Jeep promises to rebuild Australian consumer trust
Following the recent departure of Holden, Jeep has publicly, and with great certainty and conviction, committed to remaining in Australia... unfortunately.
Competition for ‘automotive bullshitter of the month’ has reached fever pitch following Tony Weber’s recent stroke of bullshit genius, using the term ‘negative growth’ to describe the 23-month new car sales apocalypse.
Out of nowhere, Trent Nikolic, the managing editor of CarAdvice, published an uplifting, exclusive tell-all puff piece for Jeep on March 5, 2020.
The new boy, Kevin Flynn, allegedly reaffirms Auburn Hills’ commitment to right-hand drive and Australia a like, promising to rebuild trust following half a decade of systematic customer ankle grabbing and knock-on sales implosion since 2015. You remember, this thing >>
“We can only change what is going forward. And that starts with understanding the reasons Jeep was once a big player in the Australian market, but that’s not the case now. What was the cause?”
- Kevin Flynn
Big Kev is the senior country manager for seven-slot shitheaps in Australia. Making like Bruce Springsteen there, apparently dancing in the dark, and to whom I’d suggest, apocryphally: You can’t start a fire. You can’t start a fire without a spark.
And there certainly has been a fire. Seven-slot shitheap sales in Australia have plummeted from a high of more than 30,000 in 2014, to a bulimic 5500 last year - lowest result in 11 years. Well done, dickheads.
I’m astounded Mr Flynn can claim any confusion whatsoever around this. The evidence seems orgy-fied. Prolific, whatever.
To me, there’s no dark-dancing whatsoever. It’s pretty simple: Despite having some uniquely compelling offerings - like Wrangler, which is admittedly a safety shitheap, but also arguably the most iconic 4X4 ever, and Grand Cherokee SRT, which doesn’t quite make you Jack Bauer, but it gets you pretty close.
Despite these icons and their attendant gravitational pull, if you systematically bend your customer base over, over and over; if that’s your business’s MO; if the whole experience is ‘grab your ankles and take it like a man’; sooner or later word is going to get around. It got around in 2015. Still circulating today (as are the disgraceful customer service practices still emanating >> )
Clean sweep
Fiat Chrysler Australia is the importer of Jeep.
The company has historically been very keen to blame its shit performance on online activists like Teg Sethi, whose epic, self-funded ‘lemon Jeep’ music video currently sits at 2.6 million views.
Let’s not forget of course that Teg, who I know reasonably well, and who is actually a reasonable chap, would never have made that video had he not been systematically violated by Fiat Chrysler in the first place. So Teg, et al, is not the problem. He’s a symptom. Jeep customers simply took action into their own hands >>
The fundamental problem is: treating your customers like shit. There’s no place for that, in the 21st Century. You can’t cover it up. There are other choices. People can shop elsewhere.
Around the time of the Jeep sales implosion, the ACCC was on the record labelling Fiat Chrysler as the company with the highest number of automotive consumer complaints, as a proportion of the number of vehicles sold. Kind of a big deal, if you’re researching a car.
On the 11th of September 2015, the ACCC - great gummy bear that it is - no teeth - the federal corporate watchdog - allowed Fiat Chrysler to sidestep prosecution and (probably) millions of dollars in penalties by entering into a voluntary agreement called an ‘administrative undertaking’ where Fiat Chrysler agreed to review previous owner complaints and provide resolutions to customers whose complaints were valid.
As far as I can tell, Fiat Chrysler just buried it. Which is to say that (as far as I can see) the company complied with the letter of the undertaking, to the minimum degree, but seemed to do everything it could to obfuscate and avoid the actions required to honour the spirit of the agreement. In other words, it seems to me they behaved like utter corporate cocks. And the customer ankle grabbing continued.
Kevin Flynn is a new managerial broom at FCA - but to call these dudes in charge of import operations Down Under, ‘Managing Directors’ or ‘CEOs’ is a bit grandiose. They are typically (in my experience, and I make no specific comment here about Mr Flynn, whom I have never actually met) typically sociopathic, narcissistic self-promoting, ladder-climbing arsehole pen pushers.
In fact on the balance of probability the average dude in charge of a carmaker import operation in Australia is nothing more than glorified middle management clerical assistant who simply gets underlings to fill in order forms, and reports back to the mother ship via some Google Hangout a couple of times a week. In Mr Flynn’s case specifically he seems to have been installed to patch the gaping hole in the hull and get the ship level. Good luck with that.
