Last week, I experienced something that reminded me that anybody can provide good service when things are going well - it is how you recover that makes the difference.

I own a 5 year old  Acura with 48K miles on it and bought it from my local Acura dealer, which is also where I took the car to get work done. They provide ‘white glove’ service, every employee I have ever interacted with is very polite; they have free internet access in their waiting room; a shuttle service with a friendly driver; a well stocked fridge and nice coffee/tea. Yup, pricey service but a pleasure to deal with — until now.

My dealer wanted me to pay $1,500 for a new catalytic convertor when the old one was one week - count it - one week out of warranty.  (Convertor warranty was 5 year, 50K miles.)

I called the Acura dealer three times, the managers never got back to me. Finally took it in one more time, was told ‘not possible’, ‘have to pay the full amount’.

Found Hondar House thanks to the Car Talk site, they quoted me $1,000, a $500 savings. I would have been glad to have saved $500. However, the fact that the catalytic converter failed with so few miles on it (and that the Acura dealer didn’t want to give me ‘goodwill’ for the week out of warranty) bothered Frank. He asked if he could make a few calls for me. 

Frank called the Acura dealer’s parts manager, and did his magic. He got them to replace the part for free. It is not often that you find a business that will call a competitor and ask them to honor a warranty and refuse to take payment for any work done.

Needless to say, I was thrilled to save $1,500. Hondar House now has a customer for life.

In the next post, I’ll walk through some of the rookie mistakes that the dealer made. They did a good job until I had a problem, and they completely bombed it, and lost a loyal customer.

Posted in: Managing Support, car dealership, customer service, trusted advisor