"Your Recent Service Experience" Emails.. Mad service advisor

It'll be back

 

hopefully it's the other side!

 

Welcome to the new way of doing business , where the customer is viewed as a burden the second there is an issue after the sale! Seems to be the new normal in America!

 

It's a restaurant in Myrtle Beach that purposely treats you like crap for the fun of it.

 

I had this same conversation with a co-worker today. These surveys annoy me - pay me for my time if you want my feedback! Why are people willing to spend their time filling out these forms to help some company's marketing / customer service / quality assurance departments for free? If there's a problem, I'll give them a chance to fix it. If they don't, I don't go back.

 

Btw, I fixed my squeaky leaf spring myself with this stuff...

 

What dealership and where?

And to the OP, I'd have been stoked if sweeky springs were the limit of my issues... here's what happened to me.

On my way to Montana for a family vacation in the mountains, I noticed my rear springs has flattened out, then later collapsed by the time we hit Bozeman.

Monday morning I was in the Ressler Toyota service check-in, Bozeman MT about 15min after opening at 0745.

0900 I drove the truck back to the apartment to discuss what was going on. The dealer stated they had a call into the district rep for Toyota to get permission for repairs, and it would take "a day or two".

1300 I drove back with my wife and sat down with the service manager, with no intent in leaving without something. We went back and forth, and it came to an agreement at 1600 that the truck was broken and needed to be fixed. The springs were 1-2 days out, and they would make sure it was good with their rep from Toyota. I had been in contact with my good friend who is a Toyota corporate rep, and she Called bullshit, same thing my dealer in MN said. 1615ish we left to go pick up new cell phones because there was no GSM service in the area, only CDMA. It was the last straw for Solevi, and now we are with Verizon.

1700 I got a call and we were authorized a rental for the duration of the repairs, but the rental agency closed at 1730, so get there. Ended up grabbing a camry that just came in, rather than the corolla that they had promised me.

We tried to make the best of things, and drove the Camry to Glacier and Yellowstone to do the touristy shit we didn't want to do.

Thursday I got a call at 0840 telling me that the springs hadn't arrived, and there was nothing they could do before our planned departure Friday. Called around, and had set up a possible 4.5hr drive one way to Missoula to get some add-a-leafs from all-pro to limp the truck home. Ended up calling the local leaf-spring guy who spent 45min on the phone with me thumbing through his options to no avail. He then asked if I had heard of Timbren SES? The salesman said he sells them mostly to people with slip-in campers, and that he had a set on his truck if I wanted to look. I told him to hang onto them, and I would be in that day.

Drove there at noon, picked up the Timbrens, picked up the truck, then headed to the apartment to do the swap. THANK GOD this kid piped up, much easier to swap bump stops than a whole leaf.

Got them installed and I was already on them with just the tent shell and bedrack. But.. they allowed the truck to get us home.

Took the truck in for the warranty repair at 0800 Monday at Inver Grove Toyota, IGH MN. They had a rental Tacoma warmed up and waiting for me, and told me "no issue." My friend at Toyota, who used to have the Twin Cities region as her area warned them I was on my way. The service manager was prepared for the worst type of customer. They were not to blame, and I treated them as though nothing in MT happened. They seemed relieved, and discussed how the other dealership was way out of line. He stated "we are supposed to be advocates for the customer, Toyota has much deeper pockets than you or I, and you have a Certified Used Platinum warranty... it's not going to cost me a penny to get your truck fixed."

Wednesday they called to let me know the truck was done. I went to pick it up and was told that Ressler never even called in a service ticket. They just gave us a rental to get rid of us.

My dealer not only fixed my dead leafs, but gave me the up-rated 4-leaf packs (2012 OR is not part of the TSB). They also gave me a new harmonic balancer, three new motor mounts, and a pair of new u-joints. All in, a total of $1947, plus labor, plus the rental. I paid $1600 for my warranty that is good till 120k or 2019... DONE.

I left a nasty survey with Toyota care when they requested it. Knowing how their system works I was not surprised when a rep from Toyota corporate called me to discuss the details. Turns out, the regional rep and my friend were chums from their early days in the company.

I was satisfied that the dealership received a reprimand of sorts from Toyota.

 

Yup. And that's not just Toyota - seems to be the norm with quite a few aftermarket vendors, too.

 

I'll give my two cents, just to lend perspective on the service advisor's statement:

I used to be a service advisor at a Pep Boys, but even there...YES the survey impacts pay. We got 3% commission, 5% on tires and alignments. We also offered surveys, rating 1-10. You had to maintain 80% on surveys. If you dropped below 80%, they held half your commission. If you got back over 80%, you got the held commission. If you did not break 80% by the end of the quarter, you lose the held out commission. Each quarter, your score started over.

