Short-sighted customer service moment from a car dealership
Today I find myself at a car dealership in town that is willing to sacrifice a long standing relationship for $50. No more $150 oil changes, no more other service, certainly won’t buy new tires from them, etc all because they insist to charge me to figure out what is wrong with my less than three year old Saab. Talk about a short-sited customer service decision.
After leaving my car to sit for a few weeks while I was on vacation I returned to a car that was just a mess. The lights kept going out, there was a violent vibration from the back wheels (feel it in the seat not the steering wheel), and it just ran rough. Given it is generally a sleep in the garage car I assumed it just didn’t like being outside and/or it is showing its 65K of KM. Although for a Saab 9-5 that shouldn’t be a lot.
I finally managed to get into the dealership a month and a half later. The lights have been an ongoing concern (they have been replaced every time I bring it in) so no worries there, they will take care of it. The vibration might be warranty work or it might not. Just to find out I get the privilege of paying for the time to figure it out.
I realize it is common practice for mechanics to do this. After all, it takes them some time to figure it out (or simply plug in the computer and it tells you) and sure mechanics could spend all day diagnosing things and not get paid. But:
- is diagnosis not built into their $80/hr+ billing rate?
- I bought the car from that dealership and I might buy another (not now)
- The mechanic won’t feel the vibration anyway as he isn’t allowed to go fast enough to feel it (yes it is above the speed limit but not by much)
What I don’t understand is why do people accept this? If more people complained then there is no way it would continue. I am certain the irritation on customers over oil changes is why GM now covers that for the first few years… obviously the service cost is worth absorbing to make customers happy. BMW, Mercedes, and others offer free ‘scheduled’ maintenance as does Cadillac. They probably don’t charge to tell you if something is warranty work or not. Why? Over the ownership time they may have to absorb $200 per customer on average which is pretty cheap for happy people that spend 40k+ on a vehicle.
Our lease is up in a year and I am pretty sure I will not be going back to that dealership for much beyond handing them the keys.
Canada 3.0: Day 2 impressions
The Canada 3.0 conference wrapped up the second day with speeches from the CEO of RIM, the Chair of the CRTC, and others all with a strong patriotic message as well as a surprising amount of useful vision and position stuff specifically from the the Chair of the CRTC. Day 2 did, sadly enough, start off with some rather dry and boring stuff that made for a fun game of buzz word bingo.
Between the speeches I attended the talk that included Waterloo’s own Jacqui Murphy from TechCapital. She took full advantage of having a mic and an audience to make it clear that startups shouldn’t be about seeking funding or exits with big companies buying you. You should dream big and focus on revenue generation. Some great messages to bring back to VeloCity I think.
The round table discussions in the afternoon felt like they lacked energy and urgency. The big rooms and groups just didn’t work well for that but I did meet some really interesting folks around my table. If nothing else, that was a huge bonus.
Overall, the strength of the Canada 3.0 conference was in the diversity of the folks that attended. There were some very obvious complaints about the lack of students attending but we really need to stop idealizing students, if they are interested they will come—if they aren’t there they really don’t care…. yet. There were enough student volunteers to suggest to me that the ones that are interested knew about it and made the effort to attend.
What I think was really missing was the younger entrepreneurs and leaders on the panels. Not the under-25s that the over 50’s marvel at, but the 25-40 yr old professional crowd that have the skills, experience, and know how to really push Canada’s ‘digital economy.’ I would have also liked to see more of an unconference stream. Being a Barcamp/Startup organizer I am already a fan of the format but we needed more conversation over round table sticky notes. I will even volunteer to organize that for next time 
I should also point out the technology situation. Stratford doesn’t have 3G, the wireless was overwhelmed by all the mobile devices and laptops begging for data (but we got the tweets out!), innovative things weren’t set up like streaming panels to the media room at the very least. Sure Igloo put together a good site but that was impressive a couple years ago, if this is ‘3.0’ then it should push the boundaries.
Honestly, it was an amazing conference. This should be the start of something… keep the buzz going, follow up with the business cards you collected, and start thinking big!
