My sales person told me BMW would be calling with some questions about the sales experience. He further told me they won't accept narritave answers but require a response from 1 to 5. Anything less than 5 is failure. So please give him fives when they call.

I didn't care. It's a small thing. Anyone else have this happen?

[Sejanus]

So just out of curiousity does your dealer deserve fives?

[Tom F.]

There was an interesting thread today about this regarding Porsches: Porsche Petes Boxster Board

Sounds like everything is tied to happy customers, including allocations!

Now, if all the car companies know that they dealers are calling you up and asking for top marks, how much does it mean? And what are the dealers giving the customers as a bonus for answering the questions "right".

[mini101]

Most car company surveys that I've heard of only count the top score as a positive. My Acura salesperson had a sign on his desk that said "Just say 'Excellent'". Anything below that was a negative.

That said, I couldn't bring myself to give the sales person a 5 to a question about whether they explained the car's features to me. That's because my motoring advisor explained the radio by saying: 'that's the radio. I haven't really had time to figure out how to use it.'

Have fun!

[Macsport]

Quote:

My sales person told me BMW would be calling with some questions about the sales experience.

Frails

MINI / BMW run a similar scheme here in the UK where their marketing people call about 2 to 3 weeks after the car has been purchased. A range of questions with 1-5 ratings as answers. My dealer was great and I was happy to answer with '1' to all the questions

At the end of the question and answer session they asked if I would be prepared to do a similar survey at around the 6 month point with their technical department to see how the car is fairing mechanically - no problem was my answer.

[RedCooperS]

I view these surveys with extreme skeptisim. I have had 5 BMWs, two of which I own now. A 528i and a 2.8 Z3 roadster. When asked about the last service on the 528i at my dealer (VOB in Rockville MD) I gave them very low ratings, when I took in my Z3 for the first service, they put a large scratch on the side, left something on the side and inside of the car that took me almost two hours to get off. Also they screwed up the airbag light and a couple of other things that the car had to go back for. (It just went in for an oil change). My complaints which include paying an after market service shop when I can get service for free at the dealer because they are so inept, has not even received a phone call with an apology from BMW. I hope the mini service is better. I understand that VOB didn't get a mini dealership because of these types of complaints about their service department. But I wonder why BMW doesn't seem to want to do anything about it. An apology would be nice!!

[Apial]

Quote:

Originally posted by Macsport


Frails

MINI / BMW run a similar scheme here in the UK where their marketing people call about 2 to 3 weeks after the car has been purchased.

the end of the question and answer session they asked if I would be prepared to do a similar survey at around the 6 month point

My salesman told me to give him a "5". Later that day the MINI was rejected and sent back on a breakdown lorry. The phone survey never happened.

A replacement car came 4 weeks later. Again no survey. 7 months later I get the left pull cured. Still no phone call.

I wonder why?

[Sealevel]

Thanks to this thread I knew what to expect. A cockeyed system when 4 out of 5 is only as good as 1 out of 5. What jackass thought that up? Like straight A's or you fail and drop out of school for the dealer, and no way for the customer to express a true opinion.

Anyway, I'm happy to say it didn't matter in the least. Debra my MINI advisor handed me the form, which I scanned as she hesistantly started to explain. I let her off the hook before she got a dozen words out by checking 5 on everything and handing it back. Lauderdale MINI's sales department was top notch in every respect & they honestly deserved it.

[Martin L]

I filled in a questionaire at the dealership and was told I'd get a follow up call, yeah right
However on company BMW I run, the day after I had some work done I got a survey call. I did point out however that I took the beemer to them as of the excellent MINI purchase experience. They were pleasently surprised

[MINIMatthew]

I got my call from MINI Canada the other day and all the questions had scores of 1 - 10 with 5 being average and 10 being excellent. There was no indication that anything less than 10 was a failure and my dealer didn't prompt me for high marks. Luckily, they deserved the high marks I gave them (but they weren't all 10's).

[wynnonna]

The first call was just to ask about the car.

The second call was this 11 question, 1-5 rating call. My salesperson told me they would be calling and that he needed all 5's. I told him I needed 2.9% financing. He didn't laugh - what a wonder! I did give him all 5's he was great and answered every annoying call I placed, sometimes several times a day, during my wait for my MINI. I ended up w/ 5.99% financing.

After having my MINI in for service (alignment & popping off back of passenger side front seat and some programming of "memory options") I received another call w/ 10 or so questions, using the 1-5 scale. Hesitantly I gave all but 1 5 - gave a 3 at having to rent a car for warranty work.

[Mini1380]

When I picked my new MINI up, I was excited and it was easy to put down 5's for everything. When I was called last night, there was as least one question that I did not answer with a 5 and that question was about the knowledge of my salesman. I was told by my salesman that there were no programable features on the MINI. He was told by his service department that there were no programmable features on the MINI. After confronting him with the owners manual (page 41) my salesman got a different story from the service department. Basically, even if the service department doesn't know abotu the features, the salesman should. Since I have read responses on this site about other people having problems trying to get features programmed and the salesman saying things like 'We will send this in and see what happens', I don't think that there are many dealerships that should rate a '5' on salesman knowledge if they don't know what can or cannot be done. And the survey doesn't ask anything about the service department, but considering it is a brand new car, there should be no interaction with the service department other than to make sure that the car is delivered clean and fresh and with no obvious bugs, scratches, missing parts, or unprogrammed features.

So don't rate them a 5 unless they really deserved it.