Two Guys Accidentally Stole Each Other’s Cars and Didn’t Realise for Half a Year
A most surreal of stories that proves reality is stranger than fiction
My father works in the car trade which has always provided me a rather unique insight into the world of car dealerships and repair garages. There are many stories I could tell which you could never make up, but this one takes the cake.
A guy — who for the purposes of this post I’m going to call Jeb — bought a brand-new car at a dealership. About two months into ownership, he had a minor problem with it and so took it back so that they could sort it. They kept it in overnight and he came back the next day.
Jeb approached the secretary — I will call her Jane — and he asked for his car keys. His car is parked outside, he points it out, she hands him the keys and off he goes. Six months pass by and then out of the blue, a letter appears through the post. A penalty notice for driving through a red light.
Jeb is flabbergasted, not only has he never blown a red light in his life, but the place he was supposed to have driven through the red light is a place he has never been.
He immediately speaks to his wife: “Was this you?” Nope. His son sometimes borrows the car, so he asks his son: “Was this you?” Nope. Jeb is puzzled. The picture showed his car, but it was clear none of them had been the driver.
He calls up the number on the letter and tells them as such. Inevitably, they are not impressed. “The picture shows your car and has your registration number on it,” they say.
“I know,” says Jeb, “but it must be a mistake, maybe there is another car just like mine with the same registration number.”
They are even more unimpressed and insist that he pays the fine, threatening court action if he does not. He decides to call his solicitor for advice. His solicitor tells him point-blank:
“The evidence against you is resounding. Unless you can prove somebody else was driving the car, or that the car was not yours, you will have to pay the fine.”
Jeb is furious. Somehow, he is being screwed. And he point-blank refuses to take it lying down. Because of this, he decides to call in a private investigator. I will call him Bob. Bob immediately gets to work, he looks at all Jeb’s ownership documents, he studies the pictures of him supposedly blowing the red light, then he studies the car.
That’s when he notices something that stuns him. The registration number on the car. It is different from the registration number on the ownership documents. There is one different digit — the ownership documents show an E where the car has an F.
Finally, proof that it was not Jeb’s car that had blown the red lights. But it also begged the question of why the registration number on Jeb’s car was different from the registration number on the ownership documents.
That was not the question Bob had been hired to answer, his job was to find the car which had blown the red lights. Jeb had the ownership documents for that car, but he did not have that car. Who the hell did?
Bob decides that his only hope of finding out is to take the registration on Jeb’s car, and run it through the database to see who the owner is supposed to be. Turns out it is not Jeb, it is somebody who I will call Fred.
Bob heads to Fred’s address and finds in the drive a car that is identical in every way imaginable to Jeb’s, except for one thing. One digit in the registration number. More perplexing, that digit matches the registration on Jeb’s ownership documents.
Determined to get to the bottom of this, Bob knocks on Fred’s door and finds that Fred’s ownership documents match the registration on Jeb’s car. Then Bob makes a further discovery. They both had bought their cars from the same dealership. Christ, he thinks, the dealership must have mixed up the cars when they bought them and given Fred Jeb’s car and Jeb Fred’s car.
Except that would be impossible. Fred bought his car a month after Jeb had bought his, and Fred had a picture that proved he originally had the car which Jeb presently had — he had taken a picture of himself with the car.
At this point everybody is beyond confused. How in the heck did Fred and Jeb end up with each other’s cars? It was now clear that that was what had happened. But how could it have happened? The ownership documents were accurate, both had originally had the correct cars, and yet somehow, they had ended up with each other’s cars. How?
After much effort, Bob finally discovered the answer. One month after Fred had purchased his car, it had a problem, and he had taken it back to the dealership. Jeb had taken his car back at the exact same time.
The secretary, Jane, was new and highly inexperienced and had been left there by herself when she should not have been. Jeb had arrived before his car was ready and despite it not being ready had filled in the release form — which he should not have done. He had then popped to the coffee place next door for a drink.
When he returned, he saw what turned out to be Fred’s car parked outside, and, thinking it was his, he pointed out the car to the inexperienced Jane who simply gave him the keys which matched the registration number of the one he had pointed to. But Jeb’s car was not yet ready, it was still in the workshop. Despite this, Jeb drove away in Fred’s car — thinking it was his.
When Fred arrived for his car, he saw Jeb’s car — which looked identical to his — in the car park. He approached the secretary’s desk, but it was not the inexperienced secretary manning it, it was the experienced one — I will call her Sarah. Fred told Sarah the registration of his car, she got out the release forms, he filled in the release forms, then he asked for the keys, pointing out Jeb’s car — thinking it was his.
Sarah realised that the registration of the car was different to the one he had originally written on the release forms when bringing the car in, but because there was only one digit difference, and the digit was extremely similar, and because there were no other cars like Fred’s in the workshop, she believed that it was a typo. And so, she simply handed him the keys.
That is the story of how Jeb and Fred for six months drove around in each other’s cars, without ever knowing it. Because Fred and Jeb saw a car parked outside that looked like their own, and believed it was their own, and neither secretary realised they were wrong. The crazy thing is, if Fred had never blown that red light, they may never have known it.
Anyhow, with that, ends this most surreal of stories. The moral being, when you pick up your car from a repair garage, always make certain it’s actually your car you drive away in.
That’s all from me, thanks for reading!
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