It was just about four years ago that I found myself writing a series of blogs on “The Gimp Goes Shopping” that would prove to be among my most popular posts in my early days.
They were the “car blogs,” a series of posts I wrote about my search for a used vehicle in Central Indiana. I learned a couple of valuable lessons by writing these blogs – 1) Most Central Indiana auto dealers do monitor the web for news & views about area car dealers and 2) This blog has proven to be a therapeutic outlet for the often stressful journey towards buying a car.
As a brief recap, I found myself so angry at Blossom Chevrolet that I swore I’d never go back. I haven’t.
I found myself incredibly irritated by a “hard sell” approach at Andy Mohr Nissan.
I didn’t buy from Ray Skillman Kia, but I found myself impressed with their approach. I’d previously bought a vehicle, probably my best ever vehicle, from Skillman and kept them on my short list of potential dealers.
I had a few other encounters but, in the end, I found myself at Tom Roush Lincoln Mazda Mercury’s used car lot in Westfield Indiana. While the process of buying the vehicle was positive and I obtained exactly the financing I’d sought, the car I bought from Roush ended up being a piece of crap and, quite honestly, that nixes them from being on my short list this time around.
During my car buying journey four years ago, one of the dealers who responded to my blog posts was Hare Chevrolet, a Noblesville, Indiana car dealer rather famous locally for their strong focus on being particularly friendly to the female buyer. Of course, it probably helps to be co-owned by two females.
But, I digress.
I’ve long been impressed with their ads and have heard positives (and negatives) before. However, they aren’t exactly convenient for me and every time I’d checked out their website nothing had proven to be particularly interesting. However, the person who’d contacted me was so completely enthusiastic (I silently sensed their sense of gloating at my rather scathing reviews of some of their competitors) that I vowed the next time around that I would give good ole’ Hare Chevrolet a chance – as an added bonus, I’d noticed on their website that they do work quite intentionally with accessible vehicles which, of course, I do require.
So, a few weeks ago I began scouring websites and doing what I affectionately call “drive thrus” of local dealers.
I have a few pet peeves when it comes to auto dealers:
- I hate it when you give me “the motion” – You know the one? Where you come out of the showroom and stand at the edge of the lot and basically say “Come over here” with your finger. Um, no. I don’t think so. If I wanted to talk to you, I would. This is what happened at Sharp Cars of Indy on Pendleton Pike. (As an aside: I have to chuckle. My other pet peeve involves spelling/editing. I drove by Sharp at one point and their big banner out from had a major typo on it. I mean, seriously. If I can’t trust you to check your banners, why would I trust you to check a vehicle you’re selling me?).
- I also hate it when dealers, quite intentionally, block their lots in such a way that you can’t possibly do a “drive thru” without encountering a sales person. I know. I know. They’re in it to sell cars, but I can still be irritated by it. While I will give some credit to the sales person, Jeff, for not being overly high pressure, it just irritates the heck out of me that I have to park my car and get out of my car at Bob Rohrman’s Eastside Hyundai on East Washington Street. This obviously creates the obligatory face-to-face encounter (To Jeff’s credit, when I said “Let me look first” he did), but more importantly it’s a pain in the butt as a customer in a wheelchair. While I had requested follow-up by e-mail since there wasn’t a vehicle I wanted on the day I visited, Jeff texted instead. I will admit I found this a bit bothersome, but overall this was one of my better experiences.
- I also get really irritated when it’s obvious that someone isn’t listening. I ventured over to Butler Fiat to check out the Fiat 500, a car that continues to strike my fancy. This was, so far, one of my most serious encounters because if that car had proven to be wheelchair friendly there’s a pretty good chance I’d have bought it. LOVE those cars. Unfortunately, while the back seat is sufficient enough to hold a wheelchair I found that the space between the driver’s seat and the back seat was insufficient for actually getting a wheelchair into the car. I was hugely bummed, but asked the salesperson if they had any other 2-door vehicles with automatic transmission. Of course, I explained a bit more about my price range. The next three cars he tried to show me were all four door vehicles, because he thought they made sense for a wheelchair. I wanted to say “So, were you listening?” or “So, you’re valuing your opinion over that of the customer who has been IN the wheelchair for his entire adult life?” When you toss in the fact that Butler Fiat is fairly new and HORRIBLY inaccessible for wheelchair using customers, I had no real desire to see them end up with my cash.
- It also seems like every single time I start looking for a vehicle, I end up finding at least one sales person who is just plain obnoxious. This encounter happened at Ray Skillman Kia, where I’d done a quick drop in because I do have a friend who absolutely loves her Kia. I asked a simple question “Do you have any 2-door Kia vehicles?” to which I got the response “I’m sure we do. I can’t think right now of what it is…Let’s go inside and I’ll get the material.” To this, I responded that I didn’t really have time to go inside right now (which was true). This went back and forth a few times at which point the sales person said “Well, for as long as you’ve been talking you could have come inside and gotten the material.” To this, I responded “I hope you realize you just blew a sale.” I have to admit that this is my one and only negative encounter with Skillman, but it was huge for me.
But, I suppose I should also really get back to the Hare Chevrolet encounter. Because I am in a wheelchair, I tend to do a lot of research online rather than dragging my butt out to every car lot out there. So, I’d been watching the Hare website quite a bit and finally found a vehicle in which I was particularly interested. The Hare website makes it very clear that they do have “internet specialists.” I take this to mean that they are comfortable with internet inquiries and e-mail communications.
