The days of "no comment" are over

For one Alberta car dealership that lesson came to the forefront after a late news story snowballed into a full blown public relations melee. 

Let’s get into it

In October 2025 Edmonton resident Ashutosh Pathak bought a used pickup from Ponoka’s Summit Ram dealership. Unbeknownst to Pathak, and to the dealership, the truck was stolen. The VIN number was duplicated from a legitimate vehicle and reallocated to the ‘hot’ truck.  

For the full story, read it at this link. Basically, it’s been a whirlwind of problems and challenges for the family who were out of a vehicle due to the chain of ownership, personal insurance left unable to respond and delays in finding a resolution with the dealership.

When asked for comment on the matter, Kaizen chose not to make a statement, which created fuel for the fire. This is what the newspaper wrote:

“Global News asked Kaizen Auto Group for an interview but they didn’t respond.”

Unintentionally, Kaizen’s lack of response reframed this into a “David versus Goliath” scenario rather than providing an accurate scope of the situation from their perspective. Maybe the company hoped the issue would just go away, or that the customer would find their own resolution. Whatever they thought might happen, certainly they didn’t consider the gravity of the eventual outcome — public interest coupled with rapid-fire sharing and commenting online catapulted the situation into a communications crisis that affected their reputation. 

Before we discuss the communications side, let’s first give you a timeline of events. 

March 12 - The Trigger

1. 10:30 p.m.

   1. Global News publishes a story about how an Alberta family bought a used vehicle from a Ponoka, Alberta dealership that turned out to have been stolen, with its vehicle ID number swapped

   2. The story points out that once the original owner’s insurance company figured it out, they wanted the truck back, which RCMP seized

March 13 - Public Awareness and Escalation 

1. 5:11 a.m. (7 hours and 29 minutes later)

   1. Social media influencer Ricarte Encabo, with 12,000-plus followers, posts a screenshot and copy-pastes the story into their status update

2. After 5:11 a.m.

   1. The story gets shared both on private pages and in community information groups, the public starts to make conclusions and the dealership’s Facebook page and Google Reviews page gets put on blast throughout the day

March 13 - The Response

1. 2:52 p.m. (over 16 hours from the time the news story was published): 

   1. Summit Ram, the dealership involved, posts a statement on their Facebook page from their parent company, Kaizen Auto Group

2. Shortly after Kaizen’s statement

   1. The customer posts a response to the statement with both contradictions and confirmations

Switching VINs is a common issue 

This analysis is not a criticism of the dealership and its parent company. We are using this very public issue as a case study, to understand how these things happen, and to help organizations understand how to get ahead of things. Being prepared before the crisis is key!

Switching VINs is a common issue. It’s the critical failure point in the story about Summit Ram and the client, and there are several recent news stories highlighting the problem in Canada: 

• This happened to a customer and an Airdrie dealership in 2024. 

• One Mississauga man was charged with over $2 million in stolen vehicles in 2024 using this tactic. 

• In Toronto this scam was discovered in June 2025 when a customer paid $100,000 for a used Porsche that was later determined to be stolen. 

For Summit and the Kaizen Auto Group, and all auto dealerships for that matter, there’s a real challenge in balancing support for the customer while remaining profitable. We need to acknowledge that the dealership is also a victim in this situation. According to a CBC article, it’s a major and ongoing concern. 

Public opinion versus facts

Despite the dealership also being a victim, the court of public opinion is a completely different animal. It doesn’t really matter how a situation unfolds, people will generally side with the consumer on issues like this, and why not? People perceive the big corporations as able to take a financial blow, and we relate to the guy next door that struggles to make ends meet in the face of shrinkflation and skyrocketing costs, every dollar counts in this economy. 

When a social media influencer posted the story, the shares and anger began to avalanche. That post garnered hundreds of comments and shares.

Another Facebook user took it even further by filming the news story playing on their television and posting it to their page. The video garnered thousands of views. 

The scathing comments were flowing, freely. 

Subsequently, Summit’s Facebook page received many angry comments, negative reviews, and even accusatory comments on older posts. One user commented on a “sold to a new customer” post from back in early February with this, “Are you sure it wasn’t stolen?”

People started rating the dealership and Kaizen Auto Group with one-star Google reviews. This became a real reputational and communications hazard for the company. 

The switch from concern to crisis is quick. A trigger of an issue hitting the public starts the process for loss of reputation, public anger, and negative press, which sets the stage for a loss of revenue.

