David had a pretty bad experience when he purchased his Mini Cooper from Brecht MINI/BMW in Escondidio, California last year: “Salesman Luis blatantly lied to me about the car’s future routine service requirements,” their employees wouldn’t help him schedule that service, and “they were completely unresponsive when I mentioned these problems to Brian, the service department representative.” When a MINI USA customer service rep called him for a follow-up review last week, he was honest about the level of service he received. That didn’t sit well with Brian over at Brecht, who left David a terse, oddly worded voicemail a few days later.
This week, I received a voicemail from Brian “on behalf of my recent feedback” in which I gave them “all zeros” (actually I gave them all 1′s, but whatever). He then told me in a stern voice, that “hopefully this won’t happen again” (i.e. hopefully I won’t complain again) and that my negative feedback “takes a lot off me” whatever that means.
No apology? No “I’m sorry you haven’t been happy with the service you’ve received, what can we do to fix it?” Nope, he just called me to let me know how upset he is that I’ve hurt his ranking. What a jerk!
(Photo: GypsyRock)
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@segfault:
Yea that struck me as odd that it wasn’t an anonymous survey. At the dealership I work at (not a BMW dealership), there is an option to exclude your information from the survey.
Corporate still has access to the info, but it’s not given to the dealerships.
There is also a place to put comments about your experience, in case you feel there are areas that need improvement or areas that are great.
Oh, and we’re not able to exclude anyone from receiving a survey. Corporate sends surveys to all new car customers as well as all customers receiving warranty repairs on their vehicles.
@toddkravos: I hope David kept the VM too. Here on the east coast, same issue at the local Bimmer dealer. A friend bought one, their first ever, and were truly excited. Until the sunroof got stuck a week later and something in shorted out with smoke. And the other problems, all within a couple of weeks. The dealer, who was nothing but smarmy before, didn’t want to know, didn’t care. Refused a loaner–”Oh, sure, typically, yes, but we just don’t have any now.” I was shocked at the complete indifference to customer service.
@DarrenO: I take my car to a dealership for servicing, and I’m very pleased with the level of service I get.
That message from the dealer sounds like a very thinly veiled threat. I would file a police report and provide a recording of the message to the police.
It was noted previously that, at BMW dealerships (stealerships?) anything less than a perfect “5″ rating by the customer results in lost bonus pay.
When I bought my car just recently (a CPO vehicle) the salesman explained quite clearly that any car they do not get a perfect “5″ rating on results in a loss of commission for the sale, and inquiries by corporate quality control.
Also, without saying this directly, my sales guy implied that if I had any reason not to rate all 5′s, that it would be better to rate all 5′s and return to him with the complaints so he could address them to the point where I would have been satisifed to give all 5′s. In other words, make them look good and THEN give ‘em a chance to fix the situation. Of course, from MY perspective, it would be far too late — my money will already be gone!
In the end, though, I had no reason to NOT give them all 5′s. I was, and still am, very happy with the whole process, even despite my constant negotiation to get a better price and perks.
Everyone is missing the point of the story. You’re all focused on BMW, but the real keyword is “escondido, ca” which is synonymous with “shithole, ca”.
You might as well buy your car in TJ, and expect to get it serviced.
BMW North America knows that the “5-point” system is corrupt, (I’ve talked to their representatives at headquarters in NJ) but they don’t seem to be able to do anything about it.
If you don’t like the system (because it doesn’t actually do ANYONE any good) then by all means, call BMW’s Customer Service line and explain why.
I give them all 5′s. Why, because, the system is stupid and broken, and the Service team is told exactly who gave them “bad” numbers, so you can be sure you’ll get crappy service next time. So why risk it? Give them all 5′s.
This surprises me, as I have had nothing but good service from the Brecht service department. Given this person’s experience, though, I recommend All German Auto (3 blocks from Brecht) the next time he needs service.
(“Shithole” or not, Escondido is the only place in San Diego County with a MINI dealership.)
@louv:
It seems like that at Audi as well. For the most part, service on my A3 is great. But, the one time I went to a different dealer for convenience purposes, their service sucked. And, surprise surprise, when it came time to give ratings in the form of a follow-up phone call, I got none that one time.
I actually had a similar bad experience at my car dealer. I gave a poor service score due to the repairs taking longer than expected and not being offered any compensation due to not having a car. Originally I was told I would have my car back the same day. When i called in on it I was told it would be ready the next day. No big deal. I got a hotel room near work and walked to work the next day. I called in again on the car. They told me it wouldn’t be ready until the next day. I had to go home at this point to get clean clothes so I had to get a taxi, which cost me $50 plus tip.
Upon going back for my next visit the service manager approached me and talked to me about my review. He then handed me my review and asked that I change my score since the review I filled out was for a different visit. Not wanting them to screw me over or do something to my car (they had already had it for 30 minutes) I did so not really caring.
I got a call about 1 week later from the regional service manager who asked me why I changed my score. I told him the CSM had asked me to at which point he told me this service shop has had issues in the past and he was sorry. He said he was reinstating my original review and was sorry for the inconvenience.
It sounds like you should be complaining about the sales guy and not the service guy. I can understand why the service advisor would be upset since you just made him look bad and probably affected his pay, and all he did was try to fix your car. How would you feel if someone just took away potentially thousands of dollars from you by just doing your job?? The service advisor wasnt the one that lied about what services your car needed. Maybe you should think about that the next time you give someone a bad survey. Customer service is hard enough without having to deal with petty jerks.
I had the same thing happen at the Honda Santa Monica! Honda called us up after the purchase and asked us to rate the dealer on a scale of 1-5, “5 being perfect”. I gave her a 4 because she was not perfect — she was actually really annoying — but she gave us the best price.
She called up a few days later to tell my boyfriend that I “failed” her on the ratings! She was particularly angry because she had explicitly told us several times to give her a 5, and we had disobeyed her.
I called up Honda and they said that they employ a 3rd-party company to do the ratings, so it was impossible that the dealer would have heard of our report. Something’s gotta give.
@considerrthis:
The service rep is the one who told me I would have my car back the same day. If it had been a sales representative I would have taken it up with him, but since it was the service manager who told me how long it would take I made completed the survey the way I did. So I don’t think I was being petty let alone a jerk especially since a large part of my job is customer service. Also not having a car could potentially cost me thousands of dollars since I often have to travel as a part of my job to customer sites for service.
@jrubow:
I apologize, I thought you were commenting on my comment.