Crissy78

I have a question... I just received my first survey from Acura about my buying/leasing experience at my dealer and asking about how I feel about the quality of the vehicle. Of course I've written a lengthy letter to go with the survey about this paint mismatch problem on my WDP and for everyone else who has mismatched paint and is pissed about it.

Does anyone read these, or is it a waste of time? I just wonder if the dealer really gets these responses since I did mark "yes" to the "May we share your responses with the dealer" question.

boxstock

Yes they get them and your salesperson's pay will be docked because of your review.

boxstock

csmeance

ifit is good, they get paid the same, if somewhat bad, they get docked money off pay and if realy bad with horrible on the list, the salesmen can get fired.

Crissy78

Are you serious? My comments are focused more on my problems with the car (the paint) and the time it's taking to fix it.

I was careful to NOT make bad comments about my salesperson because none of this is his fault. My salesperson was actually great!

I did receive a call right after I bought the car, I did not give any
"10's" on the phone survey but I did give high scores. My salesperson emailed me asking why I gave 8's and 9's. I said because no one can ever provide a perfect experience in my opinion.

Are Acura salespeople paid comission?

boxstock

The sales people get docked for anything less than 10. If you gave less than 10 then you weren't satisfied and they didn't do their job to your standards, which apparently is perfection.

boxstock

Crissy78

In most cases, everyone will not give you a perfect 10 on everything you do. It sounds like to me their system has a problem, not me. My standards are not a 10, I just will never give a 10. A 8 or 9 in a good score in my opinion.

csmeance

well acura theory is that if the salesmen does not give you his best, then he should not get paid for the best. At the dealership my uncle works at, he gets paid about 150-300 dollars per car sold. This may seem low, but think about the dealer paying for the car and other stuff, what is left over. Time to time, they may get a bonus like selling the most cars in a month or breaking car selling records, but that is it. BTW, he is internet sales manager.

Crissy78

I feel that they should give me the best quality in my paint as possible, therefore their survey is going to reflect my opinions about that. I'll be sure to make it very clear that those comments have nothing to do with my salesman. Thanks for the info!

rbf351

good luck when you need service from them

Crissy78

That would be very unprofessional of them. We are not 2 year olds. Acura shouldn't send surveys if they don't want the truth. If they painted cars with matching paint then my survey would be all 10's.

darksom1

LOL! No, I think it is more that you are being naive about a practice that has been going on for some time. My thinking is that they are merely looking at whether they eat or starve (when it comes to their survey results), not overly how you feel about the whole thing. It may not be right, but it is definitely what they do. Just like there are no perfect scores...there is no perfect world with perfect people in it. Funny how that takes you right back where you are with the survey right? Neverending cycle, you just gotta know how to play the game.

Crissy78

How should I play the game, how am I supposed to answer the questions? Tell them what they want to hear or be truthful? Or just not fill it out?

They should make quality cars, now there's a thought!

EnvisionTL

you may want to try to explain your concerns to the dealership and they may (or may not) try to help you out in exchange for a "perfect" score. You may even get an incentive or two (free oil changes, free minor servicing, or they may even hep you out with warranty issues). This is not what is the right thing to do (defeats the purpose of these surveys) but it has been reported by a few of our members on the board that this indeed works.

Crissy78

I'm currently in the middle of dealing with the problem right now (4 weeks today they've had my car).
I will try this though, would be nice to get a free oil change or something. Thanks!

rshanahan

Isn't that considered bribery?? They should take the scores and if there is a trend to poor ratings then they should fix it. Like any survey, the top and bottom 10% or so should be eliminated and the rest averaged into the real service a dealer or the manufacturer is providing to the customer. There are always folks that are never satisfied and will give poor ratings, additionally, like noted above, dealer bribery will yield all 10's, skewing the REAL opinion of the transaction.

If the manufacturing quality has a trend of problems, they should go to manufacturing and resolve it, not dock pay from the dealer that sold it to you. Isn't that what the surveys are for?

If you ding the dealer then dock pay (if they feel that will help) but really they should ELIMINATE the problem if there is a trend on one sales person, and it it's consistant with multiple sales folks, ELIMINATE the management. If the bad scores are about the management, ELIMINATE the dealership...PERIOD. Oh, wait, we're talking Acura and not Lexus.. scratch that... just slap their hand and continue, business as usual!

Just my opinion. I was able to give good ratings on my survey. I know for sure I didn't give 10's across the board. No one ever called me back whining though.

Rick

Crissy78

Thank you for this post. I was planning to write about the quality of my car, not about the people at the dealership. However when I start wondering if it will come back to haunt me I start to change my mind. I had a great salesman and honestly the service dept is trying to get my paint fixed, it's just really unpredictable.

