And they say us dealers have no morals......
Discussion
I've got plenty of stories from only one year of working in a main dealer on the Service side. Frinstance...
"My brother is following me in the trade in, he's just behind me". Trade in arrived two hours after the new car left. On a breakdown truck. With moss on it.
"I can't find the MOT, I got it tested about six months ago when I was working up north". After two weeks of chasing him for the (clearly non-existent) MOT we gave up and sent the car off for a test. Three page fail sheet.
Three year old Voyager comes in for a service (first at our dealership and no history on the Chrysler records), "it pulls a bit to the left". Turns out that the front subframe is f***ed because the cars been hit very hard underneath. We quote for repair, declined. Two weeks later salesman in dealership asks me for the "full service history" (which the customer doesn't have the paperwork for) because he's quoting trade in on a new Voyager. So I tell him about it and he low balls the customer on the trade in and doesn't get the sale. A week later a sister dealership is after the service history. I tell him.
Oops. He got the sale on the basis that he valued the car on a full dealer service history and now has what would be a Cat C write off on his hands. And no service history apart from an interim oil change with a report of major chassis damage on it.
Customer brings in a Grand Cherokee with a big drive line vibration. Transfer box is knackered. Quote replacement. He leaves. 2 months later the same car comes back for diagnosis of a drive line vibration. We wheel it out the back and go through the motions but it's the same box and worse than before. I dust off the original quote, put the customers name on it (oddly, he has the same surname as the previous owner and looks just like him, in fact he was even wearing the same Nike hoody). He then produces an RAC used car warranty document with a three week old start date.
Potential customer talks for hours with a salesman about a Voyager, books weekend test drive, gets it, returns car with 400+ extra miles on the clock. Doesn't buy. Two months later rocks up at dealership with a car that he bought in a car supermarket for warranty work. Is pissed off because I won't authorise it because it's stuff that's "broken" not "faulty", interior light unit smashed in half, crack in a headlight?
Before I worked in the trade I was all too prepared to listen to the "motor trade shark" tales but I now know that the general populace has a generally fixed percentage of w
kers. Some work in the car trade, some don't. But the percentage is about the same.
But the salesmen who wear pointy shoes thing? Can't forgive that. There's no excuse for that.
"My brother is following me in the trade in, he's just behind me". Trade in arrived two hours after the new car left. On a breakdown truck. With moss on it.
"I can't find the MOT, I got it tested about six months ago when I was working up north". After two weeks of chasing him for the (clearly non-existent) MOT we gave up and sent the car off for a test. Three page fail sheet.
Three year old Voyager comes in for a service (first at our dealership and no history on the Chrysler records), "it pulls a bit to the left". Turns out that the front subframe is f***ed because the cars been hit very hard underneath. We quote for repair, declined. Two weeks later salesman in dealership asks me for the "full service history" (which the customer doesn't have the paperwork for) because he's quoting trade in on a new Voyager. So I tell him about it and he low balls the customer on the trade in and doesn't get the sale. A week later a sister dealership is after the service history. I tell him.
Oops. He got the sale on the basis that he valued the car on a full dealer service history and now has what would be a Cat C write off on his hands. And no service history apart from an interim oil change with a report of major chassis damage on it.
Customer brings in a Grand Cherokee with a big drive line vibration. Transfer box is knackered. Quote replacement. He leaves. 2 months later the same car comes back for diagnosis of a drive line vibration. We wheel it out the back and go through the motions but it's the same box and worse than before. I dust off the original quote, put the customers name on it (oddly, he has the same surname as the previous owner and looks just like him, in fact he was even wearing the same Nike hoody). He then produces an RAC used car warranty document with a three week old start date.
Potential customer talks for hours with a salesman about a Voyager, books weekend test drive, gets it, returns car with 400+ extra miles on the clock. Doesn't buy. Two months later rocks up at dealership with a car that he bought in a car supermarket for warranty work. Is pissed off because I won't authorise it because it's stuff that's "broken" not "faulty", interior light unit smashed in half, crack in a headlight?
Before I worked in the trade I was all too prepared to listen to the "motor trade shark" tales but I now know that the general populace has a generally fixed percentage of w
kers. Some work in the car trade, some don't. But the percentage is about the same.But the salesmen who wear pointy shoes thing? Can't forgive that. There's no excuse for that.
Mound Dawg said:
I've got plenty of stories from only one year of working in a main dealer on the Service side. Frinstance...
"My brother is following me in the trade in, he's just behind me". Trade in arrived two hours after the new car left. On a breakdown truck. With moss on it.
