Car Dealer Brothers' Gesture Surpasses Customer-Service Standards

There’s customer service, and then there’s customer service that goes so far beyond what’s customary that it flies off the chart.

A gesture by brothers Abe and Al Saad, who manage the Ford Road Motor Sales used-car dealership in Dearborn, qualifies as the latter.

Wayne State University nursing student Renee Brown bought a 2004 Grand Prix from the dealership last year, depleting her savings. This week, the Saad brothers saw a news story about what had happened to their customer and her car that melted their hearts and compelled them to act, WJBK, Channel 2, reports.

Brown, 20, had walked out of her residence early on the morning of Nov. 2 to see her car in flames, a gas can beside it. She immediately suspected her abusive ex-boyfriend. Brown said she broke up with him in August, but the abuse continued.

They had dated since high school, she said, but his behavior changed. She sustained injuries in ongoing beatings that sometimes sent her to the hospital. He held a gun to her head, his finger on the trigger. “... Is he going to pull it, is this my last day here?” she wondered.

On the advice of Detroit police, she obtained a personal protection order after her car was torched. If authorities can’t catch her former boyfriend in the act of committing a crime against her, the restraining order will establish a paper trail that could lead to his arrest.

Brown said she still feels vulnerable. “It’s good I did the PPO but it’s just a PPO. People do what they want,” she said.

“I shouldn’t have to live my life in fear,” Brown said. “I’m in school. It’s too much – too much for me.”

That touched Al Saad’s heart.

He called his brother, and they agreed to replace Brown’s charred vehicle with a similar 2004 Grand Prix. It’s worth about $5,000.

“It’s yours, all paid off and everything,” Abe Saad said when he turned the keys over to Brown.

Brown’s father, Benny Brown, called the gesture “remarkable.”

“It’s worth is really hard to express,” he said. “They didn’t have to do it. It just shows the generosity and the kindness of the people here.”

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Screenshot: WJBK video