Volkswagen’s Car-Net reps wouldn’t provide any information until someone paid them $150 to reinstate service
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Months after a terrifying ordeal surrounding an abducted child, a stolen car, and a remote service that wouldn’t help, a family is suing Volkswagen. It alleges that the company was negligent and intentionally inflicted emotional distress on the family. The facts of the case and the resulting reaction from VW don’t paint a rosy picture.
In March, criminals stole a Volkswagen Atlas SUV from Taylor Shepherd. What they evidently didn’t realize at the moment was that they were taking it while her two-year-old son, Isaiah, was still strapped into the back seat. Shepherd had just taken one of her children in the house and was returning for little Isaiah. Despite being pregnant with her third child, she attempted to fight off the criminals but failed.
She called police and authorities then contacted Car-Net, the subscription service provider VW uses to do all sorts of things remotely, including tracking vehicles. The service declined to assist the detective in question because Shepherd had allowed the tracking service to lapse. Not until the detective paid a $150 fee to reinstate the service did the folks at Car-Net help out.
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Thankfully, by then, the criminals had abandoned the child who was unharmed and immediately picked up by a bystander. Now, the family is suing the automaker and Verizon, the parent company of Car-Net, for negligence and intentionally inflicted emotional distress. They tell the Washington Post that VW never contacted them directly about the issue. The details about exactly what the family is seeking are unknown.
In a video posted to YouTube in March, VW’s Senior VP of Customer Experience and Brand Marketing, Rachael Zaluzec, said that the company would extend its complimentary Car-Net service to five years. Of course, it also made sure to include a slew of fine print defining that for some cars the “safe & secure plan does not include anti-theft alerts or stolen vehicle location services.”
Thankfully, Zaluzec reassured VW buyers that it’s working “to ensure a process breach like this never happens again.” It did not however express exactly what that process breach was or how that work would ensure that this doesn’t happen again. In fact, it also didn’t address how it would treat customers who own a Volkswagen product that’s more than five years old. Perhaps we’ll just have to wait for that to happen to find out if it’ll need a cool $150 before it does the right thing.