Snoopy

Found this article about GM filing against employees who misused their employee discount. I tend to believe other similar avenues will also be explored.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080830/...unt_lawsuits_2

hhrcrafty

So, basically, they're going to spend millions of dollars trying to recover a whopping $450,000. This after posting billions in losses last fiscal year. I think the bean counters are trying to justify their own jobs now. What a joke.

You know, the salaried employees are already pissed about health care being discontinued after 65. Start going after them for so-called "discount abuse" and even they'll stop buying GM products forever too. Once again GM, wrong time, wrong priorities.

I betcha they're going to use this as an excuse to drop the discount program for retirees. If that happens, no more GM for me.

Snoopy

You bet they will......they will probably lose their Employee Discount privileges, as the guidelines indicate.

You're an attorney you know how these "things" go. Even though it can be construed as fraud, GM will probably just remove or suspend the privilege to the involved employee, as a settlement. Except of course, for those flagrant violators (I, through Corporate mechanisms, suspended one of my employees privileges for 5 years over this very action....allowing 3 friends/neighbors to use his account. He died in the interim so the privileges were never reinstated).

I do agree with your cost factor comment however. But maybe they just wish to keep the on board Legal Staff busy, in these slow times.

hhrcrafty

Well, I for one can testify to the fact that working on the in-house legal staff is no guarantee of safety when the company is going through difficulty. Usually they lay everyone off except for the general counsel and contract it all out. I'd be willing to bet it's the accountants because they generally get rewarded and promoted for uncovering stuff like this.

Think about it, though. $450,000 is being defrauded out of millions in discounts used every year by thousands of retirees? Seems to me that this is hardly newsworthy.

Snoopy

I agree.....hardly newsworthy. But it is happening, because GM either gave the info out or someone leaked it.

The numbers ?????....I wonder if $ quoted in the article is the TOTAL DISCOUNT amount. Seems practical. Then it only totals about 150 vehicles, depending on the average discount.