Texas Plumber Sues Car Dealer After His Truck Ends Up In Videos of Syria's Front Lines (mashable.com)

New submitter hydrodog writes: A Texas plumber traded in his truck, which ended up in ISIS videos showing his logo and phone number. Now he is getting hundreds of harassing phone calls for 'supporting ISIS' and is suing the dealership for not taking off his information before selling it. He is seeking more than $1 million in damages. According to Mashable: "According to the complaint, filed last week, a salesman at the dealership, Edgar Vasquez, told Oberholtzer 'not to worry about the decal,' saying that peeling it off would 'blemish the vehicle paint.' 'At no time did Vasquez or any other agent, servant, or employee of the Defendant tell Plaintiff that Defendant would leave the decals on the truck, which would be transferred in some fashion to international jihadists conducting warfare upon innocents in Syria,' reads the complaint.

Comments

BRB

[sexconker]

Applying Hillary Clinton logos and decals to my car and trading it in.
BRB.

Toyota has always had this problem

[siphonophore]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/66d1d3ec-2f19-11e0-88ec-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3uLdcGolO

FTFA:
In a statement...Toyota added: “It is not our proudest piece of product placement. But it shows the Taliban are looking for the same qualities as any other truck buyer: quality and durability.”

That's a bold pivot to a positive message. Maybe the plumber can lean in and tell customers if he can put up with ISIS's shit, he can put up with theirs.

Re:Toyota has always had this problem

[ColdWetDog]

1. Buy a number of used Toyota trucks
2. Paint the logo of your worst competitor on them
3. Ship them to the Middle East
4. Profit !

Truck traded in USA ends up in Syria how?

[snowsnoot]

A better question is how the hell this vehicle somehow ended up being shipped to the middle east where it could be sold to ISIS?

Re:Truck traded in USA ends up in Syria how?

[Sowelu]

Money can be exchanged for goods and services.

Re:Truck traded in USA ends up in Syria how?

[Solandri]

Shipping stuff out of the U.S. by cargo container is dirt cheap, especially in a country like the U.S. which has a trade deficit. More containers of stuff come into the country than go out, so many of those containers have to shipped out empty at the expense of the shipping company. They are desperate to put anything into those containers to recoup at least some of their expenses. Consequently, the cost to ship something overseas out of the U.S. is about the same as what it costs to ship it from the middle of the U.S. to the coast.

I guess my question is answered

[Applehu Akbar]

Whenever I see another one of those Daesh videos, I have always wondered where that rogue Toyota dealership is so we can wipe it out. Who know that it was in Texas?

Re: In the US

[guruevi]

If you have a somewhat successful business where you can afford trucks and employees, you could easily rake in 1M or more in a year. If your business goes bust or you have to invest into a media campaign or change your phone numbers or even a major decline in customers due to someone else's major fuck-up (if not plain illegal actions, trading with those nations in the US is strictly forbidden), 1M is not too little to ask.

Toyota is good for jihad

[Anonymous Coward]

In 1997, Robert Fisk interviewed Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Afghanistan, as described in his book The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East. But first, he had to get there.

...we set off up the track that Osama bin Laden built during his jihad against the Russian army in the early 1980s, a terrifying, slithering, two-hour odyssey along fearful ravines in rain and sleet, the windscreen misting as we climbed the cold mountain....

The road grew worse as we continued, the 4×4 skidding backwards towards sheer cliffs, the headlights playing across the chasms on either side. "Toyota is good for jihad," my driver said. I could only agree, noting that this was one advertising slogan the Toyota company would probably forgo.

Re:In the US

[Oligonicella]

It's not ridiculously high. The man and his business's reputation cannot be restored to its former state and other than suffering a monetary slam, the dealer can do nothing to help with that.

Re: In the US

[devilspgd]

How about the legitimate customers who were afraid to use his business because of what their neighbours might think? It takes a lot less than "Oh, is that the ISIS guy?" to kill a business in small town America. And what about the customers who tried to get through, but due to the hundreds of crank calls, couldn't get through and switched to another plumber, thereby losing current and future business?

Most small non-internet businesses are basically out of business without usable phones, and if this business is anything like my plumber, his number is stickered to every single piece of major work his company has done since 1984, and changing his number would undo all of that marketing effort. I'm certain I'm not the only one that calls the company that did the installation when I need service, at least if I'm happy with the original work -- Even if it's not a warranty issue, I know they deal with all of the brands of equipment installed, and they aren't going to claim the original installation was defective and charge me an arm and a leg fixing made-up issues with the original installation either.

$1M isn't much actual damages for current and future business, and some punitive damages would seem to be in order if the dealership failed to remove the logo as contracted, if that was part of the arrangement (which, admittedly, will likely be difficult to prove)