In the community and on social media - things looked bleak. As the hours progressed through Friday, Kaizen Auto Group and Summit Ram remained silent, an information vacuum grew. In the absence of a response and credible information, the public filled in the blanks. It wasn’t good. 

It wasn’t until 2.52 p.m., over 16 hours after the news story broke, that Kaizen Auto Group posted this statement on Summit Ram’s Facebook page:

KAIZEN AUTO GROUP STATEMENT REGARDING VEHICLE SEIZURE

COMPANY WORKING WITH DEALERSHIP, CUSTOMER, AUTHORITIES, AND FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS TO RESOLVE MATTER

Kaizen Auto Group is aware of the situation and has been working closely with the customer and the Alberta Motor Vehicle Industry Council (AMVIC) for the past several months.

During this time, Kaizen Auto Group has been supporting the customer while the situation has been reviewed. The customer was provided with a loaner vehicle from January through March. The customer also recently purchased a truck in January from Shaw GMC, a dealership within the Kaizen Auto Group. Kaizen Auto Group is covering the payments on that vehicle while we continue working to understand the situation and receive further updates from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) regarding the customer’s truck.

For more info: https://www.summitram.ca/statement-from-kaizen-auto-group/

This seemed to stem the flow of anger. Finally, a comment that shed some light on a complicated issue. Some people removed their one-star Google reviews and even commentary on social media cooled down. 

It’s important to note that the customer commented on Kaizen’s statement, which showed some incongruencies between the customer’s story and the business’s story. Now, it’s become a bit of a ‘he said/they said’ situation, but things have cooled down.

What should organizations do?

Hindsight is 20/20 of course but the public certainly felt the company should have responded sooner rather than later. The social media response shows us their opinion on the matter.

Organizations have to weigh the pros and cons of responding to a request for comment and it’s not always easy to know if you should. At Brick & Bridge Communications, we have developed a great solution to this problem that most organizations miss. 

Working with our clients, we recommend two important strategies to reduce ambiguity pre-crisis:

1. Define the three to five top risks to your organization.

   1. Outline each issue and create key messaging for each one

   2. It’s better to have something in place and review it after the fact rather than creating something from scratch while having to field media calls and customer complaints under duress

   3. Doing this can provide your legal counsel the opportunity to vet the components if you have specific wordings in place. 

2. Pre-assign a company spokesperson authorized to speak on behalf of the organization. 

   1. This strategy reduces the churn of indecision and allows a more agile approach should a problem arise 

   2. Your spokesperson will be able to use key messaging in a much faster manner 

   3. You can always adapt your messaging as a problem unfolds 

Effects of the information vacuum

Every business faces issues. After a number of years operating, most business owners tend to have a solid awareness of their top risks — but that’s where it ends. 

Recognizing those risks, and seeing what a triggering event can do to a business highlights the fact, it’s better to assume something will happen rather than hope it won’t. 

Not responding to comments is the first step in creating that information vacuum. Indeed, for Kaizen Auto Group, the 16 hour response delay allowed anger and frustration to flourish. It magnified the David vs. Goliath narrative and amplified a negative perception of the company. 

Even with the company’s statement, there is going to be a need to improve their reputation and that is always an uphill exercise. We’ve all heard the statistics — how many positives does it take to damper the effect of one negative? We have to remember that not everyone is going to look into the minutiae of a situation. The headline and social media backlash might be all that they look at. 

As a reminder, the company and the customer were both victims. What we’re suggesting here is that there are ways to control some of the narrative through structured and planned communications. If an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure — let Brick & Bridge curate your solution.

Reach out to Brick & Bridge. We reduce the guesswork in your issues management planning.

UPDATE MARCH 28

A few days after the story aired, Summit Ram ended up returning the money that the customer paid for the stolen truck. It's likely the company felt it was cheaper and easier to work with the customer this way and the action would appear to be an act of goodwill on their part.

From a media relations and crisis communications standpoint, a post-crisis evaluation would be the next step. When we deliver crisis communications support, we also provide the client with a post-crisis review by looking at what went well and what could be improved. This improves communication strategies and allows the company to fine-tune their operations.

What's the lesson here?

These types of media stories have a way of sticking around, and we can guarantee that Global News's first story had much more reads than the follow up. It stands to reason that people are more likely to remember the company being put on blast rather than the resolution that came from it.

Our advice is this: take a proactive approach and review your weaknesses and potential issues. Be honest and realistic about those risks and have something in place, even if it's a draft of messaging. It will reduce your stress and stakeholders will thank you for it.