Winning the Battle and Losing the War

Just over 4 years ago, I wrote an article about how much damage an irate customer can do in the digital age: Unhappy Car Buyer Gets 110,000 Views on YouTube.

In a nutshell, the customer’s initial complaint was that the car he purchased had problems and he wanted his money back, but a good portion of the disparaging video he produced dealt with how the customer was saddled with what he felt was an unfair arbitration agreement by the dealer. The customer wanted to have the case heard in court and the dealer wanted to have an arbitrator decide the case.

This case has been going on for over 7 years and it appears that it's finally been resolved. The dealer was able keep the case out of court and with an arbitrator (they won that battle). But - the arbitrator ruled against the dealer and awarded the customer $10,393 plus legal fees of $324,724. Ouch!

As if that's not bad enough, the YouTube video trashing the dealer now has over 1.3 MILLION views!

By the way, this battle was over a used car that sold for roughly $9,000...

The obvious question seems to be: was it worth it?

How does your dealership handle customer complaints???