Here's the kicker: Surveys rate 1-10. 10 is 100%, 9 is 90%, 8 is 80%....0-7 all count as 0%. So unless you got an 8-10, it was a complete zero. Not exactly fair to the advisor. On top of that, out of 10 questions, the only one that mattered was the "overall satisfaction" question. The rest were fluff and for research.

I remember getting zero scores because people were upset their tire couldn't be patched, they didn't like that the 4th tire "free" was a rebate, because their request to change spark plugs "didn't make their car faster", because we refused to rotate bald tires, really anything. When you consider how inept the average person is when it comes to cars, those are the people doing surveys. So they are giving grades without any knowledge of how things work or were repairs, and no amount of explanation or freebies changed their minds. I had friends come in for free tire rotations, brake checks, and oil changes often so they could help me out, but you can't really do that at dealerships.

So, despite your honest reviews and not blaming him at all, he still takes the hit for it. Now, that doesn't mean he should try to refuse your service based on your honest review, that's piss poor on his end. It just sucks for him because his pay is impacted by poor work in the bay.

I know people will say that is his fault somehow, but advisors don't pick which mechanic works on a car. The poor work falls on management, not advisors.

 

It sounds like you've allowed corporate america to put you in a no win situation and you're supposed to turn dog shit into gold, sound like a fun job LOL. I get your point, customers are just plain stupid. This is a career path to no where.

 

Both Luther and Walser, they both suck and Luther sucks worse. I ordered running boards from Luther, they called and said they were in, I go way out of my way to pick them up and the guy says their in another warehouse that's 10 minutes away and his policy would not allow him to go over and get them. With a straight face this guy looked at me at told me to just come back tomorrow. The next day the part manager calls me up and offers to deliver them, I said no because I would not be home to receive them and asked for a discount since I had to come back to pick them up, the guy freaked out and hung up on me. All I did was ask for a minor discount to make up for the inconvenience and money they costed me. Later that day I get a call from the accessory guy, he tells me he heard I was interested in some running boards and was told to give me a call, WTF.

 

If anyone knows of a "good" dealer in Minnesota please post it.

 

The incentive for filling them out is improved customer service, them prioritizing fixes for issues with the truck, etc

It's amazing what you guys are willing to put up with (checking ATF fluid with paperclips, replacing $100 CPS on your own, etc) but you wont spend 5-10 minutes filling out a survey that would actually highlight your issues and get them to fix it?!?!?

In other words, you are willing to spend hours and hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to get your truck to where it should have come from the factory, but a 10 minute survey is where you draw the line in the sand??!?

F*cking ridiculous.

 

If it actually did something I would fill them out. Here's what happens, you fill it out all negative and you get a call apologizing for the bad experience but the only solution is to just bring it in AGAIN and let them try one more time and somehow, without explanation, this time will be different. I don't know about you but trying to squeeze water from a rock is something I'm not interested in. These people and their current system are simply not capable of handling the typical day to day issues we have with our vehicles and I blame the system more than the people, their in a no win situation.

 

It sounds like they are using the Net Promoter Score method. Which makes sense to count all of those folks as 0% when you understand the logic of the method:

This is a single question method for calculating something more complicated, so it has some pretty significant weaknesses. Unfortunately, in order to capture the data you need to do a more in depth composite survey you need people to spend 10 minutes filling out questions. As we saw from some knuckleheads in this thread, they aren't willing to do that. (I mean, from a 15 minute PepBoys oil change I wouldn't spend 10 minutes either though, so companies have to find the balance.)

 

Inver Grove Toyota.

Luther and Walser are both utter shit across the board (service, parts, sales) ant any and all their dealerships regardless of make. I live near 494 and 169, and I literally drive 4x the distance and right past one of them to get to Inver Grove.

 

If they know how they are being paid, and they accept it, then the rating from the customer is not the issue. Nice try on the guilt trip though...........

 

Will they have a lot of other people to help. Do you want them to go to your house and fix your truck in your garage?

 

If anything I'd tell corporate that you were being pressured to give favorable ratings and that you had been threatened with no more service unless you promised to give good reviews.

It is corporate asking for the surveys. Let them know what impact they are having on their customers.

 

I think this goes both ways and sucks all around. The corporate world is horrible and mostly unproductive if theres any issue at all and at the same time many owners are whine bags.