Kimberly Porter dropped her Mercedes-Benz C300 off for repairs on December 10 at Mercedes-Benz of Collierville, Tennessee. Five weeks later, at 1 a.m. on January 17, her phone lit up with a tracking alert. Her car was moving.
She grabbed the dealership’s loaner and drove to the ping. The C300 was parked at TJ Mulligans, a sports bar in Cordova, Tennessee. Derrick Nguyen, a technician at the dealership, was allegedly inside — on a date, intoxicated, and in possession of Porter’s key fob.
Porter unlocked her car with a spare fob and called the police. When officers arrived, they found identification inside the vehicle belonging to Nguyen. He told them he had permission to drive the car.
A service manager at the dealership told police otherwise. Nguyen was arrested and charged with theft of property valued between $10,000 and $60,000. Officers noted he was intoxicated and refused to answer further questions without a lawyer.
That should have been the end of the dealership’s involvement — an apology, maybe a gesture of goodwill, and a quiet firing. Instead, Mercedes-Benz of Collierville chose a different playbook entirely.
The next day, the dealership called Porter to inform her that her car was ready for pickup. Then came the kicker: return the loaner by 6 p.m., they told her, or they would report it stolen. This, less than 24 hours after their own employee had been hauled away in handcuffs for taking her car on a joyride.
Porter decided to sue.
The dealership’s response was to ask her to drop the criminal charges against Nguyen. According to Porter’s attorney, the technician still works there, and the dealership has defended his actions. That alone would be enough to make any reasonable customer’s blood boil, but management wasn’t finished.
Mercedes-Benz of Collierville posted on Facebook offering free routine maintenance or $2,000 off a vehicle purchase to the first 10 customers who visited the store and showed a copy of a news post about the incident. The dealership was literally trying to turn its own scandal into a promotional event. The post was later deleted, but not before Porter’s lawyer captured it and accused the dealership of marketing off its customer’s misfortune.
A court date is scheduled for April 9 to set a trial date.
The facts here stack up into something uglier than a single rogue employee. A technician allegedly drove a customer’s car — which had been sitting in service for over a month — to a bar while intoxicated. The dealership then threatened the victim, pressured her to protect the accused, and attempted to spin the whole mess into a social media promotion.
That’s not one bad apple. That’s a culture.
Franchise dealerships operate under the manufacturer’s brand. Every sign on the building, every logo on the polo shirt, ties the retail experience back to Stuttgart. Mercedes-Benz corporate has not publicly commented on the Collierville store’s handling of the situation, but the silence has its own weight.
Customers handing over $50,000 vehicles for service trust that the three-pointed star means something. In Collierville, it apparently means your C300 might end up at a sports bar while you sleep.
Porter did everything right. She tracked her car, called the police, and lawyered up. The dealership did everything wrong, then doubled down, then tripled down. If there’s a case study in how not to handle a crisis, Mercedes-Benz of Collierville just wrote it in real time.
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