BMW Dealership Revokes AI Chatbot's $27K Car Buyback Offer

When the deal-maker isn't human

A BMW dealership in Toronto initially refused to honor a $27,162.79 vehicle buyback offer made by its AI chatbot, telling the customer the bot had made a mistake. The dealership reversed course only after CBC News contacted them about the dispute.

Zack Giacomelli, 31, submitted an online inquiry last month to sell his 2021 BMW back to the dealership where he'd purchased it. He exchanged texts with "Quinn," who asked questions about the vehicle and eventually made a firm buyback offer that would cover what Giacomelli still owed on the car.

Minutes after receiving the offer, a human sales consultant called to revoke it, explaining Quinn was an AI chatbot that had generated the figure in error. The dealership said the actual offer would be around $20,000—more than $7,000 less than Quinn's promise.

According to BMW Toronto sales manager Scott Shadbolt, the chatbot misinterpreted information about how much Giacomelli owed on the vehicle, treating that amount as the buyback price. "The AI bot ran with that, misunderstood the message," Shadbolt told CBC News.

Why it matters

This incident arrives as Canadian businesses rapidly scale AI adoption—12 percent now use AI to produce goods or deliver services, double the rate from a year earlier, according to Statistics Canada. Among those companies, a quarter deploy chatbots or virtual agents. Each implementation carries contractual risk: Canadian courts have already established that companies remain liable for their AI tools' mistakes, treating chatbots like employees for legal purposes.

Legal precedent already exists

Canadian law provides clear guidance on AI liability. In 2024, the British Columbia Civil Resolution Tribunal ruled that Air Canada must honor a fare rebate its chatbot incorrectly promised, rejecting the airline's argument that the bot was "a separate legal entity."

"Just like an employee may do something wrong and the company's held responsible, a bot is just like an employee," said Tanya Walker, a litigation lawyer with Walker Law in Toronto. "It can enter into a contract on your behalf."

Walker noted that Giacomelli could have argued for a binding agreement even though he hadn't formally accepted Quinn's offer—the chatbot had scheduled an in-person meeting "to lock in" the deal, which could constitute acceptance.

Transparency failures compound the problem

Giacomelli told CBC News he had no idea he was communicating with AI. Quinn never disclosed its non-human nature during their text exchange. "I feel embarrassed, and I feel angry that I've been negotiating with this bot," he said.

Shadbolt acknowledged the dealership is now implementing changes to ensure customers know when they're interacting with AI, and that only human employees will present buyback offers going forward. "It's a bit of a new territory for us," he said.

Gus Skorburg, co-director of the Centre for Advancing Responsible and Ethical Artificial Intelligence at the University of Guelph, said companies deploying AI to cut costs must accept responsibility when those tools fail. "When they make mistakes, you have to be willing to sort of own up to that," he told CBC News.

These details were first reported by CBC News.