Raleigh car dealership cuts ties with cleaning crew after racial slur printed on oil change reminder stickers

By Aaron Thomas

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    RALEIGH, North Carolina (WRAL) — A Raleigh car dealership is apologizing after racial slurs were printed on oil change stickers placed on customers’ vehicles. Leith Volkswagen of Raleigh says it’s now cut ties with a third-party cleaning crew it blames for tampering with Leith’s label making machines after-hours.

Leith Volkswagen says an investigation determined none of its employees were responsible for the N word printed on the oil change reminder stickers usually found on the windshield.

WRAL News spoke with Conrad Alston, one of the 11 customers impacted. Alston said it was triggering to receive this from a place he consistently does business.

“It makes you upset,” Alston said. “It makes you angry.”

Alston learned about the racially insensitive message after his girlfriend picked up his 2017 Volkswagen Passat over the weekend from Leith Volkswagen of Raleigh. The car was due for an oil change, Alston said. The car is the second that Alston has purchased from the dealership.

“Just to see something like that when you’re spending money at a business place, it’s kind of absurd for the day,” Alston said.

Alston’s girlfriend shared what happened on Facebook. Her post has gotten 716 shares as of Monday night. It includes comments from users in disbelief.

WRAL News spoke off camera on Monday night with the Leith Volkswagen of Raleigh general manager and a sales rep.

Leith Volkswagen of Raleigh issued the following statement about the incident:

“On Saturday, February 25, Leith Volkswagen learned that an offensive racial message was printed on Next Service Due stickers placed in customer vehicles that day,” the dealership wrote. “We immediately launched an investigation and determined that our third-party cleaning crew had accessed our equipment after-hours on Friday evening and created the offensive message.

“In the 48 hours since this incident occurred, we have contacted all 11 impacted customers to apologize, we have terminated the third-party cleaning company, we have posted a public apology on our Facebook page, and we have taken internal steps to ensure this cannot happen again. We are deeply sorry that this incident occurred.”

Leith has since terminated its agreement with the cleaning company and taken action to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Leith told WRAL News, it was one of the cleaning employee’s underage children who came to work with them – who was responsible.

On Sunday, Leith Volkswagen of Raleigh posted a public apology on Facebook.

“Leith Volkswagen deeply regrets and apologizes for a racially insensitive message that was printed on a service reminder card for customers that picked up their vehicles on Saturday, February 25th,” the apology reads in part. “When this was brought to our attention, we immediately launched an investigation and determined that our LabelMaker was inappropriately accessed after business hours on Friday evening, February 24th, by a non-employee and programmed with a highly inappropriate message …

“We deeply regret this unfortunate situation occurred and we are taking the necessary steps to ensure that this does not happen again.”

Alston said he’s still unsure if he will take his car back to the dealership for business. “I think somebody should have looked into this and seen it before it happened, seen it before any customer got treated in this manner that day,” Alston said.

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