Worst customer experience ever (Part 3)

A brief recap of my worst customer experience so far, which occurred over 3 visits to a major auto dealership (I'll add a fourth as a special bonus just for you! :) ...

• Part 1 involved arriving a few minutes before opening time and being summarily dismissed (and dissed) by the Parts counter guy.
• Part 2 was a few days later, whereby I waited half an hour without so much as a nod in my direction. But when I left a salesman ran after me and begged me to come back.

The next day, I went back to the dealership, and luckily the guy who had alertly fetched me in the parking lot saw me right away and directed me to an available sales rep.

I sat down and we discussed what I was looking for, then went into specifics about my trade-in. And that's when he hit me with Car Sales Trick #28, asking me what the value of my trade-in was. Obviously, he was hoping for a low figure, and if conversely I high-balled, he'd just go to his industry-standard book of used-car values that everyone in the known universe knows about. Should I have done my homework? Possibly. Still, it seemed like a cheap trick and so I left.

I'll be buying my next car from their competitor, a smaller but friendlier shop.

Unfortunately, a week later (still hadn't bought my new car) I was forced to go back to the "bad" dealership, just for a planned service visit (no other shops had availability), but they still managed to surprise me with some silliness...

Part of the service was an oil change. When I went to pick up my car saw they had stuck one of those reminder stickers on the inside of my windshield, but the writing was so faint, just scratches in fact, as to be totally illegible. I asked the technician and he apologized, but the plastic stickers were too slick to take ball-point ink.

I had to laugh! What kind of answer was that? This dealership has been in business for over 20 years, I wonder if this problems dates back to Day 1?

Incredibly, they're the #1 or #2 dealer in a couple of makes, and continue to grow, all of which underscores 3 facts:

1. Many countries in emerging markets have a long way to go regarding customer satisfaction.
2. These countries are still very generous, in the sense that the market accepts vendor behavior that would be inadmissible in major markets.
3. There's a great opportunity for forward-thinking dealers to come in and blow this type of old-schooler out of the water.

Tags: automotive, auto industry, automotive industry, auto dealer, auto dealers, car dealer, car dealers, motor vehicle dealer, motor vehicle dealers, customer satisfaction

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Comments

[Steve_O]

Reading your story reminds me of a car dealer scam news feed. Go to www.ByOwnerAutoSales.com and click 'News Headlines'. It's amazing to see how car salesmen are swindling customers every day. Knowledge is power!