One Volkswagen dealer in Raleigh is in the process of damage control after service center customers found a racial slur inside one of their completed vehicles. The offensive language was printed on oil change stickers and left after the service. The dealer has since fired an entire cleaning crew that it blames for the message.
The dealer, Leith Volkswagen, says that none of its in-house employees were responsible for the oil change stickers that had the N-word printed on them directly after the message “We Thank You for Your Business!”.
One of the 11 affected customers was Conrad Alston who bought two vehicles from the dealer and spoke with local news station WRAL. “It makes you upset… it makes you angry… Just to see something like that when you’re spending money at a business place, it’s kind of absurd for the day…
“I think somebody should have looked into this and seen it before it happened — seen it before any customer got treated in this manner that day,” Alston said. For its part, the dealership issued an apology on Facebook.
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“On Saturday, February 25, Leith Volkswagen learned that an offensive racial message was printed on Next Service Due stickers placed in customer vehicles that day… We immediately launched an investigation and determined that our third-party cleaning crew had accessed our equipment after-hours on Friday evening and created the offensive message.”
“In the 48 hours since this incident occurred, we have contacted all 11 impacted customers to apologize, we have terminated the third-party cleaning company, we have posted a public apology on our Facebook page, and we have taken internal steps to ensure this cannot happen again. We are deeply sorry that this incident occurred.”
The dealership says that an underage child was responsible for the message. The child evidently accompanied a guardian from the overnight cleaning crew.