Negative review while serving vehicle

[CAautogroup]

Hello all,

Has this ever happened to any of you?

We recently went out of our way to accommodate a customers' vehicle repair request. Though the customer was argumentative about pricing, hours charged, parts used etc, they ultimately agreed to the repairs. About an hour or so later, we receive notifications of several 0 or 1 star reviews on many social websites including Yelp, Google, Yahoo, Facebook....... you name it they had an account or made a new account to put their side of the story out there. 

How would you handle this? Do you feel obligated to complete the said repair? 

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and opinions.

 

Nick 

[stvstbsvc]

The last negative review we received was from a customer like that that put up a number of red flags.  We soldiered through and paid the price.  I think you need to uphold your end of the agreement and LEARN from it.  We did!  You may be lucky enough to talk with the customer while you are getting paid (I might be thinking CASH!) and have them adjust the reviews...

 

[Nataly Kartunova]

This is why you got hurt." We recently went out of our way to accommodate a customers' vehicle repair request"

Learn from it and keep going.

Every time you bend over to accommodate a customer, you expose a certain part  of your "body " to them and it never fails for them to "stick it " to you.

 

[xrac]

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[Topauto]

Just be true to your integrity. Complete the job correctly at the agreed on price. 

Never I say never be available to work on their vehicles again. 

Lesson learned. 

[FROGFINDER]

  On 4/7/2018 at 8:44 PM, CAautogroup said:

Hello all,

Has this ever happened to any of you?

We recently went out of our way to accommodate a customers' vehicle repair request. Though the customer was argumentative about pricing, hours charged, parts used etc, they ultimately agreed to the repairs. About an hour or so later, we receive notifications of several 0 or 1 star reviews on many social websites including Yelp, Google, Yahoo, Facebook....... you name it they had an account or made a new account to put their side of the story out there. 

How would you handle this? Do you feel obligated to complete the said repair? 

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and opinions.

 

Nick 

Expand  

The argumentative nature was the red flag.  Vetting customers is the most important part of the service advisers job. If you do the repairs i would demand cash payment in full to release the car.   

[spencersauto]

I would post a review in response to theirs stating the facts. For example I would say we appreciate you trusting us with your vehicle and we are sorry to hear your experience wasn't as expected. We feel we met all your expectations by providing you with an estimate prior to the work being completing, we completed the work in the estimated time and we were unaware of any issues until reading your reviews. We would love to know how we could have made your experience with us better so please contact us at -------. 

 

We got a three star review from someone last week just because we couldn't align his vehicle because he had over sized wheels. Customer has never been in to get a true idea of what were about. Frustrating to say the least. 

[ADP]

  On 4/9/2018 at 12:41 AM, xrac said:

If I haven't started the repair I would back the car out and call the customer and tell them to have a good day.  Then I would post a reponse to all the reviews that the customer was complaining before you ever started the repair and you chose to not do the work because you knew you could not make them happy. 

 

Expand  

This is exactly what I would do.

[gandgautorepair]

We had this happen last year. Said we broke their cruise control and we had noted on the RO that there was a symptom related to the cruise control when we did our inspection. Customer argued, but left with a smile on their face, and then plastered negative reviews on every possible site. Oh well. I answered them all with the facts, which is all you can do. People see through that stuff. People also see that all of our great reviews aren't fake.

Do what you say you'll do and let it go. If you haven't started on the repairs, then maybe stop now and don't do it. The purpose of the bad reviews is to manipulate you do drop your price when the customer picks up the car in exchange for revising or removing the reviews. You choose if you want to live with the reviews or pay the guy to remove them.

[Truett]

  On 4/9/2018 at 12:28 AM, Nataly Kartunova said:

This is why you got hurt." We recently went out of our way to accommodate a customers' vehicle repair request"

Learn from it and keep going.

Every time you bend over to accommodate a customer, you expose a certain part  of your "body " to them and it never fails for them to "stick it " to you.

 

Expand  

A very smart man once told me.... “You can bend over so far you fall on your face”. With some people you just can not please them no matter what you do.

[xrac]

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[Custom Coach]

we had one that the day the customer picked up the car he cried on social media about his so called mediocre paint job and how anyone with brains would never have work done here

I simply replied with the truth ( " If you were not happy with your cars paint job then you should have brought your concerns to our attention when you were picking the car up then we could have addressed your concerns at that time ")

 

I now have a woman who is suppose to bring her car back for a check engine light concern to see if its from work recently done by me but she has canceled or no showed twice so far so we will se if she shows up Tuesday morning this week or not

if she is a no show again I will just write her off as a lost cause because I am offering to scan her car for free to see if its recent parts changed if so I will replace them at no cost to her 

if it turns out to be something else then I will try to explain to her what needs done and leave the ball in her court if she wants me to do the work or not.

but she cant say I never tried to help her

Edited April 23, 2018 by Custom Coach

[OOOooo]

I think as shop owners we get hung up on reviews too much. We should think as consumers in this case. The type of people that check reviews before going to a business will expect to see some negative ones, if there are enough posted. What they are looking for is consistency. If all the negative are about the same thing then there is a problem. If you get a negative just bury it in positive ones. When a customer is really happy ask them to post a review.

[autobodyguys]

Always respond to the negative review. It shows other potential customers that you care and acknowledge the complaint. Just remember when commenting you are not responding to the customer, you are responding to everyone reading.

[alfredauto]

Google me lol I can only laugh about it. I put in the guys part during my lunch break and it didn't fix his problem so I'm worse than the devil himself. It taught me a lesson; if the guy doesn't want to pay me diag time I don't want his business. End of story. We all get negatives it's part of owning a business. 

[xrac]

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