It seems some car companies are more sensitive than others. Sensitive enough to report a customer’s complaints as a crime. That’s whats happened to one customer who bought a car from the Vietnamese car company VinFast, according to Reuters.
If you aren’t familiar with VinFast, don’t worry, they aren’t sold in the U.S. Yet. It does have plans to come here, though not until next year. VinFast has an expanding lineup of Opel-based cars that’s going to include some EVs and some self-driving tech. Oh, they also sell a Pininfarina-designed BMW X5 with a GM Small Block V8 called the President.
Anyway, the whole problem started when one Vietnamese YouTuber named Tran Van Hoang posted a video about his ownership experience. Hoang had a sizable YouTube following with over 450,000 followers, so his complaints did potentially reach a good-sized audience. In the now deleted video, Hoang complained about the quality of his car. After a bit of searching myself, I found no trace of his channel. It seems as if Hoang may have taken his whole channel down because of VinFast’s legal action, though I do believe the below video is the one in question. It seems that it’s being shared by others. The title roughly translates to “Criticizing Vinfast Lux A2.0 and about to be sued.”
VinFast was quick and thorough. Even though the video seemed to be taken down, VinFast managed to save it. In a statement released Monday, the company is calling the video evidence: “Although Mr. Tran Van Hoang proactively removed those clips, we saved all the evidence and have sent our complaints to the police.”
The company is calling the complaints untrue, and claims that the video is damaging to its reputation, telling Reuters that VinFast’s lawyers think they have “sufficient grounds to prove it is not just a normal complaint.” What could not be normal about it, though? Is there something bigger going on here they aren’t saying? Do they think this is some kind of coordinated attack against them? It has to make you wonder since the company is this pressed over one customer complaint.
VinFast claims that this is their first time reporting a customer to authorities and that they are doing it to “protect our reputation and our customers.” Protecting your reputation is one thing. But seemingly censuring customer complaints you don’t like is a whole other issue.