The Sweet Service Award goes to the Head Office of Mercedes-Benz and its Customer Care Manager Steven Crittalle, who patiently listened to my saga with Mercedes-Benz Culemborg (see Sour Service Award below), and made me feel that he would try to do everything in his power to make me a happier Mercedes-Benz owner. I had been cut off from the Customer Complaints Call Centre in Pretoria three times when the Culemborg branch switchboard operator had transferred my call to Pretoria. I spoke to Raven in the Call Centre, and he typed as I spoke, documenting the saga of disasters I had experienced. I reached Steven as Raven said my complaint would be referred to the Dealer Principal Keith Steel at Culemborg, and that concerned me, as part of the complaint was about Mr Steel, who became less and less customer orientated in dealing with my complaint. Steven came to the rescue! The only disappointment is that he cannot get to the bottom of what went wrong to the part ordered for the repair of my car’s roof.
The Sour Service Award goes to Mercedes-Benz Culemborg, a branch which had received a Sweet Service Award three weeks ago, when its Workshop Manager Dean Guimaraes helped me to open the roof of the car, despite a plastic bracket of the roof having cracked. The part needed to be replaced, and Dean showed it to me, as small as a credit card lying in the palm of his hand. When I asked, he verbally quoted the cost at ‘a few hundred Rand’. I had been there on a Friday afternoon, on a day when that branch was doing a Parts stock-take, so they could not check the availability of that part on that day. ‘Service Ambassador’ (he is anything but that) JP de Klerk took my details, and I added the replacement of a windscreen water bottle and windscreen wipers to the work to be done. I was told that the parts would be at the dealership by the Wednesday, and not having heard from JP, I called him. He confirmed that all the parts had arrived, and that I could bring the car. He called me back an hour later to say that the roof part had not arrived, and told me an odd story about how the part that was coming from Mpumalanga had in fact missed the bus, and would only arrive a week later. He could not explain why the part had not been sent. There was no apology from him. I called him on the following Monday, and given that the parts now had definitely arrived, I booked the car in for the following day. I had bought the windscreen wipers at Mercedes-Benz Century City and had them installed there, and had bought the water bottle, but the replacement of that was a more complicated process due to its location in the car. When I arrived at Culemborg, the bracket and the water bottle had to be installed. I was not told how long it would take to fit the two parts, and as I had my laptop with me, I decided to sit in their customer lounge and get on with my work, not expecting to be there for more than an hour. I had to use their archaic internet service (via Telkom), which requires one to sms Telkom for a free password, which is 16 digits long, and is ‘unlimited wifi for half an hour’ employee Marcel Pluke cleverly told me! After 30 minute the wifi cuts out without notice, and I had to have Marcel called again to assist me to reconnect, as the system to do that was different. I asked to see the Dealer Principal Keith Steel, and he told me that it was a new system, and that they were grateful to have it, not having been on wifi in the building before. The wifi service is disruptive for blogging, as it does not save work once the half an hour runs out, and therefore I braved asking the Service Manager Pierre after three hours of sitting there, how long it would still take to finish my car. He told me that both parts had been fitted, but that the roof part would have to be adjusted to make it work, and he had no idea when that would be done. I was not impressed with him, as he had given me no indication of it taking so long, and this is when I started thinking that something really serious was happening in the workshop, Mr Steel and Pierre meeting regularly. Other customers were pacing the floor too, not impressed with the poor service, and the lack of communication.
I decided to go back to Camps Bay, and the driver Deon showed me to the car. He kept talking on his cellphone while driving, mumbling away about Camps Bay, and I asked him to stop talking on the phone while he was driving. He disagreed about the route to get to Camps Bay, and mumbled more about making a stop in the city, but was unable to tell me that he actually wanted to drop me in the city centre so that another colleague could collect me there and take me to Camps Bay, to allow him to collect a customer in Wynberg. None of this was explained to me, and I insisted that he drive me to Camps Bay, which he finally did, as my patience with the cumulative inefficiency of Mercedes-Benz Culemborg had reached breaking point. I heard nothing from Mercedes-Benz, so I called them at 16h45, to find out how I would get my car back. Dean and Pierre were not available, and the Customer Relations executive (another inappropriate job title!) Antoinette was unable to tell me what was happening. I called Mr Steel, and he dispatched the very nice driver Mark to collect me. When I arrived at the dealership at 17h50 (they close at 18h00), no invoice had been prepared for me, and JP rudely told me that he had no idea that a driver had gone to fetch me! I asked Mr Steel, who was on his way home, to help me get an invoice, as Dean and Pierre were said to have gone home. I lost it when the invoice showed that the roof part had changed its name from ‘bracket‘ to a ‘roof hinge’, and had grown in price to R2784, with R850 plus VAT extra for the labour cost, a total exceeding R4000. Dean denied quoting the ‘couple of hundred Rand’. The Consumer Protection Act is completely ignored by this dealership, customers not being pre-quoted for parts and labour at all! Pierre would not listen to my complaint about the cost difference, and he only offered to take off the labour cost, leaving me to pay the part price. When I got into my car, a box with the replaced part was on the passenger seat, looking nothing like the part which Dean had shown me two weeks prior, now having grown ten-fold in size, looking more like a paper punch! I called Mr Steel twice the following day, and he returned the calls in the afternoon, sounding very unfriendly and defensive. He could not explain why the part had changed in appearance and in cost. When he called back, it was clear that he had been lied to by Dean. I suggested that the charge relative to the quote was contrary to the Consumer Protection Act, and that I should be refunded for the difference between the two costs, with labour added. Mr Steel refused categorically. I asked him to research why the part had taken 10 days to reach Cape Town, and he claimed to have called back, but there was no evidence of this on my cellphone. Only after I had lodged my complaint with the Call Centre, and had spoken to Stephen at the Head Office, did Mr Steel call, not explaining why everything had gone so horribly wrong at the dealership the previous day, but offering me a full refund, being an (unspoken) admission of malpractice and poor service, but which was not accompanied by an apology. He did not explain why he offered the refund, and whether it was the complaint lodged at the Call Centre, my threat to pass the story to Noseweek (who have written about the poor service received regularly by their readers from the company’s dealerships around the country), or my threat to pass the matter on to the National Consumer Commission!
The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog. Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at whalecot@iafrica.com. Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog. FOR THE DURATION OF MASTERCHEF SA SEASON 3 WE ARE MOVING THE SWEET & SOUR SERVICE AWARDS TO SATURDAYS.
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Tel (021) 433-2100, Twitter:@WhaleCottage Facebook: click here
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