The Basement

I love karma. Two weeks ago I wrote about how a poor web marketing strategy, followed by a lousy sales man wasted over 2 hours of my attention. Now, for the three of you who read my blog that are not in marketing – attention is the Holy Grail of the modern marketer. Especially one that sells $18-$60K consumer products like cars. In this case the offending company was Volkswagen and it's local Tulsa dealer Brad Noe Autoplex.

In summary, I spent over two hours on the Volkswagen website learning everything there was to know about a car that does not exist. The problem was that during that 2 hours Volkswagen did everything possible to make me want that car, including helping me "build my own". In software, we call this vaporware.

I emailed both the dealer and VW customer service. The dealer – Brad Noe Autoplex – was quite responsive. Immediately responding to my email and then later in the day with a phone call from the sales manager. They were professional, understanding and apologetic... even though they completely understood that they had lost my business. This is the right response.

On the same day, after getting no response from VW from my email – complete with URL I might add – I decided to call their customer service department. I complained in detail – politely and professionally – for about an hour. I gave them my phone number and my web address. The customer service rep was polite but unsympathetic. I told them that I was discussing this experience on my blog and repeated the URL.

The next day I got an email from someone at a large prominent international software vendor. It appears that they read my blog and were emailing the link around as a negative example. Their management wants to help everyone understand that somewhere out there, there are real people. The author of the email happend to be in the market for a car and told me that VW was now definitely out of the running. I records about 600 hits on the original post from that company's IP address.

After the phone conversation I posted Volkswagen: Drivers Unwanted and shifted more of the blame where it belonged – to Volkswagen.

Fast forward to now, two full weeks later. I haven't heard from VW (other than from the dealer).

Today though, I noticed that someone from Volkswagen started reading my blog at about 7AM. They clicked 17 times before someone at Brad Noe Autoplex started clicking at 9:21 AM. This is the first time the VW IP address appears in my logs. My guess is that someone at Volkswagen called someone at Brad Noe to find out what the problem was. From the looks of my logs, it was a long conversation.

Here's an except from my log...

I'm glad to see after wasting 2 hours of my time, I am wasting many times that for them. In the meantime, the Jetta Wagon is still displayed prominently on the VW website despite the fact that it hasn't been built since April and none really exist for sale anywhere. They are still bragging about the great gas mileage of their TDI Diesel engine ("Go farther: Jetta TDI gets up to 42 mpg." ) - which is not really available anywhere in the US. They might as well advertise a hybrid Touareg full-loaded that get 87 mpg at $12,999. Why not? They are essentially doing this already.

Just think how much time VW could not only save their prospective customers, but also who ever is reading my blog (at VW and Brad Noe) if they just adopted a web strategy that was transparent about the actual availability of their products. Why is this so hard? Amazon does this with millions of items – VW only makes 10 models (with options of course, but come on). I thought those kids were supposed to be engineerin' geniuses?

Farfegnugen must be German for crappy supply chain management.

Note to VW: Stop bothering your dealers and take a few minutes to review your website. Your dealers' salesmen would probably be more personable if customers showed up asking about a car that they could actually get. And, if you want me to explain your side of the story, you'll have to contact me and tell me what it is. Oh, and why after I sent you an email and called your customer service folks and complained for an hour, did it take you 2 full weeks to get around to reading my blog? Just curious.