Hey, Jerry! I hear Priority Chevrolet is looking for a sales manager! You’d fit right in!

Maybe the staff and management of Chesapeake, Virginia’s Priority Chevrolet aren’t quite in the vile category of Jerry, William Macy’s car salesman in “Fargo,” but even for a profession seldom mentioned in the same sentence with “ethical,” its alleged conduct in a recent transaction is appalling.

According to a lawsuit, Priority sales manager Wib Davenport sold a 2012 Chevrolet Traverse to Danny Sawyer for about $5,600 less than it was worth. There is a dispute over how this happened, but a contract for the inadvertently discounted sale was presented to the Priority customer and signed, and Sawyer quickly returned with a cashier’s check to cover what he owed the dealership after the various discounts and the trade-in.

After driving off in his new SUV, Sawyer went on vacation. He returned to voicemail full of messages from Davenport, who also authored a letter explaining that the dealership had made a mistake on the contract and had sold the car for the wrong price. He asked Sawyer to return to the dealership and sign a new contract. Right.

Imagine your reaction to that. You escape the clutches of a car dealership, where the manner of determining the price of any car is ever mysterious, and the process is filled with last minute charges and phony “let me talk to my boss” charades, having acquired  a new car and paid a good price for it, and then the dealership asks you to undo the deal because they want more money. It is a classic bait and switch. Sawyer refused, as would I, as would you, as would anyone who wasn’t born yesterday.

The dealership says Sawyer initially agreed but never followed through. Well, that only means, if true, that he agreed and then suddenly hit himself on the forehead with the palm of his hand and said, “Wait…what the heck am I doing?” He had no obligation to return the car, and even if he initially agreed, that agreement isn’t enforceable, since it was entirely gratuitous.

After Sawyer failed to return to the dealership, it continued to bombard him with phone calls, text messages and hand-delivered letters. Either Davenport chose not to take responsibility for his mistake, or the dealership’s management was trying to undo it through harassment. Correctly, Sawyer ignored them. So one of Priority’s other sales managers, Brad Anderson, reported the vehicle as stolen. Police officers arrested Sawyer in his front yard and took him before a judge. He ended up in jail; for four hours. (Admittedly, I can’t understand how it got this far, since Sawyer had a valid contract indicating that he owned the supposedly stolen vehicle. But stranger things happened in “Fargo”….)

Charges were eventually dropped, of course, and now Dennis Ellmer, who manages the entire Priority Auto Group including dealerships in Virginia and North Carolina, is trying to apologize…especially since he’s facing a multi-million dollar lawsuit from Danny Sawyer.  Ellmer admits that his staff sold the SUV to Sawyer for too little and unconscionably tried to force Sawyer to fix the results of their own incompetence. He also admits that it was wrong to falsely accuse Sawyer of grand theft auto when he didn’t cave to his dealership’s pressure tactics.

Bully for him. I haven’t seen any apology for hiring at least two unethical and unscrupulous managers, assuming that Davenport and Anderson are exceptions rather than representative of the level of honesty and responsibility nurtured by the culture of Ellmer’s entire organization, as I suspect.

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Facts: Virginian Pilot

Graphic: Just Comedies

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.