I would hate to write about the car, then the salesperson get a slap on the hand just because the quality of Acura product is not up to par. I would hope that they would welcome my feedback as I always try to approach things in a professional manner. Also, I hope that Acura realizes that the class of people who "usually" purchase their vehicles will offer them negative feedback only when it is true and not out of anger at a salesperson.

x03BlackAccV6x

The surveys are actually done by JD Powers and have a huge impact on dealership personel. I don't think it's fair for the dealership staff the way it's set up right now but it's something we have to deal with. By the way, anything lower than a 10 is failing. If you give a 9 as a score it actually translates to a 75 out of 100...why JD Powers holds us to this godly standard I don't know. A lot of times people think they are giving us a good grade with a 9 but didn't give us the 10 because we didn't give them a happy ending or something like that but they don't realize the 9 is considered a "C" and unacceptable. And by the way, we are not allowed to explain the scoring system to customers either and neither will JD powers while surveying you.

jimmyl729

No, those Acura corporate surveys are independent from JD Power surveys. JD Power surveys will ALWAYS have JD Power printed everywhere on the questionnaire. They survey every brand that has enough market share.

The rating scale of 1-10 in JD Power surveys (based on all aspects of the experience, whether it is sales experience, service, or anything) are all calculated into an index model regression, which then adds up into a score out of 1000. Then the rank list is compiled based on the total score of each make. In 2006 for example, Lexus was ranked #1 with 912.

Whether JD Power results has impact on dealership personnel is up to the OEM. If service advisor is a major issue in the results, or if OEM rewards dealerships based on study's results, then yes. But not all OEMs uses JD Power as a standard to reward its dealers, but most use the results to compare with their competing brand.

The OP's long side letter complaint of the paint quality most likely is going to be ignored, just like how I've received a lot of letters/certificate of death/repair invoice from customers, but we can't really do anything about it, because we can't quantify them. Any presentable data to the OEM comes directly from the questions, which are quantitative data that are representative of the population.

x03BlackAccV6x

You are completely wrong.

American Honda sublets it's "independent" surveys to JD powers who then gives American Honda a report base on a two part survey (electronic and/or phone).

The phone survey is the prelimenary part and a have minor impact on dealership and personel ratings. The OEM does not do much more than provide this information to the dealers in great detail which then leaves each individual dealer to reward and/or punish dealership staff based on performance. The reason for this being is that each dealership is individually owned. On occaison there are "spiffs" given out as rewards base on ACE performance from the OEM but is only applicable to the sales staff for the most part. Sevice personel get rewarded by individual performance based on tenure, ace index, and training completeion. Rewards are not an extra couple bucks on your next paycheck either for the service guys.

The problem with the phone surveys is the scoring in which the staff get graded on. A quote from the Dealer Operations Manual..."Daily alerts are generated from the phone survey in the form of an Opportunity
Bulletin Worksheet (OBW) if the client answers 1-4 in overall satisfaction with their service
experience or a negative verbatim. Opportunity Bulletin Worksheets will be posted to the OBW Log". When contacted the consumer is given the option to score the dealership on a scale of 1-10. Now the dealer then gets graded on a scale of 1-4 from being given a grade on 1-10 scale from the consumer. This gives anything other than a perfect score a 75 or less out of 100. Now these are considered to be the "heads up" surveys so that the dealer can contact the customer and resolve the issue on a non-perfect phone survey prior to the customer recieving the electronic survey. The reason for this is to avoid the more negative impact of the electronic survey who's grading is given out to consumers who may have had no prior experience with dealer or OEM products/service. This information is published by JD Powers.

Upon completeing the phone survey you must then agree to participate in an electronic survey which is more detailed. each question on the e-survey has a specific weight (levels of importance to clients):

¯ Service Initiation: 21%
¯ Service Consultant: 17%
¯ Service Delivery: 23%
¯ Quality: 39%

These are more accurate and the dealer is graded on a scale of 1-100 from being graded on a scale of 1-100 from the consumer.


