturday morning. At 9:22am, our service tech brought the truck into our shop. The truck was very dirty at that point. The tech noted that there was a lot of bugs on the hood of the vehicle that he had to remove to install the bug shield. We have cameras that show the vehicle the entire time it was here at our facility. There are breaks in the feed during the night, not during the daytime hours when we were in possession of the vehicle. When there is no movement, our cameras do not record. The only times that there were breaks in the footage were during the night and when the truck was outside.
Saturday after he picked up his truck and left, he did return about 5 minutes after leaving. He talked with our salesperson and told him about the scratch. The customer and our salesperson viewed the footage for a while and didn't notice anything obvious. The customer was told that we would review the footage and if we did put a scratch in his truck, we would fix it. On Monday, our general manager went thru the footage and didn't find any time when we came into contact with that spot on the truck. There is a large scratch in the hood up by the windshield wiper on the driver's side. While watching all the video footage, it was determined by us that we never came within approx. 2 feet of that spot.
Monday I called the customer and told him that we did not find any evidence that we caused the scratch and that we therefore would not pay for damages to his truck. He later came into my office on Monday and demanded that we fix his truck, or in his words he would bad mouth us to all of his friends. He also flashed his work badge and kept telling us that he worked for the state. We took this as more of a threat. In our eyes, he was using his position as a state employee to bully us into fixing his truck. He works at the Minnesota Security Hospital in St. Peter and reviews footage for a living. When I asked him to review the footage with me, he kept getting up and refused to watch it.
We have surveillance for the entire time the truck was in our care and we did not find anything to suggest that we caused the scratch in his hood. Therefore we will not pay for damages that we did not cause. The truck was very dirty and was covered in bugs when it was dropped off in the dark, it is reasonable to assume that the damage occurred in his possession.