Jeep blames trolls for sales plunge

Senior executive Jeep adventurers have travelled to Sheepshaggistan and discovered El Mierda - the fabled lost city of bullshit. Get the full story…

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Dave Morley - a good, experienced journo writing for some off-road website - Blue Singlet Spanker or whatever it’s called - has highlighted, in my view, the depth of reality denial that exists in the Fiat Chrysler Death Star Satellite here in Australia. (May not be a real satellite)

Apparently, if I’m understanding this correctly, evil trolls have mounted a sustained and co-ordinated attack on poor old innocent Jeep, and sales have collapsed as a result: Bastards.

That’s the apparent position of new-ish Jeep Australia boss Kevin Flynn.

El Mierda doesn’t get the most favourable reviews on TripAdvisor.

Apparently this was ‘revealed’ (if that’s the right word) at the Jeep Gladiator international launch in Sheepshagistan. They all held hands, braided each other’s hair and drove the Gladiator from - I dunno - Queenstown, all the way to El Mierda, which is just past Mordor, by the sound of things. You can see Fantasy Island from the beach.

I agree that Jeeps sales have gone poopy in their trousers here. In 2014, Jeep sold a record 30,000 of its seven-slot shitheaps here. (There was an ignorance epidemic - a real outbreak among new car buyers. Who knew?) In 2015 that fell to 24,000, then it got cut roughly in half to 12,600 in 2016. Then 2017 was a real ‘Barry’ 8300 sales. 2018: 7300. Last year they couldn’t even offload 6000.

That’s like trying to find a place that’s open for breakfast in Dresden, on the 15th of February 1945. Imagine parachuting. The chute fails. You go for the reserve. It fails. I imagine this is how it feels to be the sales director for Jeep in Australia. A very tough job indeed.

And it should not be because the brand is so iconic. I want to love the Grand Cherokee and the Wrangler and the Gladiator. I do actually love them as icons. But as ownership propositions … they’re the red-headed nympho named Tiffany. Fun for a while, but lock away the knives.

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Back lashings

Kevin Flynn, the holder of the Jeep Australia poison chalice, apparently told Mr Morley:

“We don’t have these problems elsewhere in the world.”

-Kev Flynn, Jeep Australia chief excuse-maker (in my view)

That’s quite true. We agree on that. Jeep global sales have surged almost five-fold in the past 10 years. So the issue has to be something intrinsic to Australia. That’s a logical given. What could it be, I wonder.

Mr Morley says the Flynn-ster - who admittedly is only new in the top job - has laid the blame (for the failure of both parachutes) at the feet of damning social media commentary.

To understand this I Googled ‘Fiat Chrysler Australia’ and clicked and Google’s reviews, and sorted them, newest first (just in case things have changed recently for the better). The Panel shows the top six newest reviews - all one star out of five.

The complaints include fixed price servicing … with wiper blades costing $140 extra, an allegation that the customer service was ‘juvenile’, quote “some of the worst customer service I have experienced - so much time and effort wasted,” et cetera. There is certainly an online backlash.

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Martian orders

In respect of this alleged antisocial media Jeep bashing, The Flynn-ster allegedly said:

“It’s almost become a sport.”

Some of your customers might feel it’s become a sport for FCA to, I’m paraphrasing here, routinely put them through the wringer, ignoring them, failing to meet the basic standards of customer service.

Threatening lawyers, enforcing gag orders and filing cease and desist letters to customers is not sporting - it’s grubby.

In the immortal words of Mars explorer Matt Damon, I’m going to have to science the shit out of this. Let’s apply some basic science philosophy here to validate or deny this position.

The Flynn-ster’s imputation appears to be that there’s nothing wrong with Jeep, or Jeep ownership in Australia, and the commercial defect (in his view) appears to be only the product of a sustained, unjustified, unprovoked and co-ordinated social media attack.

We know that Jeep can sell 30,000 seven-slot shitboxes in Australia - because they did that, in 2014. And if they had done so in 2015 to 2019 inclusive they would have inflicted 150,000 new Jeeps on our roads.

But instead they sold only 58,000 Jeeps. So I ask you to deploy Occam’s razor on this - simplest answers being the best, in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary.

Mr Flynn’s hypothesis seems to be that this 92,000-unit Jeep sales deficit over five years inclusive is a product only of an unprovoked and sustained social media attack by trolls, and that Jeep is completely innocent in all of this - just a victim of a random attack.

Also, let’s not forget, they’re hardly defenceless in the media domain. An advertising campaign like ‘You bought a Jeep?’ from 2012 costs between $10 and $20 million to execute. That’s one campaign. (And I know that’s how much it cost because that’s what the advertising agency put in its entry submission for an industry award.)

That’s a hell of a lot of money with which to forge perception. I’d suggest, if you get into the ring with $15 million and you’re only up against a few Twitter trolls, that’s like bringing an AR-15 to a knife fight.

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Head in the sandbox

“It’s not a product issue.”

And here I think we agree also. It’s not a product issue. It’s a cockhead issue. Fiat Chrysler ‘Straya - Jeep’s parent in Shitsville - treats customers very badly. There’s an orgy of evidence.

Look at Ashton Wood, the guy who ran the ‘Destroy My Jeep’ campaign. And Teg Sethi, whose epic ‘lemon Jeep’ video was posted four years ago and now sits on 2.6 million views.

I know both these guys personally - Jeep’s treatment of them was appalling in my view. Unethical, heavy-handed, bastardry. The high-priced lawyer stand-over tactics - disgraceful. Just think of how many people these two guys are connected to - friends, family, colleagues, probably in the hundreds - all of whom will probably also tell their stories to their friends and colleagues to never touch a Jeep for the rest of their lives. Just how effective was the lawyer-up, arsehole manoeuvre? Not very, I would think.

The term ‘Jeep bashing’ in my view implies a lack of justification - when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. These two guys are just the tip of the lemon Jeep customer backlash iceberg. In my view, it’s overwhelmingly justified - in fact the bashing probably hasn’t been severe enough. These people are backed into a corner - that’s about the only time normal people come out swinging. When they’re left with no other choice for survival other than to fight.

You corporate types just don’t like it when the little guys knock you off your perch, or in this case, kick you firmly in the middle stump with a Colorado workboot.

Here’s Flynnie waving his flag again:

“We’ve got more than adequate cover, and we do take care of our customers.”

Maybe you do - sometimes. But all too often you do not. You leave people high and dry and you make it extremely hard for them to get the kinds of remedies they deserve.

Social media does not exist on its own. It empowers people to comment, and I suspect you dudes behaving badly don’t like it because automakers cannot litigate to shut people up. Thankfully.

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‘Til death?

Poor product reliability is one thing, but owners can live with that if they love the iconic brand - and if you look after them when something goes wrong.

Unfortunately, at Jeep you don’t - Jeep is iconic for two things in Australia: Number one: Deeply emotive styling (I admit it - even I feel Jeep’s compelling gravitational pull). And number two: Fucking people over when the chips are down and they need help. And that’s indefensible.

Which is why sales are in freefall today. You can make up any narrative you want, and feed it to journalists and the boys upstairs, but it doesn’t change the underlying reality.

This is a situation you simply cannot hope to bullshit your way out of, in my view. Send me a friggin’ postcard when you leave El Mierda. It is quite lovely at this time of year...

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