The survey will not be ignored and may cost someone their job based on an unclear scoring system presented to the consumer in a way that gives the impression on no importance. You yourself have that impression. The issue should have been taken up with the OEM and not entered on the survey given to reflect the dealership/dealer staff rating.

ankur914

^^Honda Surveys are crap anyway...from the questions they ask/1-10 scale used to the personal information they collect....For it to be a true method of process improvement (Both at the management/personnel level and the manufacturing level), they should protect the consumer by keeping in annoymous and ask appropriate questions aimed at improvement. Addiionally, the scoring system should not have to be explained in detail to the consumer so to keep the customer's answers unbiased (if the scoring methods are told to the customer, that may introduce guilt to their answers where they will be more lenient when responding)...but they dont keep it annoymous, and rather collect personal information such as customer's salary...I kept those items blank on my paper survey...Read up on some posts people have placed here on AZ...they've actaully been harassed for giving 9/10's by the selling dealer!....NO dealer deserves a 10 unless he goes above and beyond, and most do not do that....Why give a 10 when he/she does an average job of selling the car (my dealer got upset at me when I asked him to pullout the only anthracite TL that was car-locked (similar to land-locked ) behind other TL's and was not accesible to view )? 10s should be reserved for those who outperform the rest, not for those who do just the average....In your (aimed to the general public, no one single person) yearly reviews at work, does your boss give you an excellent (aka 10/10) for working the required hours and doing the required work? Do i believe the scoring system and utilized scale is whack...Yes (1-10 scale is vague and is not consisent between any two people)...Do i believe that a dealer should lose his job if customers rate him/her badly....ONLY if there is a trend of bad reviews for that dealer... Should the dealer be docked pay...NO, the entire dealership as a whole should be punished cuz management at the dealership is not doing their job. Improvement occurs at the foundation, aka management. Sorry for the rant, but statistically speaking, Honda puts too much emphasis on their surveys when they are not appropriately created to be used as statistical tools for analysis.

darksom1

Hahaha...so THAT's what you meant when you were talking about the service before? (in the parking thread) Yeah, a lot of people think that we are abused after we buy our car from Acura. And a lot of them are not educated on the scoring system. I gave 10s on my survey, but I let the dealership know about stuff I didn't like and they took care of me. I really haven't had a problem with my dealership. Should I be saying yet? I will say this though...if at a restaurant, I get shitty service, the tip reflects it! I see no reason why I wouldn't do the same at a dealer unless they made good on their mistake later! Basically, my survey will always state 10s, as long as my car service/perks say "10"! LOL! Now THAT's the real world expectation you should be looking for Crissy78!

x03BlackAccV6x

Well my point is that as a consumer people need to understand that a perfect score should be given if the dealer did a good job. People's perception is that nothing is perfect and they can find something wrong with anything. By expressing this your giving a failing grade by not giving a perfect score even though the consumer was satisfied overall. I believe the dealer/staff are more deserving of a perfect score for doing a good job than a failing score just because it wasn't perfect which nothing ever is.

ankur914

No, you're right....If the dealer puts in his work, s/he should get paid for it. Even if he does the average, he should get paid for it, as long as he doesnt piss the customer off. But the average score shouldnt dock his pay....Thats not fair. I think after so many "average" claims against a dealerSHIP, the management of that dealership should be auditted for its practices and see how management can strive for more customer satisfaction. Also, the main thing is, the scoring system is completely stupid..A 9/10 is very exemplary score, and the way the survey is designed, it makes it seems so tooo! However, it is evaluated as otherwise. This is why i said the survey in general is a bad tool of evaluation...I completely agree with what your are saying and the point you are trying to make.

darksom1

Oh, I was just kidding before (sorry I didn't make that plain). I would never give less than a 10 unless they just didn't do what they said they would do. I was like that before I had knowledge of the "system". I still want my perks tho!

You hear that Rosenthal? I'll give you a "10" if you save me a "Ben"! LOL!

x03BlackAccV6x

I'm also a little sensitive about the subject because I get beat up on a daily basis because of these stupid surveys. I assure you I excell at my job and my customers are always happy and return on a daily basis for service. There's nothing worse than doing this and being rewarded with a "C"!

neuronbob

To the OP: after many car purchases, I've finally learned how to play the game. At my current dealer, after I bought my first Acura 5 1/2 years ago, I filled out my survey with 10's and commented that although my sales experience was exemplary (which it was), I didn't like being asked to fill out all 10's all the time. So I haven't gotten that kind of survey since with the two cars I've bought since then.

I have gotten service surveys by phone and since I'm treated well, I give 10s and don't comment further--that's how the game is played and it does have an effect on your relationship with the dealer/service department. When I have an issue (not a common occurence in my experience), I take it directly to the service rep or manager and it's usually addressed at that level, and quickly.

With that said, with a major f-up leading to a problem with your car.....let 'er rip with the negativity.

