The price war kicked off by Heifeng had driven Benma, Baolai, Aoto, and several other foreign marques into a corner. Losing now wouldn't just dent quarterly profits—it would torch their reputations in China. Even so, the German parent companies clung to a single strategy: hold the line. Slashing prices in this market would mean surrender, so orders from the top would drag things out as long as possible and hope the storm passes.
That brittle posture shattered when a video began racing across the internet: a young PhD student perched on the hood of a brand-new Benma B525, weeping as she demanded her rights. "Your Benma 4S shop is bullying me!" she cried. She had paid ￥660,000 (≈\$92,000) for the car, and before it even rolled past the dealership doors, the engine started leaking oil. When she asked for an exchange, the shop strung her along for days. Now they were talking about swapping the engine and quoting "three-guarantees" language like a shield. The brush-off felt like an insult for someone who'd spent years studying and believing in rules and reason.
The scene unfolded in Hangzhou, inside a bright, glass-boxed 4S showroom. The store manager, Zhang Yunxing, stared at the woman with a look that mixed frustration and dread. He had tried to smooth it over the week before, when the leak was first spotted—on the day Audi's sales exploded. A scandal then would have looked catastrophic. He coaxed her to go home, promised to "follow up," and reported everything to headquarters. The reply was short and cynical: keep losses to a minimum. In other words, stall if you can.
He knew perfectly well what the law required here: a defective new car should be replaced outright. But "minimizing losses" meant doing anything except that. He found new reasons each day—paperwork still processing, parts on order, the person in charge on leave—until the customer ran out of patience and planted herself on the hood. Now he faced more than one problem. Dozens of shoppers and passersby had gathered in a ring around the B525, phones up, cameras flashing, all ready to upload.
"Come down and we'll talk," Zhang pleaded. "We're helpless too—the regulation in your case only allows an engine replacement." The words sounded thin even to him. The crowd muttered and pushed closer, asking what was going on. Those who'd been there from the start explained, and the explanation traveled like a spark across dry grass.
"That's bullying," someone spat. "Is this how Benma treats customers?" Another voice cut in: "They overcharge you with mystery fees when you buy the car, and when something breaks, they shrug you off." Heads nodded all around. "It's not just Benma," a man said. "I looked at Baolai and Aoto before. Same tricks."
Then came the comparison no one from Benma wanted to hear. A young man threw out a counter-story from that morning. At an Audi 4S shop, a first-time buyer nicked her headlight before leaving the lot. The staff didn't lecture or dodge. They swapped the headlight on the spot, charged only labor, and sent her off smiling. "If this had happened here," he said, jerking his chin at the blue-and-white roundel, "who knows how much they'd bleed you for?"
The crowd reacted in a wave. "Audi service is on another level." "They practice what they preach—pursuit of perfection, even after the sale." Benma's delay-and-deflect routine might have looked like standard procedure without a direct comparison. Put next to "customer first," it looked exactly like what it was.
Phones kept rolling. The woman—red-eyed, voice scraped raw—recounted the timeline for yet another camera: the price she paid, the leak she saw, the days she waited, the excuses she heard. By afternoon, the clip was everywhere, captioned with a dozen variations of the same idea: "Benma bullies a student and refuses to replace a defective car." The comment sections were a bonfire. "Benma, get out of China." "Buying Benma now is asking to be played." "With after-sales like this, don't talk to me about 'customer devotion'."
Inside the showroom, the staff wore fixed expressions—sympathetic, irritated, and openly mocking—but none moved the situation forward. Zhang strained to keep the lid on, shuttling between the woman, the service bay, and his office phone. Headquarters still offered the same line: do nothing that sets a precedent, spend nothing you don't have to, and wait out the noise. But noise doesn't stay in the social-media age; it amplifies.
The worst part, for Zhang, was that the "minimize losses" order had backed him into the least economical outcome. A prompt replacement would have cost a car; now the entire brand was bleeding every hour, and the video stayed on the feeds. What was the point of holding price when goodwill was draining faster than engine oil? Yet he couldn't move without approval, and the approval wouldn't come.
As the afternoon thinned toward evening, the circle of onlookers swelled again—office workers cutting through the showroom for a firsthand look at the story they'd watched on their phones. They asked sharper questions: Why had the defect been discovered on pickup—was pre-delivery inspection a fiction? Why cite a policy that everyone knew allowed a replacement? Why argue with a student holding an invoice and a broken car rather than fix the problem and apologize?
Every new voice added weight to a consensus building since the price war began: the old formula—high sticker, hidden fees, grudging service—no longer worked. Consumers had tasted a different model in price and treatment and liked it. It wasn't just about one B525 or one manager named Zhang. It was about trust, which turned into a scoreboard where Benma lost.
By nightfall, the video had spawned copycat posts: people told their dealership horror stories and tagged them under the same hashtag. The woman finally climbed down, exhausted, and sat in a chair while a cousin argued with a customer-service line on speaker. Zhang stood nearby, notepad in hand, repeating soft words he didn't believe. Somewhere above him, a regional VP was composing a memo about "public-opinion guidance." Somewhere higher still, a board member in Munich skimmed a translation of the clip and wrote in the margin: "Hold price. Strengthen PR."
But in the showroom, the calculus felt much simpler. A buyer had spent ￥660,000 (≈\$92,000) on a failed car before it left the shop. The law said replace it. The conscience said apologize and make it right. The crowd said you don't deserve our money if you can't do either. And the market—led by Heifeng's relentless price-cutting and Audi's hands-on service—was already voting with its feet.
When the lights flicked off and the glass turned the shop into a dark aquarium, the last thing Zhang saw in the reflection was the B525 with the hood still warm, and on it the ghostly outline of a young woman who had made up her mind not to be bullied. The coming days would bring statements and counter-statements, maybe even a quiet settlement. But the damage had already leaked where no gasket could hold it—in public trust. And once that runs onto the showroom floor, no one can mop it up fast enough.