Think again.
As is fairly customary, you click on a vehicle and then have the option of submitting for additional information or, as Hare puts it, “Get Sale Price.” To me, this implies that, perhaps, the vehicle either has an internet price or a sales price lower than the marked price (If you visit the website within certain hours, you also get the pleasure of dealing with a customer service “pop-up” that allows you to immediately ask questions). In order to submit for information, you MUST provide first and last name, phone number, and e-mail. There is also a space for comments. In the comment area, I asked a couple basic questions about the vehicle in question and I stressed that I have a hard time taking calls during the day because of my job and I would prefer e-mail contact initially. As this was a late night inquiry, I was well aware that I wouldn’t receive any response until the next day.
So, what happens?
I’m sitting in my cubicle at work the next day when, you guessed it, I look down and realize that my phone is ringing. I ignore it as I always do during my work day but, at lunch, I check my messages and realize that they’ve called and left me a message.
“Hmmm. That’s a bit Irritating,” I think to myself. By mid afternoon, they’d called again.
No e-mail.
By late afternoon, however, I get an e-mail response and think to myself “Finally!” However, instead of answering my very specific questions they completely neglect to even mention the vehicle about which I’d inquired and instead give me a generic “When can you come in? We’ve got many used cars to choose from” spiel.
I decide to give her the benefit of the doubt. After all, maybe the name/phone number were simply forwarded to her and she didn’t realize that I’d asked specific questions. So, I “reply” directly to her with my questions. A day goes by and, you guessed it, another phone call.
This is followed shortly thereafter by a rather abrupt e-mail informing me that she’s “tried several times to get a hold of you.” I will admit that I was very tempted to fire off a “Actually, you’ve only tried once to get a hold of me the way that I asked you to do so,” but I held it in and responded with another inquiry regarding the specific information I was seeking about this vehicle.
This time, it took a couple days to get a response (which included a weekend and a Monday). On Tuesday, I received an e-mail and phone call encouraging me to come in so they could appraise my vehicle. I was a bit more firm with my e-mail response this time and said very clearly “I am not yet at the point of wanting to come in. I am wanting you to answer the questions that I have asked on multiple occasions.” I again explained the question again and, lo and behold, this time around I actually ended up getting a response by e-mail informing me the car was still available and informing me of the price (which was, in fact, not a sales price but the same price as was on the site). I did some research and decided that the deal wasn’t quite right, but responded with a brief description of what I was looking for and informed her that I’d continue watching the website. I’d actually intended to explore the possibility of an accessible vehicle, but I had such difficulty getting an answer that I decided not to explore it. She tried a couple of other times by both phone and e-mail to encourage me to come in, but I’d made it clear that I didn’t see a point in coming in until I had a vehicle I was specifically targeting.
Finally, she went away and I was secretly relieved. This sure wasn’t the fantastic customer service I’d been expecting. I came away from the experience wondering why it had been so difficult getting e-mail contact even after an explanation had been offered as to why I needed it. It seems like such a basic thing for a company that proclaims themselves to be internet friendly to be able to answer basic questions by e-mail, but I came away feeling like they’d been trained to absolutely chase down phone contact no matter what. Then, of course, it also made me wonder why they were so hesitant to put basic information in writing.
In other words, it didn’t build the trust.
Then, a couple days ago I found myself again exploring the Hare website. I must confess that I really hesitated to contact given my previous encounter. However, I really found myself interested in a particular vehicle and the deal that was advertised for the vehicle. It was advertised in “Traders Deals & Wheels” and on the Hare website. So, I checked out the website and realized that the car could very well end up working with a wheelchair. I tried to again submit an inquiry related to the vehicle and included, once again, very specific questions with the request that contact be by e-mail. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the button to submit. So, I did some research and found the appropriate used car vehicle contact for the dealer and e-mailed my questions and my request for e-mail contact. I did invite him to forward my inquiry to an appropriate sales person, but requested e-mail contact. In fact, since I was writing by e-mail I didn’t even give a telephone contact number. I will admit that I was tempted to request that my contact not be the previous associate with whom I’d dealt, but I figured that wouldn’t happen anyway since it wouldn’t be an internet inquiry.
The response? Well, to their credit it was an e-mail response. It went like this “Hey Richard, this is “so and so” from Hare Chevrolet. Give me a call at…”
Yes, I am intentionally leaving names out. Having now had two encounters with similar responses, it seems likely that this approach is more corporate philosophy than individual choice. Don’t get me wrong. I understand the concept of building relationships and the importance of phone and face-to-face for customer service.
I get it. I understand it.
But, really? Your response to my very specific questions and accompanying explanation of why I need e-mail correspondence is a one sentence e-mail casually written with a “call me” statement that doesn’t answer any of my questions and appears to completely blow off my inability to call?
I have no doubt, Hare Chevrolet, that you’ve made many people happy with your female friendly focus and your “family” approach to business. However, I clearly have different expectations that have simply not been met and there’s simply no way on earth I’m traveling all the way to Noblesville nor taking time out of my work day to give you a call when you don’t have the decency of basic customer service – respecting a customer’s wishes and asking simple questions.
The car search continues. I have faith that I will find a car dealer who actually acts like they want my business and also manages to sell quality, affordable vehicles.
Who's Yer' Gimp? 