EnvisionTL

I do not think I've given my dealership anything less than a 10 on the surveys. They treated me very courteously when I stepped in their dealership (Lexus ignored us). I walked in with a friend of mine just to browse and they greeted us within the first 2 minutes. At Lexus I stood around for 20 mins and NOONE said anything to us. This was back in Nov 05. After I purchased my TL, I went back to get the license plate hole covers. The salesperson ( not the original I bought the car from) spent 20+ mins sifting through those manilla envelopes they keep each car info in to find me two little plugs. The only time I had a questionable visit was when I was not paged to pick up my vehicle (I was in the waiting room with the gf). We expressed our dismay with the service tech manager and he apologized for it. I believe that the dealerships should have a chance to better themselves before getting punished. I agree with everyone on the fact that the Acura surveys are poorly designed to rate a dealership. But it seems that even a good dealership can have a few bad incidents that may turn people sour.

Zapp Brannigan

When I bought mine last month the sales manager came out to watch the salesman give me the orientation (you know, "here's the keys, here's the owner's manual etc.) The salesman was new and forgot a few things and the manager would interject with the missing info. Well, anyway, he happened to mention to me that when Acura called with their survey that if I gave anything less than a ''10'' the salesman would lose all commission. This sounded like a bunch of bull to me and I figured the sales manager was trying to inflate the scores.

When Acura did call I specifically asked if this was true. She would not give me a straight answer so I told her that if it was a lie that the sales manager gets a 1 for being a liar. If it was true then the sales manager got a ''10'' and Acura itself got a 1 for wasting my time with meaningless surveys whose only purpose served was to cheat their employees out of their earned wages. She went through it very quickly and I doubt that she even recorded my scores. But it still tick me off a little. If they really cared what people have to say about the experience they wouldn't 'extort' a high number from them.

Crissy78

As I stated before. My sales experience was fine, all of my questions were addressed and the salesperon was patient with me making a decision. I wasn't real impressed with the person I signed the papers with, but I only had to be around that person a 15 minutes max. I didn't appreciate the pressure to purchase the Car Care Kit, etc.

My service experience has not been bad, they've never argued that their is a problem. It is just that the car has been brought back to me twice and the problem not fixed to an acceptable level. I've only driven my car 2 weeks out of the 6 weeks I've had it. So I think I have been VERY nice about the whole thing. It is a paint issue and I do want it done right, so I've tried to be understanding. Communication throughout this has been okay, although I did have to call the service manager myself and he was very polite about this issue.

If it's fixed right, soon I hope, My survey on the service will positive.

As for sales people...the only thing I hate is when a salesperson tells you to "call or email them if you have any questions about the car." You email, and wait a few days for a reply; however when you were looking to buy, they were "johnny on the spot" with returning emails. I guess it's just human nature to react like this, since after the sale is completed they already have your money!

Crissy78

[QUOTE=Zapp Brannigan] Well, anyway, he happened to mention to me that when Acura called with their survey that if I gave anything less than a ''10'' the salesman would lose all commission.
]

This explains why after the phone survey I got a very direct email from the salesperson about why I didn't answer all 10's for him. I guess he was pissed at me, it is a little unprofessional to send an email to the customer asking this (like jumping on them in a round about way). I won't buy Acura again anyways, thank God its a lease and I did get a low payment, I would like to try something outside of the Honda family for once. I have never had any other type of car.

ankur914

[QUOTE=Crissy78]
He should ask himself how he failed to provide you will "10" quality service, or at least should have rephrased it to say something like "We apologize that our service was not up to par with your expectations We would greatly appreciate it if you could spare a few moments to provide My dealership and me information on certain aspects on how we can make your purchasing/overall dealership experience more pleasurable next time around." Maybe its time for Acura employees to take up their concerns with Corporate instead of blaming their customers....Just my

jimmyl729

i dont know how i can be wrong when i've been working at jdpower for yrs doing auto syndicated/proprietary studies. perhaps you need to do some research on the difference between syndicated and proprietary studies.

bottomline is, anything you sent alongisde with the filled out survey, complaint letter repair invoice death certificate or whatever, will be disregarded. we only analyze response data, not deal with customer complaints. those should go to the OEM's customer care department.

x03BlackAccV6x

I didn't mention anything about customer complaints...and yes those do go through American Honda's customer service department.

geezer31

All the entries I've read seem to imply that the rating system is unique to Honda/Acura. I had exactly the same experience - the insistence on a 10 rating - when I bought a Toyota. This leads me to believe that this stupid practice is prevalent throughout the auto industry and not limited to any single brand of car.

ankur914

Very much seems like it.