"I can't find the MOT, I got it tested about six months ago when I was working up north". After two weeks of chasing him for the (clearly non-existent) MOT we gave up and sent the car off for a test. Three page fail sheet.
Three year old Voyager comes in for a service (first at our dealership and no history on the Chrysler records), "it pulls a bit to the left". Turns out that the front subframe is f***ed because the cars been hit very hard underneath. We quote for repair, declined. Two weeks later salesman in dealership asks me for the "full service history" (which the customer doesn't have the paperwork for) because he's quoting trade in on a new Voyager. So I tell him about it and he low balls the customer on the trade in and doesn't get the sale. A week later a sister dealership is after the service history. I tell him.
Oops. He got the sale on the basis that he valued the car on a full dealer service history and now has what would be a Cat C write off on his hands. And no service history apart from an interim oil change with a report of major chassis damage on it.
Customer brings in a Grand Cherokee with a big drive line vibration. Transfer box is knackered. Quote replacement. He leaves. 2 months later the same car comes back for diagnosis of a drive line vibration. We wheel it out the back and go through the motions but it's the same box and worse than before. I dust off the original quote, put the customers name on it (oddly, he has the same surname as the previous owner and looks just like him, in fact he was even wearing the same Nike hoody). He then produces an RAC used car warranty document with a three week old start date.
Potential customer talks for hours with a salesman about a Voyager, books weekend test drive, gets it, returns car with 400+ extra miles on the clock. Doesn't buy. Two months later rocks up at dealership with a car that he bought in a car supermarket for warranty work. Is pissed off because I won't authorise it because it's stuff that's "broken" not "faulty", interior light unit smashed in half, crack in a headlight?
Before I worked in the trade I was all too prepared to listen to the "motor trade shark" tales but I now know that the general populace has a generally fixed percentage of wkers. Some work in the car trade, some don't. But the percentage is about the same.
But the salesmen who wear pointy shoes thing? Can't forgive that. There's no excuse for that.
I could churn out many a similar tale after working for seven years in the after sales side of the business."My brother is following me in the trade in, he's just behind me". Trade in arrived two hours after the new car left. On a breakdown truck. With moss on it.
"I can't find the MOT, I got it tested about six months ago when I was working up north". After two weeks of chasing him for the (clearly non-existent) MOT we gave up and sent the car off for a test. Three page fail sheet.
Three year old Voyager comes in for a service (first at our dealership and no history on the Chrysler records), "it pulls a bit to the left". Turns out that the front subframe is f***ed because the cars been hit very hard underneath. We quote for repair, declined. Two weeks later salesman in dealership asks me for the "full service history" (which the customer doesn't have the paperwork for) because he's quoting trade in on a new Voyager. So I tell him about it and he low balls the customer on the trade in and doesn't get the sale. A week later a sister dealership is after the service history. I tell him.
Oops. He got the sale on the basis that he valued the car on a full dealer service history and now has what would be a Cat C write off on his hands. And no service history apart from an interim oil change with a report of major chassis damage on it.
Customer brings in a Grand Cherokee with a big drive line vibration. Transfer box is knackered. Quote replacement. He leaves. 2 months later the same car comes back for diagnosis of a drive line vibration. We wheel it out the back and go through the motions but it's the same box and worse than before. I dust off the original quote, put the customers name on it (oddly, he has the same surname as the previous owner and looks just like him, in fact he was even wearing the same Nike hoody). He then produces an RAC used car warranty document with a three week old start date.
Potential customer talks for hours with a salesman about a Voyager, books weekend test drive, gets it, returns car with 400+ extra miles on the clock. Doesn't buy. Two months later rocks up at dealership with a car that he bought in a car supermarket for warranty work. Is pissed off because I won't authorise it because it's stuff that's "broken" not "faulty", interior light unit smashed in half, crack in a headlight?
Before I worked in the trade I was all too prepared to listen to the "motor trade shark" tales but I now know that the general populace has a generally fixed percentage of w
kers. Some work in the car trade, some don't. But the percentage is about the same.But the salesmen who wear pointy shoes thing? Can't forgive that. There's no excuse for that.
You try to see the good in people, but no matter how hard I tried, sometimes some customers were intent on convincing you they were crooks.
Triumph Man said:
73mark said:
Triumph Man said:
Fair play to you actually, and bonus points for getting "renege" into your response. Not that chavvyboi will know what that means...
Renege go back on a promise. Good enough for you.
Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff