Don't Buy: 2022 Land Rover Defender (and here's why)
New Defender: damn sexy and lemon of the year 2020 contender. Plus: Land Rover Australia with a grubby attack on the freedom of speech...
The epic shitbox we know and love as ‘Defender’, and Land Rover Australia - one of the more low-rent automotive brands in the country. Again. Still.
First, Defender. Such an enduring shitheap. Land Rover Australia - such appalling behaviour, laminated with incompetence. You can take the Land Rover out of Ford (and they did that, around a decade ago) but you can’t take the shitbox out of Land Rover, seemingly. It’s stuck up there like a barbed-wire enema. Hurts so good.
For a background briefing on this (all-new shitheap Defender) just check out TFL - The Fast Lane - an awesome American YouTube Channel. They bought a Land Rover Defender. (First mistake).
Pro Tip: 1. Don’t buy Land Rover, 2. Repeat >>
Less than 200 miles later, the check engine light came on. The dealership reset that. Then the car’s camera system took a big, steaming dump in its trousers and could not be repaired.
So, Land Rover USA, mindful of the channel’s audience, offered to replace the vehicle. The replacement lobs, and the dealership is fitting the winch, right? Genius technician slices a wiring harness. Oops a daisy. Problematically, it cannot be replaced or repaired. TFL is thus awaiting their third shitheap Defender. What could possibly go wrong? And, as of today, they could have walked further, off road, in the circumstances.
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A Promised Land (Rover)
Meanwhile, here in the land of the mad-rooting bogan, the overweight caravan-hauling imbecile, a chap with admittedly poor impulse control named Chris Garcha recently decided he had too much money and not enough pain in his motoring life. He fell in lust with a Defender and its rolling Wi-Fi hotspot capability (ironically named ‘InControl’).
So he dropped $95,000 on this regrettable infatuation. Just like Sally Morphy’s Ranger Rover in 2015 >>
That’s at least four years worth of inspirational - and very stern - some would say ‘merciless’ - flogging, at current market rates. Just saying.
Hilariously, despite the hotspot being advertised on Land Rover Australia’s website, it wasn’t actually fitted to, or available in, Mr Garcha’s Defender. Missed it by ‘that much’. The dealer offered him a Wi-Fi dongle. It’s hardly the same thing.
Then they offered to swap the vehicle over for an MY22 Defender, at no cost, which apparently will have Wi-Fi capability. If it ever gets here.
That’s from the dealer - clearly trying to do the right thing. Shout out to Gold Coast Land Rover for not being abject arseholes - even though this is (seemingly) a breach of the franchise agreement.
Doing the right thing
Mr Garcha said ‘OK’. Then Land Rover Australia head office got involved, and things went kinda downhill.
A War & Peace email from a dude named ‘Anthony’ ensued - the team leader of the so-called Land Rover Australia Customer Relationship Centre. I do find it frankly remarkable that you can be a $100,000-ish customer, and yet not be entitled to know the name (like, the full name) of the person you’re dealing with at head office, whose core function is relationship restoration. Way to build a relationship, dickheads.
Bottom line - Land Rover can’t supply a replacement Defender for 18-24 months. They’re not prepared to let Mr Garcha drive his depreciating shitbox for that time, awaiting said replacement. And they can’t guarantee the specifications of the replacement in any case.
So, they offered Mr Garcha a refund of $95,000 and a $6000 ex-gratia payment - subject to him signing their filthy gag order. Essentially, this represents the refund Mr Garcha seems entitled to, under Consumer Law, because the product did not match the description and promises made about it by the manufacturer.
(Only, without any admission of fault by Land Rover or the dealer.) Plus $6000 to shut up about this for eternity, lest all of Land Rover’s lawyers come after Mr Garcha for damages, as only arsehole corporate lawyers can.
I must say, I had some reservation about publicising this, as I didn’t want to torpedo Mr Garcha’s settlement. I needn’t have worried.
Quite. These grubby gag orders have to stop. Land Rover is not alone here. This year, I’ve seen the same thing (generally) from Fiat Chrysler, and my good friends at Mercedes. What a frankly disgraceful way to have a relationship with a customer.
