We often criticize the advanced tech that surrounds our lives these days, from our addictions to social media to the rise of AI, but sometimes tech is our friend. For instance, one woman’s Mazda app was the only way she could’ve found out about the weird adventure her car went on one night.
“I think my car got stolen last night?” TikTok user Paige began her video, with unusual uncertainty for someone who’s the victim of vehicular theft. She goes on to explain that this is because she currently doesn’t have her car with her as it’s at the dealership for service. However, her app notified her that her car’s doors were open. Bear in mind that this was at 9:30pm, so after the dealership was closed.
Things only weirder from there. Thanks to the app, Paige was also able to see that her gas tank was practically 20% emptier than it had been when she’d handed the car in. The reason, as the app’s GPS tracking revealed, was because the car was no longer at the dealership but was actually parked 30 miles away at a personal address.
Paige’s car wasn’t stolen in the traditional sense, then, as by the next morning it was back at the dealership, but clearly some Mazda employee had taken it home themselves overnight. With Paige’s original video going viral, racking up 2.8 million views at the time of writing, this kickstarted an epic saga — titled “Who the F stole my car?” — in which Paige fought to get to the bottom of the Mazda mystery.
First of all, upon complaining about her car being taken off-site the next day, Paige was informed that this was a completely normal practice as sometimes they need to give it a test drive. This made no sense in Paige’s case, however. The car — which she had only bought 10 days prior — had a crack in the windshield and an error with its blindspot monitoring sensor, so nothing that required them to check its driving capabilities.
Paige’s frustrations only grew when she was repeatedly passed around and ignored when requesting to speak with the general manager. The highest she could get up the food chain was the service department manager, who informed her that the car needed to be driven home as a test because there was a problem with the check engine light. Paige knew there was no such problem with her car and got the distinct impression that this manager was assuming that as a woman she wouldn’t know much about cars and he would be able to talk her around.
“My ex-girlfriend was a narcissist and even she didn’t gaslight me as much as this Mazda dealership is,” Paige hilariously summarized.
Somehow, like Palpatine, the negligence returned the following night when the dealership left her car unlocked — with the keys inside — overnight. At this point, TikTok was furious on Paige’s behalf and was strongly encouraging her to lawyer up and sue Mazda. Unfortunately, one more follow-up from Paige the next morning turned the mood around. Paige informed viewers that she had spoken briefly with Mazda corporate and was not looking to cause a blow-up or get anyone fired.
Suddenly, Paige found herself becoming the villain of the story, not the hero. “I sense a complete 180 or even 360! Sketchy,” wrote one comment. “Why am I detecting a change of attitude here?” another interrogated. “Mazda had her sign an NDA,” someone speculated.
In her next follow-up, Paige hit back at her critics, explaining that no, Mazda had not forced her to sign anything or paid her hush-money, but that she resented TikTok’s insistence that she become a kind of “de-facto savior” for everyone screwed over by car dealerships. Likewise, she stressed that the same week this all happened also saw her lose her job, so she was in no place financially to hire a lawyer to help her.
The last update Paige posted saw her share Mazda’s paperwork on her car servicing which claims that she had told them the check engine light was on, which she knows she did not say, suggesting the documentation has been back-dated and the dealership is trying to cover itself.
Sadly, Paige is far from the only person whose car has been taken for a joyride by their dealership. As one alarming story shared in the comments reads: “I found my car at a Target before. I started taking pictures when a guy approached me. He smirked and said you like the car, huh! I said, of course… it’s my car!!! He then fumbled on his words and said he was doing a road worthy test on it to see if they fixed the problem.”
Employees of other dealerships and insurance agents also joined the conversation to say this is “definitely not common practice” and that she should “report to Mazda and also to the police ASAP!!”
Whether Paige ever gets to the bottom of what her dealership was trying to pull here or not, what her viral story has revealed is that many people have suffered similar experiences, but what’s changed recently is that we’re now able to track our cars better and so can catch them in the act. So that would be one upside of the tech apocalypse, I guess: more reliable car servicing.