Jacksonville dealership accused of scamming customers speaks out

The Jacksonville car dealership being investigated by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles for failing to pay off customer trade-ins, thereby ruining the credit customers, has reached out to Action News Jax.

Riverside Chevrolet told Action News Jax reporter Jenna Bourne that the problem stemmed from employee turnover in the finance and insurance department.

Riverside Chevrolet is the same dealership where multiple cars were set on fire Monday night.

The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office is investigating the car fires as arson.

Two whistleblower former managers at the dealership said there could be up to 100 customers whose credit was hurt after the dealership failed to pay off their trade-ins.

A Riverside Chevrolet spokesman told Action News Jax that the dealership has appointed a customer care manager to handle customers' issues, and that the general manager will send customers a letter explaining what went wrong.

The spokesman said that letter can be sent to their credit bureaus' in order to attempt to repair bad credit from the incident.

To contact the customer care manager, email them at customercare@riversidechevyjax.com.

Here is the full statement from the general manager, Damon Ferguson:

"We have designated a specific individual Natalie Batissa to personally assist our customers with any information concerning vehicle payoffs.
In addition, we have created an email address to where customers can more easily communicate with us as well.(customercare@riversidechevyjax.com)
Any customer that has had any issue with erroneous credit reporting caused by us, our assigned agent will provide a  correction letter on the customers behalf to correct  the issue.
Other Internal actions will include more staff training during the sales process as to ascertain the correct information from the customer as well as orientation.
I will also be writing personal apology letters to customers as well for the inconvenience we may have caused."

Cox Media Group