[etinifni]

I've had my car into the BMW dealership a couple times over the past few weeks and when I got an email survey from BMW I answered honestly. The next day I got this text from my SA:

[etinifni]

Should I have not been honest when I filled out the survey?

[STR3T]

Originally Posted by etinifni

Should I have not been honest when I filled out the survey?

Only if you have another dealer close by you can switch over to

What does reck the ticket and "ro" mean?

But yeah, if they're not doing what they're getting paid to do...be honest.

[Big Nodge]

I'm amazed at what car dealerships have done to these surveys. My BMW dealer hasn't asked me for one yet (and at this point they probably shouldn't), but I've had multiple people, both service and sales, at different Audi dealerships directly tell me "please fill out the survey and give me all 10s, it's really important to me to get all 10s" and one even said "if you aren't going to give me all 10s just don't do the survey".

So they've made them into a complete and total waste of time.

And in this case, to remedy your concerns they think that sending that text is going to help? Is that even English? Yes it's a service adviser and we shouldn't expect elegant prose here, but I mean basic grammar and punctuation?

I'm about to end a pretty painful BMW purchase process and it continues to amaze me the level of service and basic competence that is considered acceptable when buying a fairly high-end automobile.

[fecurtis]

I give all 10's. BMW isn't the only one who does this, it's an industry wide practice. If someone even gets a 9 in something, their pay and what not are affected. Even if it's something beyond their control, like there was spilled coffee in the waiting area or something so you dinged them for that in the survey.

Pretty stupid thing but I do find I consistently get good service when I come in so I continue giving 10's.

[spiff56747]

Originally Posted by fecurtis

I give all 10's. BMW isn't the only one who does this, it's an industry wide practice. If someone even gets a 9 in something, their pay and what not are affected. Even if it's something beyond their control, like there was spilled coffee in the waiting area or something so you dinged them for that in the survey.

Pretty stupid thing but I do find I consistently get good service when I come in so I continue giving 10's.

In that case, they should only have the option to give 10's for everything. Why does 1-9 even exist ?

[335BOY]

Originally Posted by spiff56747

In that case, they should only have the option to give 10's for everything. Why does 1-9 even exist ?

Agreed. Its a totally flawed system. Rarely do they get accurate feedback.

[tex2670]

Originally Posted by etinifni

Should I have not been honest when I filled out the survey?

Is there a place on the survey for grammar?

[WHL102]

Personally, I like to be upfront and honest on these surveys because I think it's important that the dealership and MFG. receive REAL feedback. I'm also pretty critical about customer service, in general.

In reality, I gave my salesperson 10's because the poor kid was only on the job for about 6 months. I don't really want to mess with their job security/salary. Same goes for the SA's. Plus, with service advisors they will see your survey and I wouldn't put it past some of these guys to snub you or find other ways to make you pay in the future.

I will say, I gave a HORRIBLE survey for one SA at Mercedes and she had been fired when I went back a few weeks later.


Also, OP. I'd find a new SA. If he can't be bothered to spell check and add punctuation, he probably doesn't want to be bothered with a lot of other things.

[Hallen]

Yep. I got the same thing. I wasn't fully satisfied because it seemed like they just gave me an answer to get rid of me. I researched the answer and found it to be incorrect. So, I gave them a 2 on part of the survey. I gave them 8's and 9's on everything else. The head SA called me about my "extremely low" survey. They really still have not resolved my question.

I doubt I'll fill out another survey with them. I don't like people pestering me when I don't want them to. I'm not going to gift them a good score to keep them from bothering me, and I'm not going to give them a bad score because I know they'll bother me about it and I won't get friendly service the next time I go in.

I think it's really bad that the individual survey goes directly to employees within the dealership. It should be aggregated and only handled by certain people, probably not in that dealership. If you handle it like they are, it leads to an immediate inflation of results and it all becomes meaningless. A 10 is now average and anything less is failure. It's a stupid system.

[mr shickadance]

these surveys are a good example of something that started with good intentions but now has just gone off the rails.

these surveys could have useful infromation, the problem is that corporate auto manufacture's 'expect' all service advisors to earn 10's across the board. Then they tout that they have the best customer satisfaction in the next block of TV ads.

the reality is that if SA's don't get 10's down the board there pay is docked. You mess with someone's pay, you are going to very quickly find out how people get around the system. I mean it's ludicrous to imagine you could please everyone, and frankly, some people do not think giving out a 10 is achievable, so right off the bat you are fighting an uphill battle.

if you get shit service, by all means drop the hammer, but otherwise, you are affecting this guys paycheck at the end of the week, so is the fact that they didn't say 'good morning' the right way enough to knock them from a 10 to a 9?

[BEM-S4]

I once got into a verbal altercation with an SA at VW, almost came to blows it was such a bad screaming match they closed the whole place down for a couple of hours. Long story short he got fired. In any event - that was a fun survey to complete.

[Bob in IL]

I took our BMW in for routine service today and when I picked it up, the SA didn't say anything about the survey, anything less than a 10 let us know etc., which surprised me. On the receipt for the work, there is a sticker indicating I'll be receiving a survey from BMW, and if there is anything less than a 10 call them and give them a chance to make it right etc. I'd never seen this approach before, but IMO it's not a bad way to do it.

[chiefneil]

The survey works like this:
10: Pass
1-9: Fail

Dealerships get very worked up about "passing" (all 10's) because it affects how much money they get from BMW. Presumably the dealer's owner or GM sees the scores and since it directly affects his pocketbook you all know what flows downhill from there.

BMW would have to be blind to not know what's going out there at the dealer level with regards to survey arm-twisting. Given that the system has been in place for decades, I'd say they're perfectly happy with how it works and don't care about honest feedback (BMW, not the dealers).