A Dealer’s Camera System Helps it Beat Claims of Damage

Image: Bill Pugliano (Getty Images)

With the slimy ways that dealers often do business, it always comes as a surprise when dealers get a win—and one that’s both right and verifiable. For that, you have to give credit where it’s due. In this case, one dealer’s camera system has been used to catch customers lying about the service department damaging their vehicles, Automotive News reports.

Gjovik Ford in Plano, Illinois opened two years ago. Given that the dealer has an 11-acre vehicle lot, owner Todd O’Reilly knew that he would need an excellent security system to cover that kind of space. So, he went with a system from a company called BTI Communications Group. The system is made up of 42 dealer cameras and 28 on the lot. They record in HD and offer numerous angles of view.

What O’Reilly didn’t expect was that the system would not only help with dealer security, it would help when customers claimed his service techs damaged their vehicles. O’Reilly told Automotive News, “You’d be surprised how many people say we’ve scratched their car or dented it, and a lot of times you just don’t want to argue.”

Using the system, O’Reilly says that they can review video to determine if the damage was already on a customer’s vehicle when they arrived at the dealer, or how the damage happened in the unfortunate event that the dealer did cause damage. The system even helps with claims of theft. The dealer has a camera system specifically for big work trucks, which helps when customers claim someone stole something out of their vehicle.

While the $100,000 system is helping the dealer save money—between $3,000-4,000 a month, it’s also helping with dealer revenue because at the end of the day, a dealer is gonna be a dealer. O’Reilly says the camera system helps upsell customers on repairs for the damage they see with the camera system. “Nobody can hide with the camera system,” O’Reilly said.