FIGHTING FOR YOUR CONSUMER RIGHTS WITH SOCIAL MEDIA
This is a customer service story with a happy ending, but it's also a cautionary tale. I would today be out $5,500 if it were not for the Internet.
I love Volvos. My wife and I have for years. We're so brand loyal to Volvo that we own two of them--a small X60 sedan and a larger XC90 wagon.
Our love comes from a combination of their cool, European styling and their incredible safety record. You may be aware Volvo sponsors a group called "A Volvo Saved My Life Club" and publishes the stories of people who have lived through horrific crashes because of Volvo safety features and engineering.
Last summer as our XC90 passed 60,000 miles I began to hear a horrific grinding sound in the transmission, but only when we were coasting at high speeds. When we brought it in for service at the local dealership, Borton Volvo on Lyndale Avenue, they said they couldn't "replicate" the problem. Okay.
Another couple of thousand miles passed and the grinding was combined with a lurching when accelerating. I brought the car in and left on a business trip. When I landed at Dulles airport in Washington, I returned a call from the service department.
The transmission in the XC90 was shot completely. A new one would cost $5,500.
Silence. I'm not a shouter, but I got pretty hot about a transmission failing completely just outside of the 50,000 mile warranty, and after I'd pointed out the problem some time before.
To their credit, the service department people at Borton connected me with Volvo service headquarters in Paramus, New Jersey. A very nice person named Lois took my information and said she would "get some action." Sounded promising.
That night, thinking about the $5,500 we would have to pony up, I began doing research on the Internet. I went to Google and typed in "Volvo XC90 transmission problem."
Well! Page after page of links came up: people with the same problem, threads in car forums about the lemon transmissions in the 2003 and 2004 XC90s. Consumer guides with warnings about buying used 2003 XC90s. And on and on.
I began printing out pages from the car forums. Some people had gotten the entire transmission paid for by Volvo. Some only had to pay $1,000. Some people got screwed.
I turns out in the first two years the XC90 was built--2003 and 2004--Volvo had to buy transmissions from General Motors for some of the XC90s because they ran short and couldn't keep up with demand. The GM transmissions didn't work well in the XC90. Some crapped out after just 20,000 miles. One person posted a note that they had replaced the transmission twice before 60,000 miles.
I called up the service manager at Borton and told him the good news! I had reams and reams of examples of people all over the country who had this same transmission problem and Volvo corporate paid to have the bad transmission replaced. I had all this great, great evidence that he could use to make the case to Volvo! The service manager wasn't quite as ecstatic as I was (the dealer probably had to pay part of these settlements) but he said he would press the case.
After a few days of silence Borton called back: all we would have to pay is $200--which was the deductable if we had purchased an extended warranty for the car. They threw in the 60,000 mile oil change and check-up for free.
Even five years ago what happened to us wouldn't have been possible. The infrastructure was there, but people wouldn't have thought to instinctively go to the Internet and post their stories. And if they hadn't done that, I wouldn't have found them and made my case to Volvo.
Some people think that the Internet is pretty well established now. My point--emphatically--is that we're at the beginning of the beginning. Now that the cloud is stable, fairly secure and real-time reliable, now that we have plentiful, free tools for communicating and publishing ourselves (you're reading my blog) ---now the Internet is beginning to reveal itself.
A system where instincively most people participate, read, listen, discuss, and write back.
I've got $5,500 that says we're just past the starting line.
FIGHTING FOR YOUR CONSUMER RIGHTS WITH SOCIAL MEDIA
This is a customer service story with a happy ending, but it's also a cautionary tale. I would today be out $5,500 if it were not for the Internet.
I love Volvos. My wife and I have for years. We're so brand loyal to Volvo that we own two of them--a small X60 sedan and a larger XC90 wagon.
Our love comes from a combination of their cool, European styling and their incredible safety record. You may be aware Volvo sponsors a group called "A Volvo Saved My Life Club" and publishes the stories of people who have lived through horrific crashes because of Volvo safety features and engineering.
Last summer as our XC90 passed 60,000 miles I began to hear a horrific grinding sound in the transmission, but only when we were coasting at high speeds. When we brought it in for service at the local dealership, Borton Volvo on Lyndale Avenue, they said they couldn't "replicate" the problem. Okay.
Another couple of thousand miles passed and the grinding was combined with a lurching when accelerating. I brought the car in and left on a business trip. When I landed at Dulles airport in Washington, I returned a call from the service department.
The transmission in the XC90 was shot completely. A new one would cost $5,500.
Silence. I'm not a shouter, but I got pretty hot about a transmission failing completely just outside of the 50,000 mile warranty, and after I'd pointed out the problem some time before.
To their credit, the service department people at Borton connected me with Volvo service headquarters in Paramus, New Jersey. A very nice person named Lois took my information and said she would "get some action." Sounded promising.
That night, thinking about the $5,500 we would have to pony up, I began doing research on the Internet. I went to Google and typed in "Volvo XC90 transmission problem."
Well! Page after page of links came up: people with the same problem, threads in car forums about the lemon transmissions in the 2003 and 2004 XC90s. Consumer guides with warnings about buying used 2003 XC90s. And on and on.
I began printing out pages from the car forums. Some people had gotten the entire transmission paid for by Volvo. Some only had to pay $1,000. Some people got screwed.
I turns out in the first two years the XC90 was built--2003 and 2004--Volvo had to buy transmissions from General Motors for some of the XC90s because they ran short and couldn't keep up with demand. The GM transmissions didn't work well in the XC90. Some crapped out after just 20,000 miles. One person posted a note that they had replaced the transmission twice before 60,000 miles.
I called up the service manager at Borton and told him the good news! I had reams and reams of examples of people all over the country who had this same transmission problem and Volvo corporate paid to have the bad transmission replaced. I had all this great, great evidence that he could use to make the case to Volvo! The service manager wasn't quite as ecstatic as I was (the dealer probably had to pay part of these settlements) but he said he would press the case.
After a few days of silence Borton called back: all we would have to pay is $200--which was the deductable if we had purchased an extended warranty for the car. They threw in the 60,000 mile oil change and check-up for free.
Even five years ago what happened to us wouldn't have been possible. The infrastructure was there, but people wouldn't have thought to instinctively go to the Internet and post their stories. And if they hadn't done that, I wouldn't have found them and made my case to Volvo.
Some people think that the Internet is pretty well established now. My point--emphatically--is that we're at the beginning of the beginning. Now that the cloud is stable, fairly secure and real-time reliable, now that we have plentiful, free tools for communicating and publishing ourselves (you're reading my blog) ---now the Internet is beginning to reveal itself.
A system where instincively most people participate, read, listen, discuss, and write back.
I've got $5,500 that says we're just past the starting line.
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