For me, buying a car is about as enjoyable as a root canal. And a story like this one just reinforces the low opinion I have of dealerships in general.
In a nut shell, a guy bid on eBay auction for a brand new BMW. The auction had no reserve and a minimum bid for $60k. The guy bid at that price, and the auction closed with a single winning bid: his at $60k. Later, the dealer called him and reneged on the deal, saying that the auction was "a mistake". The guy countered that they had entered into a legal contract through eBay, that the dealership had adjusted their Buy It Now price twice (meaning they were watching the auction), that this wasn't their first auction (they're not novices), and that they've reneged before (a different car in a prior auction).
The guy, obviously, felt cheated. He posted on in a car forum, and his thread got picked up by autoblog (with 300+ diggs, but no front page yet ... hmmm ...) and reddit (and I suppose, now on Neatorama).
While I'm not big on Net vendettas, I can't help but wonder at the new megaphone consumers now have. Big blogs like The Consumerist are filled with irate consumers with damning stories. Even the little guys can have their say (see the story of nissan.com and starbucked.com)
Obviously, there are two sides to the story and we haven't (and probably won't) hear from the dealership. So I'll let you guys decide on who's at fault and so on.
But what I'd like to ask you is this: what's the thinking of big corporations on PR disasters like this one? Do they even care about Net protests? Or do they think Net protests will blow over in a matter of days and then it's back to business as usual? If you work in a large company, I'd love to hear what you think.
Links: the original thread at M3Post (long)
Update 3/25/08: Apparently complaining on the Net worked this time around. Here's the update of the dealership agreeing to sell the car at the bid price: Link
I doubt the bad PR will make much of a dent. I hate eBay. What I wonder about most is the final price fee they must have had to pay eBay..if they got out of it with false claims or if they absorbed the costs hoping eBay turns a blind eye to the matter since they were paid anyway.
Who would have ever thought????
My husband's sports car was totalled by two dealership mechanics (they were hot-rodding it on rain-wet roads) and the dealer just shrugged it off. He refused to make any kind of restitution. The head of his dealership group told us to get stuffed. The in-country corporate HQ refused to talk to us. The "customer care" organization also refused.
When we got a reporter interested in our story, we were threatened by the dealership with a lawsuit if we persisted in "defaming" them further.
We had to cash in one of our investments in order to buy a new car, and almost nobody knows what that dealership did, so they keep selling and servicing cars with nobody knowing the risk they are taking.
The corporations DO NOT CARE as long as it doesn't impact their bottom line.
*ahem* did I speak out loud?
Why doesn't the car dealership at least use the "I was sleepwalking" defense... that would be more plausible.
People get onto the net and get onto the blogs and see lots of other people with them and get the idea that theres this big powerful mass of them that companies. politicians, etc.. should be concerned about the opinion of. It becomes easy to forget that your actually very few people, most people on popular blogs are spread across the country and world and number extremely small compared to the vast majority of consumers whom have little if anything to do with any blogs at all.
A good example would be Ron Paul, who has massive internet "movement" support - but it means nothing at the ballots.
Companies aren't going to care about consumer advocate internet sites until one or more of them becomes the kind of household name status that, for example, Britney Spears has.
You are bemoaning a Car Dealer's lack of Control over the car he is selling AND this guy is a two time offender?
You are giving the benefit of the doubt to someone who hasn't earned it and i question if you would have done so if this person had a profession that didn't wear a suit and tie.
PULEEEZE
A couple of years back a large credit union in Quebec made the news several times. Their "customer service" was nothing short of horrible. Thousands of customers had legitimate gripes about the practices of this credit union. Someone started a blog to complain about this and invited other customers to write about their stories. Within a couple of months there were thousands of posts.
Eventually the blog got the attention of traditional media. The blog creator (or readers I'm not sure) also organized protests in various locations around the province and advertised the blog with stickers near the credit union branches.
Within a year the credit union experienced 15%(if my memory serves me correctly) more account closures than it usually did as well as a significant increase in complaints. The credit union attributed a large part of that increase in account closures to the web protests. Since it did impact their bottom line they took action.
Hence imho web protest can be a useful tool to support consumer activism but the latter is still what will make large corporations notice.
It would just be too easy otherwise ;).
Sure it's frustrating but beside the time he lost ( I'm guessing he didn't invested much time in this if he ended up buying a car on ebay ) nothing of importance was lost.
Thank goodness for the Amex fraud department - I was never charged a cent for the fraudulent charges, and they replaced my card before I even knew it had happened.
I only use Amex online these days. And never, ever paypal.
http://www.autoblog.com/2008/03/23/bmw-dealer-auctions-new-m3-for-60k-on-ebay-doesnt-want-to-hon/