Huff ‘n’ puff
Mr Flynn’s entire puff piece recently on CarAdvice never once acknowledged the truth of the company’s epic customer betrayal. In my view, that’s disgraceful.
And I call it a puff piece for this reason. See those ads? All five of them? Explore the fucking range, indeed. Trent Nikolic is a good journalist (and a good bloke, like that matters). But he’s operating in the Matrix, and the CarAdvice Matrix is an advertising delivery system. It’s not about you, in the audience.
Jeep paid a lot of money for those three ads, which in my view explains why Mr Nikolic declined to publish (or presumably ask) what I would categorise as any properly hard questions. Like: “What do you say to the customers whose trust you have betrayed?” If he was sitting opposite me, I would ask him that, which is why of course he would never subject himself to that.
Even hero journalists such as Edward R Murrow was forced to do occasional puff pieces for CBS, back in the day. So I wouldn’t be too critical of Mr Nikolic here. He’s in a box, and the box has boundaries.
Still, in my view, the epidemic of Jeep advertising infecting that particular story is up there with that steaming pile of Mercedes-Benz EQC winning Wheels Bullshit Car of the Year, complete with a Mercedes-Benz ad on the outside back cover of the magazine.
How stupid do these marketers think you are, in the audience? It’s insulting. Intelligence insulting. Might as well scream: ‘Paid for by Jeep’ or whomever. This kind of thing doesn’t look bent over at all, I think you’d agree. You could argue a compelling case that the whole page on CarAdvice is in fact just an ad for Jeep.
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That’s 600 words in total, including an introduction and heading: seven Jeep ads, excluding editorial images (only one of which looks to me like original CarAdvice photography; the rest press images supplied by Jeep).
Criminal behaviour caused this to happen to a Dodge Durango on live television (back when people actually watched it).
Criminal intent
Every now and then, though, however occasionally, even in a puff piece such as that, some hilarious gem manages to slip through.
“[We are] looking forensically at parts pricing, looking at 17,000 parts numbers to rationalise costing and availability.”
- Kevin Flynn
Forensically. Sounds so right, but is so wrong. Which is just perfect. Perfect. Ever since the genre of crime scene investigation got popular on TV, the term ‘forensic’ has become so damn sexy. It actually means:
related to scientific methods of solving crimes, involving examining the objects or substances that are involved in the crime
-Cambridge
Seeing as Jeep parts pricing is, in a sense, criminal, that would be exactly the right way for you tools to investigate it internally, I’d suggest. Forensically. Might as well call a spade a spade.
Remember the Lawrence family, whose Grand Cherokee diesel injection system went poopy in its trousers in about September last year? That went kinda viral when it came to light the official repair quote was an eye-watering $47,515.55 - those pricks didn’t even round if down to an even 47-and-a-half.
Most reasonable people would categorise that price as criminal, in my view.
Re-write the wrongs
To Mr Flynn, whose job it is to re-float Jeep’s shit Australian sales from the bottom of the Marianas Trench, I’d suggest: Perhaps it’s time to drop the H-Bomb.
Try honesty, Kev.
Just fess up. Authenticity: it’s bold, even dangerous. But it might work. I know it’s a last resort, kinda like fixing bayonets. If you have to resort to honesty in the corporate world, something upstream has gone monumentally wrong.
You might have to say: ‘We behaved badly. We treated our customers like shit at both dealership and company levels. But that’s all over now - we are totally committed to delivering ‘best practice’ customer support henceforth. We will not let you down again.’
Of course, then, you’d actually have to do that - and that would mean changing the culture at dealerships and within Fiat Chrysler’s local shop. Frankly I doubt there’s any man who could achieve that - no matter how pure his intentions. Jack Bauer perhaps - but it might kill even he. And of course the optics of honesty would probably go over poorly with the boys ‘upstairs’, back in Auburn Hills.
So, if you’re on the cusp of buying a new car and considering owning a Jeep, and perhaps reading that puff piece and considering extending them the olive branch, the benefit of the doubt, I would say - I get the attraction. I really do.
But stop smoking crack: If you know what’s good for you, purely as a risk mitigation strategy, buy something else.
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