After Wil’s purchase of a new car didn’t go as smoothly as he expected based on past transactions with Ford, he didn’t give them a great survey rating. The dealership manager’s completely proportionate response? To e-mail Wil and tell him that he is no longer welcome at the dealership, and to never come back.

I recently bought my third new Ford, from a dealership here in [redacted]. The previous two were both Fords purchased at other dealerships where I had amazing customer service, hence the reason for buying a third from a ford dealership. I had several problems with the purchase:

• A salesman who, when asked point blank what a rubber tray insert was, lied point blank to me and told me it was a false bottom for the center console (If there is a false bottom for the console, I never got one)
• A pretty significant problem with my brakes less than 200 miles into ownership
• A finance/title department that told me it would be no problem transferring the tags from my wife’s car that we traded in to my new vehicle, despite the inability for it to happen in this state, as tag transfers must have identical titles.
• Issues with people not double checking paperwork properly that forced me to make a separate trip back (I live 45mins-1hr away with traffic).

As I follow consumerist pretty religiously (and also work on a trading floor with no privacy for taking a personal call), I asked for all communications with them to be in writing via an e-mail I sent to my salesman while trying to hash things out so that I would have them for my records. After doing so, I received 7 calls and corresponding voice mails before I got a single e-mail responding to my issues, the largest of which was having the ball dropped on my tag transfer and receiving a phone call from the county that I was going to need to take off a day of work to handle in person unless it was dealt with properly (after paying a $600 fee I was told would handle this legwork).

I let things work out on the tag issue, had my vehicle serviced to repair the brakes, but was still quite dissatisfied with my overall experience, both in general and relative to my other previous experiences, because nobody there seemed to pay any attention to the details that make things run smoothly when I filled out my survey, and I expressed my displeasure quite candidly in the survey. Tonight, I received an e-mail from the GM of the dealership asking me not to return, as I am no longer welcome there.

I’ve attached a print screen of the e-mail (which is quite hilarious, both for its lack of capitalization and the eagerness to tell me just how great they are, while sounding very much like a “you can’t fire me, I quit” letter ). I guess it’s a good thing that honest feedback doesn’t help improve customer service.

mr [redacted]
i am terribly sorry that you have had such a horrible experience with my dealership
by far, you are the most unsatisfied customer that i have had in my 4 years as owner/gm of this store
in 2011, [redacted] ford was awarded ford’s presidents award for customer satisfaction
i think one other dealer in the state won this award
the 7 calls and voice mails you received were simply me and my employee’s trying to respond to your concerns
[redacted] is one of the top salesman in the nation in customer satisfaction
at this point, i am content that we are simply not capable of making you a satisfied customer and respectfully ask that you never return to my dealership as you are no longer welcome here
take care and good luck with you future automotive transactions

Does this sound a little familiar? It should. A few months ago, we shared with you the experience of a reader who gave a local Ford dealership’s service department an unsatisfactory rating in a customer service survey. They called him up and implied that any future service he received from that dealership would be subpar.

There are many ways to raise your customer service survey scores. Banning every customer who gives a bad one seems a lot less efficient than just having more competent customer service. But what do we know?

RELATED:
Giving A Ford Dealership Bad Survey Grades Is Basically Tossing Their Employees Out On The Street
Dealerships Fake/Alter Customer Satisfaction Surveys To Get Marketing Money From Toyota
Would You Give Your Dealership A Positive Rating In Exchange For A Free Oil Change?

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