This sounds like an old ignorant bigot who says I knew so and so did such
and such, so all them people are just alike. They are all alike, I haven't
seen anything to make me change my mind about them.



"Gould 0738" wrote in message
...
Chuck, I'm beginning to get the feeling that you are looking at Powers
from an insiders perspective who has been burned in one way or another
by negative survey results sometime in the past.

Close.

Never burned, but I have seen the shenanigans first hand.

Take the dealer who sent in a "change of address" for each customer
shortly
after the sale. Mysteriously, all of his customers seemed to move to a
post
office box number after buying a Brand X car. This guy went from so-so in
the
satisfaction department to the glowing superstar of the district
overnight.
Every single report was "completely satisfied" with just about everything.
As a
result, his dealership got bonus shipments of models that were in short
supply.
Mfgrs have been known use the results to determine allocation to dealers.
The guy finally got busted after about a year and a half. Disgruntled F&I
manager blew the whistle about the scam. I understand they threatened to
pull
his franchise over the whole incident, but the bottom line was the guy was
selling cars like crazy. (You would be too, if your outstanding
"satisfaction
rating" earned you a disproportionate number of the hard to get models)

Take the very common practice of the "free tank of gas if you'll let us
help
you fill out the survey." Get the customer to bring the survey in, and
agree
to address any of the issues the customer would otherwise mark as less
than
satisfactory.

Then factor in the aspect of human nature that the guy who is truly
satisfied
may or may not have anything to say about his experience. The guy who is
ticked
off most definitely will. I have set in CSI reviews with factory reps
demanding
to know why the dealership's rating had slipped a couple of points in a
month.
Upon examing the individual returns, we'd find that maybe 125 people were
generally pleased and half a dozen or so hadn't (apparently) even bothered
to
read the individual questions. In many cases, they just took a pen and
would
draw a vertical line straight through all the vertically stacked
"completely
unsatisfied" comments. When we'd investigate just why the customer was so
unhappy, about half the time it was because the factory had screwed
something
up in the assembly of the car and that particular part had just failed the
day
before the guy got the survey. Even though we'd be fixing it free,
providing a
loaner, etc, some of these people felt that they had to "get even" for the
inconvenience. As a result, questions like, "How would you rate your sales
person's professionalism?" would get marked "completely unsatisfactory!"

I bought a new Volvo this year, from a local dealer who sells a lot of
luxury
car lines. Volvo is the least expensive trademark they carry. (I bought
the
least expensive Vovlo made). I was amused to see that nothing has changed
in
the survey department. At delivery time, they stressed just how important
the
survey I was going to receive was to the dealership.

After I had the car a few days, I got a call from the sales manager asking
whether I had any problem recommending the salesperson. "No, the
salesperson
was pretty decent. No problem." The sales manager went on to tell me that
a
significant portion of the salesman's income was a bonus that was
determined by
how well each survey rated his performance. Bring on the guilt trip.

The day before I got the survey, I got a letter above the signature of one
of
the upper level managers in the dealerhship organization. It was almost a
plea.
"If there's any reason why you cannot mark us completley satisfactory in
every
category, please contact us before you complete the survey and let us try
to
make some arrangement to accomodate your concerns."

The opinions expressed by the customers are quite often influenced, and
in
some cases very strongly and deliberately, by the selling dealer.

As far as the questions in the survey:
I have sat on dealer advisory councils where the wording of survey
questions
and the order in which they should appear on the CSI survey have both been
discussed.
The results of those discussions certainly weren't binding on the survey
company, but somebody sure thought it was important to solicit our
opinions. No
way in heck that anybody could say the subject, wording, and order of the
questions isn't ever a topic for discussion. There isn't a true "arm's
length"
distance between the survey company and its customers (the manufacturers)
that
would be required for the survey to be objective.




It has now been a number of years since these experiences, but I see
nothing
that would lead me to suspect that the survey companies have changed
tactics.


Perhaps no
more so than the marine press with their well known penchant for
writing puff pieces about favored advertisers.

The most blatant puff pieces ever written were never presented as
objective,
scientific research. Just a matter of opinion.