An Insanely Corrupt Japanese Company Finally Collapses
The Scandals of the Used Car Business: Big Motor
I just found out about this a few days ago and was blown away at the audacity I was seeing.
All of Japan apparently was too and had been since June this year when the president of the nation’s biggest used car company, Big Motor, admitted to overcharging customers for repair services.
This blew the lid off of the contained chaos as it was soon discovered that employees were purposefully damaging cars in order to get larger insurance pay outs. One method being used was to put golf balls into socks and whack the car’s body to make dents.
In July president Hiroyuki Kaneshige resigned. During a press conference about the scandal, in the only time he got emotional during the questioning, said in reference to the way the cars were being damaged:
It is a sacrilege for people who love golf.
ゴルフを愛する人に対する本当冒涜ですよ
This unleashed a torrent of hilarious memes that will forever haunt the now disgraced man who single handedly built up an empire from seemingly nothing in 1976.
Instead of showing remorse, or empathy, or shock at what his customers had suffered, he instead chose to very weirdly apologize to…..golfers?
The golf ball abuse was only a sliver of the corruption that had taken root in Big Motor. Here are what I think to be the top 3 major ones.
Damaging cars
Obviously this is what caused the story to become newsworthy in the first place. Employees were damaging cars customers brought in for routine services/repairs in order to make a profit from the insurance companies.
Here’s a video of a Big Motor employees teaching new hires how to pop a tire with a screwdriver and send the pictures to the insurance company. Yes an actual instructional video on how to cheat people out of their money! Watch the entire video for details on how the scam worked (in Japanese).
But surely this is an isolated incident right? No way this could have been the company’s policy? Wrong and wrong.
The Japan Times reports that a total of 1,275 such cases have so far been discovered. It was further uncovered that branch managers were under pressure the top to charge a bare minimum of ¥140,000 per repair job.
How could this have gone unnoticed? Well some of the insurance companies did in fact notice and said “hey guys, what the hell is going on?” They requested that Big Motor investigate the issue, to which they thoroughly investigated themselves, and duly came back saying we found nothing.
Let’s walk through that again. The suspected criminal was asked to investigate himself and came back saying that everything was fine. And guess who was the leading insurance company who asked for the investigation?
It was the same company who themselves were getting a payoff from Big Motor!
Sompo Japan Insurance had been looking the other way when higher than expected claims were being made. Why? Big Motor was hiring Sompo staff to come work for them, and Sompo was hiring Big Motor staff to work for them, and in this tradeoff lots of money and benefits were passing hands.
A few of the other insurers like Mitsui Sumitomo called in suspicion to this and it was because of them that the case went forward and ended up before the public eye.
Abusing Employees
The employees maybe weren’t directly told to damage cars. But they were given quotas too reach each month that could only be arrived at through some kind of cheating of the system.
All branch managers had to join the company’s Line chat group. Which by the way were all ordered to be deleted once this scandal began breaking. Lucky for us many screenshots survived of the absolutely toxic abuse that was prevalent in Big Motor.
One example from a supervisor to his employees was the phrase 適当な仕事すんなクソタコ、basically “do your work shithead!”
Check this website out for some more examples of the screenshots from these chats.
Employees could be fired for any reason. And when the president’s son, vice president Koichi, came to visit, dread and woe to that store.
He would fire people for having light colored hair, for a cigarette butt being found in the parking lot and so on. Employees would often be at the hopes till 3AM the previous day just to ensure his holiness’ visit would result in minimal damage.
One woman, after working until 2AM to prepare the shop for a different higher up’s arrival was told by her supervisor if she could “lick” underneath the chairs because he wasn’t happy with her work.
Even the company’s employment manual was laced with potentially deadly abuse. Though it is now redacted, this picture of page 100 has the phrase, insinuating what power managers held:
部下の「生殺与奪権」を与える
The power of life and death over the subordinates
Killing Trees
If it were not enough to harm vehicles, line pockets with insurance money, and crush their employees, even nature felt the wrath of Big Motor.
If you live in Japan and visit one of the shops you’ll notice that you have a clear view of all the cars from the street. Not too strange at first glance.
Then look at the public sidewalk in front of the shop and chances are you’ll become aware of the dead tree trunk or bush roots coming out of the dirt.
In fact, every single shop that should have a city/public owned tree on the sidewalk….strangely doesn’t. Convenient that each store isn’t obscured from the road by those disgusting trees.
Turns out that Big Motor was intentionally poisoning the trees in order to get more views from potential customers.
One investigation in Gunma prefecture found that the 17 trees planted in front of a Big Motor store were, well, not there and that the soil held traces of herbicide.
What is Going to Happen?
It is important to note that the allegations are still under investigation and that no formal charges have been levied just yet.
Former president Kaneshige, though out of the job, still sits on the board of investors so would still have some say in the company.
I hope that justice comes, all the facts are laid bare, and all the wrongs put right.
One thing for sure is that customer faith has been destroyed. In early August the company only sold about 1/3 of what they would have normally.
Will that continue? Or is that a temporary dip due to the recent media coverage? Maybe things will bounce back after people stop caring.
So maybe it’s not quite the full collapse as my title suggests, but I think it will be as the government gets more involved.
This comedy of events shows just how corrupt a tightly controlled, family run business bent of profits can become. I wonder how many more companies in Japan are just like this?
One thing for sure, I will always get a 2nd and then a 3rd opinion next time I bring my car in to a garage.