In what has got to be the worst parenting nightmare ever, a mom and dad in China are being sued by an Audi car dealership after their toddler drew some pictures on 10 cars with a rock.
According to an Australian news source, a couple got the shock of a lifetime when they received a bill for $41,000.00AU after their toddler daughter used a rock to draw pictures into the paint of 10 brand spanking new cars, one of which was a coveted Audi Q8 worth $41K AU.
The couple had accompanied a friend on November 24th to the fancy dealership and they brought their toddler daughter with them. What happened next is fuzzy in detail. It is possible the parents just didn’t know the girl had a rock in her hands. But also, who brings a toddler to an expensive dealership and then doesn’t pay attention?
The Australian news source reported that the Lingui People’s Court the dealership sued Mr. Zhao (the toddler’s dad) for 200,000 RMB (or $41K AU) but the family rejected the deal and instead apparently settled for $14,000K AU.
The dealership now has a problem on their hands. They told the court that they cannot sell these 10 cars for their full value once a repaint job is done. If they do, they could violate Chinese law, which says that it would be false advertising to call the cars new when repair work had been done to them. Therefore, the dealership argued, they must sell the cars for marked down and that is why they are owed the $41K AU. The Australian news source reported that if the dealership were to charge the full price for the cars and they were found guilty of fraud then they would be liable for paying three times the value of each car sold to the customers they cheated.
Talk about quite a pickle.
As a mom of three little kids, I am both horrified and sympathetic toward these parents. Anyone who has ever spent more than five minutes with a toddler knows how much trouble they can get themselves into. They break things, I get it. My own toddler once knocked a full can of paint over onto the newly refinished floors in my mother-in-law’s kitchen. I didn’t know the paint was there and my mother-in-law didn’t think to childproof her kitchen in the rare opportunity that we stop by. Total destruction happened but we survived.
But 10 cars damaged? How did this child manage to “draw” on 10 different cars without anyone noticing? Whatever the details of this story turn out to be, I’m feeling pretty sorry for those parents and also the dealership.
Yikes!