Tech7427

you guys should really change the way you think of these surveys..

if i ever come across any one of you at your job and i need to fill out a survey ill be sure to f you over as well..

you know, csi surveys are everything for my job.. its either i eat or starve..

id watch what you say about rosenthal as well

Bearcat94

:WTF:

I've heard this before. So I'll say again, "Stop blaming the customer for Acura's Fucked up, Bullshit, dumb ass survey methodology".

If ACURA can't realize that there will always be some people who see "10" as unattainable perfection, why is that MY problem???

And while were at it: YOUR dealership signed the agreement with ACURA that allows this to take place. Go complain to the people that fucked you, not to us.

And what's with the "id watch what you say about rosenthal as well"? Rosenthal's gonna do what? Stop sending me survey's? Yippee!! Refuse service to AZ members? What? As far as I'm concerned Rosenthal Acura can kiss my ass.

Bearcat94

I just found that you're an Acura Technician. I had assumed sales.

Regardless, your vehicle knowledge could be a huge plus. But you gotta lose the attitude - instead of being mad about surveys or ridiculing someone because they don't understand ABS or how the Service Dept works, be friendly and educate them.




(Doesn't change my opion of ACURA's stupid Survey Scoring though.)

Tech7427

dont mind my drunken rage early in the AM.

if you were in my shoes and read what people say in these "surveys" then youd understand where i was coming from.

and yes, i hate the method they use for scoring us. we only as techs only have 3 questions in the survey that pertain to us, which is, thouroughness in furfilling your requests, quality of work performed on your acura and time it took to complete the repair..

i have a problem with the first question, i got fd up by the car wash team, if you can call them a team, but anyway they never vacuumed the trunk, so she gave ME a 7 on the survevy, yea, because im the one who washes the cars!!

i could go on and on and i completely agree with the clientel that the surveys are fucked up.

but i ask to just take into concideration next time you get a survey from service that you remember it isnt the technicians fault why parts go bad.

for instance, i did a 03 tl trans 2 weeks ago, a week later it came back for a 1-2 slip.

threw another trans in it. got a survey, quality of work went to a 7 because its my fault the trans was faulty.

they have to completey redo the survey method...

KJSmitty

My current career/profession involves performance, proficiency, and assessing processes/products that ultimately effect individuals lives. Bottom line, if I was to "play the game" as many contractors/artisans would like me to, people could die.

Sure the automotive /dealership arena isn't "always" that serious of a "game", but none-the-less I'm a straight shooter and call a turd a turd and a diamond a diamond. I fully agree that the so called quality/service questionnaires from either corporate or specific dealership are a joke. And if you haven't "read" before, I (previous career) worked at a dealership for 8+ years and dealt with them directly. I have purchased/had warranty work performed on numerous new vehicles since my time at a dealership, and have been over plenty of useless surveys. Knowing the effect on the specific dealership and employees, much subjectivity goes into the answering of each survey. BUT, I still grade accordingly.
The surveys that I truly despise are the ones originating from the specific dealership service/quality dept... Why? because NOT ONCE in my 25 years of filling them out or answering them over the phone did anyone from that dealership remotely question HOW they could "make right" what they obviously "didn't do right!"
As mentioned, in my line of work we perform numerous audits, assessments, "surveys" and/or evaluations... WHY one may ask??? To "trend" what is wrong and benchmark what is working. First thing you do is fix what you did wrong then change the process (or human factor) so it doesn't happen again. This isn't the reason for surveys at a dealership - sure they may say it is but they don't fool many. They are completely for overall "data" that reflects them as a "great" dealership, which in turn doesnt benefit the customer at all, only the dealership. In all reality, giving dealerships "10s" when they don't deserve it may help you but it hurts all those who reference the "data" and choose that dealership under false pretenses etc..

Do I like the fact that a survey could "hurt" someones financial or job security? No. But will I assess someone/a dealership inappropriately for that reason? No again...

I look at it both ways, objectively I answer surveys appropriately to say what needs to be said and to possibly get what I need. On the other hand, if you work at a dealership, regardless of what department, you need to understand "the game" you placed yourself in - then "play" it accordingly.


**As for Crissy 78, and/or anyone with a blank survey in their hands,

What has worked well for me in situations were I had service/sales issues: Take the blank survey into your dealership and explain to them that you want to "assess" them as perfect (IE-10s), yet you still have a problem/issues that need to be resolved. Be completely professional and sincere - nothing wrong with dangling the survey as "bait" in order to get them to do what both of you know is right. A "non-perfect" survey will hurt them more than you. A dealership could care less once the damage has been done by a poor survey. But they will usually work quite hard to ensure you send in a perfect one under these circumstances.

Best of luck with your paint mismatch Crissy