Edmunds.com | Inside Line | Auto Observer Your Account | Help | Directory
You are here:
![[F]](http://a332.g.akamai.net/f/332/936/12h/www.edmunds.com/media/townhall/webxicons/site.gif){kind=small}
Forums
Smart Shopper Stories from the Sales Frontlines
44395 messages, Last post on Jul 04, 2009 at 6:58 PM
You are in the Smart Shopper Forum. Your Hosts are kirstie_h & tidester
|
|
|---|---|
|
Replying to: mac24 (Jul 22, 2006 8:25 am) Not a chance...We all get spoken to like that. I have seen worse in other shops. |
|
|
|
|
Replying to: deserth8r (Jul 24, 2006 1:59 pm) There is normally an inverse relationship between the amount of time spent with a customer and the amount of money you make. Full list sales are normally pretty quick and painless but mini deals are almost always slow going and very painful. It really sucks when you sell a 45,000 dollar vehicle to someone and only get 75 dollars on it then they trash you on the survey so you don't even get any bonus money either. CSI scores are even more important for mose european makes as the CSI score is tied into the bonus money the dealership recives as a percentage of the vehicles invoices that are sold for the month. European brands typically don't have a holdback percentage like domestics and asian brands do. A bad CSI score means you don't get any money back from the manufacturer after a sale. Then you have land rover that not only ties that money into CSI scores they also tie it into audits that they do once a quarter. Get a bad enough audit score, some of which is entirely subjective to the individual auditor, and you will lose as much as a third of that money. |
|
|
|
|
Replying to: tsgeisel (Jul 24, 2006 1:44 pm) "Wow. I had no idea the CSI survey affected so much. I sure hope it did - I was very unhappy with the dealership I bought my last car at, and not so happy with the salesman I dealt with (and way less happy with others that I dealt with at an earlier time), and my survey reflected that - but only in an appropriate manner. I like the idea that perhaps the dealership was hurt because of a poor CSI survey." |
|
|
|
|
Replying to: british_rover (Jul 22, 2006 4:18 pm) Ouch! But consider this...Especially back home in Los Angeles. How many of these vehicles actually leave the pavement? The Rovers are clearly more prestigious and probably do a better job in the field but I sure love my Commanders. And there is a price point difference. The fact that we can't seem to sell any of them has them in the mid-$20,000s which is not a bad deal. There is one Rover tooling around Wichita these days. I admit to some envy when I see it.
|
|
|
Replying to: moparchrisks (Jul 24, 2006 2:18 pm) The brits and aussies use land rovers as their military vehicles, and from what I have seen they are very capable off road. I imagine these are a little different than the civilian version though. |
|
|
Gotta jump in here. I totally understand the correlation between good CSI surveys and bonus money. However, it is my opinion that the survey process is flawed from the start. Isn't the whole point of the survey to figure out where things could go better? "Continual improvement" is the term that comes to mind. If every survey comes back with all 5's, how is anyone supposed to know if the buying and F&I process really could be improved? I don't believe for a moment that every salesperson is perfect in every transaction he/she is involved in. Yet, they all want perfect scores and will go to great lengths (bribery, anyone?) to achieve it. I just bought a Saturn last month and the survey came in the mail a couple of weeks ago. I took a long time filling it out, and did give a couple of "4" scores in areas where I thought our salesman could improve. It's my job as a customer to be honest about the transaction and to try to show the salesman or dealership where they could do better, not to kowtow to someone's need for extra money. Same for the service survey .. when they do a good job and fix the problems the first time out, they get 5's. However, I just had my wife's car in the shop 3 times to fix the same problem and when the survey comes for that, I'll mark it accordingly. As an individual who is surveyed for the job he does (though not compensated for the scores), I know how much it sucks to get a low grade. In fact, just today I had my boss talk to me about a "1" score that I got recently .. for a case that dealt with a product I don't even support! Burned me up for a few minutes, but I got over it. Having said all that, I think that the story cluedweasel shared with us seems out of whack. The customer in this case drove every car on the lot, asked for (and got, IMO) really good pricing and still dinged the dealership because of some inner need to never hand out perfect scores, no matter the situation. If that were me (and, trust me, that would never be me) and I spent 10+ hours selecting a new car, I would have given clued all 5's for the amount of work he put into the deal.
|
|
|
|
|
I think it's unfortunate the the survey scores are so all-or-nothing. I know that surveys are that way, so I tend to always score them 100% unless I have a real problem, but it basically means that customers are in a bind, unable to give meaningful feedback unless they're really pissed off. On my last car purchase, I had a fine time with the salesman but I had some issues with the finance guy. I gave the salesman all perfect scores, but not the finance guy. I hope that I didn't hurt the salesman with my scores on the financing portion. (Any idea whether I might have? This was a Honda dealership.)
|
|
|
Replying to: michaell (Jul 24, 2006 2:27 pm) You're right, it is. It's a blunt tool disguised as a fine instrument that the manufacturer uses to beat the dealer with. I would find it very frustrating to have my renumeration controlled by such a device. The worst part is that a salesman who may have been the very epitome of honesty and truthfulness throughout the transaction, then has to ask the customer to lie on their behalf when filling out the survey, which leaves a bad taste for customer and salesman alike. |
|
| In my past experience, it's been the F&I guys that try to slip something in to the paperwork. "Oh gee, how'd that get there, I'm sorry." I've had to mark down my responses simply because the F&I guy tried to pull something, even though the sales person was excellent. | |
|
|
|
Replying to: tamaraster (Jul 24, 2006 2:32 pm) |
|
You are here:
Forums
Smart Shopper Stories from the Sales Frontlines
New? Join Now!
Forum Tools
Search Forums
Browse by Vehicle
Browse by Board
Browse by Topic
Today's Chats
