"This is theft" St. Gallen garage owner uses Jaguar for private trips - customer irritated

A Jaguar owner from St. Gallen discovered via the manufacturer's app that his car was being used privately during the service. Emil Frey explains why the vehicle covered 75 kilometers.

Anyone who has a car needs to have maintenance work done from time to time. Most people go to their trusted garage and have the car serviced. This was the case for a Jaguar owner from the canton of St. Gallen. He took his Jaguar to Emil Frey, and while his car was there for servicing, it was allegedly used by an employee for a drive home, as the owner told blue News.

"I took the car to the garage. I only ever have problems with the car, but this time I just wanted to take it in for a service," says the Jaguar owner. He has been driving the car for years and always goes to the same garage.

"This is customer theft"

But the peace did not last long. He used the manufacturer's app, which records all of the vehicle's movements, to check the location of his car - and was amazed: "I saw that my car was on its way from St. Gallen to Rheineck. It drove through various municipalities in the canton and even stopped at a store until it stopped in one place after another. The next morning it was back in the garage in St. Gallen."

For the owner, the case is clear: "This is customer theft." When he asked the garage why his car had covered almost 75 kilometers, he was told that this was normal. In addition, the employee had no other car available at the time and had to go shopping for something private.

Although they came to an agreement after the incident, he did not receive any financial compensation. "They only accommodated me a little," he says.

The fact that he discovered the private trips via the app was crucial: "If I hadn't seen it, it would never have been reported to me. The garage itself had no idea about the private journey."

Emil Frey has an explanation

Peter Hug is Director Corporate Services at Emil Frey. When asked by blue News, he says: "Generally speaking, we would like to say: It is absolutely standard in the industry and not uncommon for a customer vehicle to be taken home by the responsible diagnostician or workshop manager for extended test drives in the evening."

Such drives are important in order to have realistic everyday conditions over longer distances, especially for more complex fault diagnoses. He continues: "These journeys must be communicated to the customer. We can rule out with absolute certainty that our specialists use customer vehicles privately."

blue News recently reported on a similar incident.