AI chatbots are being embraced by management that wants to spend less money on employees, and employees who want to lighten their workloads. But that all assumes the software can actually do the tasks it’s assigned correctly. A Canadian BMW dealership recently found out that this can be a costly assumption.
As reported by CBC News, faced with a major repair bill, Zach Giacomelli decided to sell his 2021 BMW X3 back to BMW Toronto, the dealership he bought the crossover from used in 2023. After contacting the dealership, he received a text from “Quinn,” who asked questions about the X3 (which was at the dealership for the aforementioned repair work) and came back with an offer of $27,162.79 CAD ($19,385.68 USD at current exchange rates).
That was great news for Giacomelli, as the offer was the exact amount the 31-year-old owed on the car. But not long after, he received a call from an actual salesperson saying the offer wasn’t valid. They explained that “Quinn” was a chatbot—a fact that Giacomelli wasn’t aware of during the negotiation—and that it had made an error. The salesperson said the dealership was really willing to offer, at best, only $20,000 Canadian—about $7,000 ($4,995 U.S.) less than what the chatbot offered.
“I feel embarrassed, and I feel angry that I’ve been negotiating with this bot,” Giacomelli told CBC News. “If they’re going to be replacing their employees’ jobs with AI, then they need to be honoring what that AI says.”
That is what the dealership did* *after it was contacted by *CBC News. *The offer of $27,162.79 Canadian was reinstated to “do right” by Giacomelli, sales manager Scott Shadbolt said in a phone interview with the media outlet. Shadbolt explained that, due to a miscommunication by a human employee, the chatbot misinterpreted the amount Giacomelli owed—$27,162.79 Canadian—as the amount the dealership was willing to pay.
In Canada, at least, companies can be held liable for mistakes made by chatbots. In 2024, Air Canada was required to honor a fare rebate after its chatbot gave a customer wrong information, CBC News notes. A lawyer consulted by the publication said that, even though Giacomelli hadn’t accepted the offer (he’d made a slightly higher counteroffer), it was reasonable to think that an agreement was in place because the chatbot set up a physical meeting, telling him “let’s lock it in today at 3:30.”
Initial uncertainty about the outcome aside, this all worked out pretty well for Giacomelli. Not having to talk to a car salesperson sounds pretty good, from a buyer’s perspective, especially when you can get free money from an AI chatbot’s mistakes. But the push to replace human salespeople at dealerships with AI probably won’t last long if mistakes like this keep getting made.