'The Only Thing We Did Was Borrow Two Injectors' Former Kia Service Manager Used Parts From Customer Car To Fix Somebody Else's

We get it, times are tough for many businesses. But taking parts from a customer's car to fix another's is probably taking resourceful frugality a bit too far. A service manager at Kia of Lake Charles in Louisiana found themselves out of a job last week after doing just that.

Shirley Poullard, the owner of a first-generation Kia Telluride, took her car into the Louisiana dealership for repairs after a tire blew out, according to KPLC. After the car apparently sat for over a month with "little communication," she decided to go check on it. Poullard then started recording video after she discovered her SUV with the hood up and engine "taken apart," not typically things required after a blown tire. After some initial denial, the service manager eventually admitted on camera that parts were taken from Poullard's Telluride to fix another customer's car.

"The only thing we did was borrow two [fuel] injectors... We replaced them for free," someone can be heard saying in the clip. After the video went viral among the Lake Charles community (and then across social media broadly), the dealership launched an internal review, and the service manager in question was terminated. For what it's worth, a quick internet query says a Telluride fuel injector costs about $421.

A statement pops up the second you land on the dealership's website reads:

We want to address the recent incident involving a member of our Service Department and a customer. We took your feedback seriously and immediately began an internal review. Following that review, the Service Manager is no longer employed with our company. Our team is held to a high standard of customer care, professionalism, respect, and honesty. Every customer deserves to be treated with dignity, and we sincerely apologize to the customer involved.

"Taking something without permission is stealing," Poullard told KPLC. "Which is what y'all were doing is stealing. Because had I not come up there, I wouldn't have known. Y'all would have just threw my car back together and expected me to drive it. And later down the line when something went wrong, I would've been the person they tried to say was at fault."

We won't comment on Poullard's speculative claims as to what Kia of Lake Charles would or wouldn't have been willing to do if something went wrong with her car in the future. What we can reasonably say is that, deservedly or not, car dealerships in general don't exactly rank at the top in terms of consumer trust, and stories like this only exacerbate the image.

In any case, Poullard is currently reunited with her Telluride but says she feels "uneasy" behind the wheel. She's also apparently in the process of looking for a lawyer, and you know what? Good for her.