Useful Consumer Law & Car Industry Resources:
Customer Care: A Car Industry Joke (only, not funny) >>
GAG ORDERS: HOW CARMAKERS BUY YOUR SILENCE >>
Consumer Commission’s New Car Investigation: Industry Violations Rife >>
CONSUMER WATCHDOG: HOW IT FAILS YOU (AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT) >>
The fish rots…
When you go to Land Rover Australia’s website you can look at the way they describe the vehicles and their capabilities, and the relationship you will have with them. This is huge - the relationship part.
Carmaker websites essentially perform the same function as fluffers on the set of a pornographic movie, metaphorically. It’s all about the facilitation of desire. You have to want it, and you have to want it, bad. Viscerally.
This is from the Land Rover Australia home page, today:
I don’t know about you, but when I read that gag order it seems to me there is a massive disconnect between the claims the company makes about important matters, such as (quote) ‘doing everything we can to support people’ by going (quote) ‘above and beyond’ with (quote) ‘passion and capability’.
When you juxtapose the two things - the claims about conduct and the reality - it’s almost a joke that writes itself.
To me, Mr Garcha’s experience demonstrates how the company actually behaves towards people rightfully in need of support. It demonstrates how that conduct is completely different to how Land Rover claims it behaves. A carmaker attempting to gag a customer after the carmaker makes a $95,000 promise it cannot deliver, is morally reprehensible. It’s a grubby attack on Mr Garcha’s freedom of speech. In my view.
Remember: Land Rover is not being generous here. A full refund is a legislated consumer entitlement in these circumstances. Circumstances about which there appears to be no dispute. It seems to me Land Rover Australia is simply not above using its power to leverage Mr Garcha’s understandable dissatisfaction - and holding out a carrot in exchange for a gag. Seems asymmetric. And morally reprehensible.
The mafia does business this way, seemingly. Just change a few details and this becomes exactly the kind of deal you’d enter into with John Gotti. I’m trying to see an ethical dimension here. I really am trying to see a moral justification for Giving Land Rover the benefit of the doubt, in relation to this conduct, and I am failing.
How to: Public Relations (with me)
Mark Cameron is the managing director of Jaguar Land Rover Australia. He’s a former Ford sales and marketing type. To Mr Cameron I would say: You can do better than this, dude. There is a way not only to recalibrate your company’s apparently defective moral compass on issues of this nature, but also to serve your own commercial best interests. And, who doesn’t want that?
Instead of placing these onerous and immoral burdens on customers - and it does seem breathtakingly immoral to make the customer pay when you fuck up - throw him a bone. Refund the car. Apologize, sincerely, for said fuck-up. Offer him some inducement in good faith - like, stick him in a Disco for six months and a Rangie for another six. Invite him to some VIP drive events. Like, here’s a free car for a year and a couple of cracks at flogging a Range Rover in mud - please continue to love us.
That doesn’t cost Land Rover very much - carmakers do this all the time with journalists and footballers, celebs and social media influencers. This would not only stifle Mr Garcha’s understandable critical commentary in relation to your failure to supply the product as advertised - it would turn Mr Garcha into a 24-carat Land Rover evangelist. You wouldn’t even have to pay them some exorbitant fee to appear.
Like, imagine two parallel universes. This one, where Mr Garcha reaches out to the automotive Antichrist, here in the Fat Cave, with his seemingly legitimate complaint, exacerbated by a grubby gag order. And another universe where he downplays an honest error you made, and talks up endlessly the steps you subsequently took to turn his frown upside-down.
In the parallel universe, Parallel Mark Cameron would probably sell an additional 15 or 20 cars off the back of a move such as this - which would more than offset the depreciation of Mr Garcha’s long term test drives. Plus, it would be the right thing to do. (There’s that…) I don’t know if that matters to you or your organisation, Mr Cameron, but it would certainly be far better than this, in the context of public perception of the brand, and its conduct.
If you are in the market for a Land Rover, I urge you, in the domain of risk management, to consider carefully Mr Garcha’s experience, and Land Rover Australia’s conduct, before making your final decision.
Don’t forget to check out TFL’s wonderfully entertaining ‘Keystone Cops’ Defender ownership experience in the USA.
And if, after all this, you go and buy one anyway, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
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