Canada 3.0 Conference: Day 1 impression
The Canada 3.0 started today in Stratford Ontario (45km west into farm fields from Waterloo) and surpassed a lot of people’s expectations I think. The morning had the typical political talk you would expect when government folks are given a microphone along with the University of Waterloo making it clear it is committed to the Stratford campus and all the potential developing such a campus may hold. What followed was a day of great conversation about communities, what to do to foster entrepreneurial talent, mobile technology, and more.
It was high level discussion mostly but it was honest discussion focused not on how great Canada is but where Canada needs work. Have a look at the twitter stream under the #can30 hash tag for some great bits of information. Day 2 promises to be more interactive with work groups tackling some of the issues presented today.
I spent a lot of they at the VeloCity booth talking to people that are interested in the idea and colleagues at other schools that are a bit envious that Waterloo has such a residence. I will be around for day 2, stop by the booth and say hi!
Test driving the Cheverlot Traverse on my Twitter Test Drive
Over the past couple of days I have been driving the Chevrolet Traverse as part of a Twitter Test Drive arranged by Waterloo Auto Mall. Overall I think it is a great XUV (SUV is so 1990s) that does pretty much all of what a mini-van offers but with a much more solid vehicle that you can use on light off-road fun and snowy days.
What I really liked about it:
- Back row of seats—although not entirely usable for adults (what back row is?) there are plenty of seat belts for when you need to move kids around town
- Even with the back row up you have space for stuff—something I didn’t expect given it isn’t a Yukon or Tahoe.
- The 3.6L engine can actually move the thing—it has enough acceleration to be fun
- Overall design of the interior—although not up to European quality of materials, it certainly is well designed and comfortable
What I don’t like:
- The stock GM technical parts that you see in 20-30K vehicles in this one that has a 50K+ price tag—The quality isn’t there in the 20 year old digital displays compared to similarly priced BMW’s and Mercedes.
- The exterior lighting—again, for the price I would expect xenon lights and less ‘cheap’ looking plastic
- Mileage—this vehicle isn’t broken in but but the avg economy on a highway drive between Waterloo and Hamilton was 12L/100km (~20 mpg). Why wouldn’t I just drive the V8 Tahoe?
- The one I had was front wheel drive only—for the price I would expect all wheel drive.
The two top things I don’t like is (I think) because this model has a 50K price tag but there is a 35K version. That is something that I think plagues GM vehicles as a whole. You can’t upgrade bits here and there and add that much to the price because you start getting into BMW and Mercedes land that have all those features and more in a much nicer designed package with quality finish. BMW and Mercedes just don’t have a lower priced option… GM needs to either upgrade more in a vehicle or stop trying to have premium domestic vehicles.
My verdict
If you can get an all wheel drive version at the 40K level you are getting a great vehicle. The quality, the performance, and the utility is certainly there. However, I am not convinced I wouldn’t look seriously at a Jeep Commander instead if I want a 4×4 that can do family stuff for ~35K.
Also: See the Edmunds report on the Traverse
About TwitterTestDrive
As far as I know the Waterloo Auto Mall is the only dealership trying to actually use social media and reach out to its customer base. I think it is a brilliant idea to try out and let the users of social media reach out to their online friends about a real experience that is essentially word of mouth marketing. I expect the #twittertestdrive hashtag will be filled of some honest and interesting experiences over this summer that will influence at least a couple car buying decisions out there.
StartupCampWaterloo number 6!
Almost ready to have the sixth StartupCampWaterloo in just under two years. For this one it was decided to not get an opening speaker and just leave it to the community to drive the event. Our sponsors are still doing the same thing and making sure everyone has snacks and liquids. I am really looking forward to the event and meet some new folks as well as catch up with others. If you haven’t signed up and are coming, please head over to eventbrite!
After number six there will be some changes coming to StartupCampWaterloo. We didn’t get a chance to put them in place this time due to vacations (I didn’t post a thing in May) and overall being busy. If anyone has suggestions please post them here to drop me an email (jrrodgers on gmail).