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Trying to find somewhere to voice my opinion about the fact that gm lost the lawsuit we had about our 07 Equinox. They are supposed to give us a replacement or 25,000 dollars but they know that they can get out of it with their bankruptcy. They want to try to buy us off with 6,500. This is not right. We had so many problems with the cobalt right before this but never held it against them. This is what we get for being loyal customers. I have had gm for the last 15 years and this is what I get. We just want the thing to run but even after 22 service visits and them having the vehicle for 63 days and it still doesn’t run. So we are in for 476 a month for 5 and a half years for a lawn ornament.
36 Comments on “Ask the Best and Brightest: Can New GM Really Leave Its Rep Behind?...”
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Nope. Built by unionized blue collar for (unsuspecting) blue collar. Period. That will never change – only the existence of unsuspecting buyers will. It doesn’t matter how good the product is anymore.
GM’s quality problems and customer service attitude problems are mostly a management thing, not a UAW thing. The decade long screwed up intake manifold gaskets on certain GM V-6s? Management/engineering … not assembly. Door locks, wiper motors and other ancillary components that fail soon after the warranty is up? Intentionally designed that way.
The UAW certainly hasn’t helped, but management killed GM, not the unions.
BTW, VW is kicking butt on the world stage and is heavily unionized in its home country.
I have been saying for years that the first thing GM would need to do to start the recovery of its reputation is to match Hyundai’s warranty. Hyundai wrote the book on how to recover from self-inflicted mortal brand wounds.
GM is still structurally the same car company
I was feeling sorry until you mentioned your payment and term. maybe you just want out of the payment and obviously you are upside down a lot. an 07 equinox and 6500 dollars should buy your way out of the problem. I can hear the worlds smallest violin playing beautiful music.
I’ve wondered why so many (me included) have what seems to be an almost irrational hatred of GM, and this story helps. That is, over the last several decades GM has betrayed its own customers. My dad was a faithful GM man and so was I until just one too many rebadging, poorly thought out, depend-on-customer-loyalty examples. So I haven’t bought a GM product for over 25 years and am not about to start now, ‘reinvention’ or no.
@Strippo –
I don’t know a single “blue collar” who puts up with such crap from their cars. Especially since they’re the ones most likely to take a peek under the hood. If anything, it’s blue collar America’s lost trust in the D3 that has brought them where they are.
Think what you will about organized labor, but these people aren’t fools.
The reader’s plight is terrible. GM should honor lemon-law and similar claims. Now’s the time to build good will, not throw it away.
To me this is not about right and wrong or about obligation to the customer. If I chose to be loyal to anyone or anything, I am still responsible for my life and the chances I take.
Its sad to me that a company is so indifferent with selling its products. Its also sad to me that those buying products have an unhealthy relationship and unrealistic relationships with such enterprises.
I’d be pretty touch for me to accept being in such a predicament as the one for the above person. I’d be in some pain. Still considering what I have power over and do not, I need to accept such situations, and stop looking at myself as a victim. This is imo, an opportunity for growth, for me. The company has room to grow more caring also, but that is not really my business. My business is my well being.
Why do they deserve to leave their rep behind? Through arrogance and customer neglect, they’ve steered themselves into bankruptcy, all the while blaming the perception gap, the banks, sunspots, global warming, and basically everything except themselves and their failure to build competitive vehicles.
The people running this ship have not been fired. They still believe that they are great people building great cars, but it’s the customer’s fault for not seeing this greatness.
Mr. Equinox, do you really think that as a customer, you’re going to be treated better by GM when they come out of bankruptcy? Why would you even risk it when there’s a Toyota and Honda around.
Count me as +1 for never buying GM again.
Me too and my wife as well, we had many GM vehicles all our working life and how did they reward us? By P! us off many times over those same years! Never again! They should just die and wither away, the World will be better off without GM imho!
Horner is right. An extraordinary warranty would put GM on a survivable course. This can be implemented immediately.
ravenchris,
Yes. If it didn’t break them. And the warranty didn’t help the Equinox owner one bit.
Equinox Owner,
If it buys you out, take the $6500. Get a ’91 Camry or Accord that’s got a bad body but good mechanicals.
The length of the warranty is only part of it; the bigger issue is whether people will need to use it. Hyundai has rapidly gotten that part down; not sure about GM doing that.
BTW, GM’s warranty isn’t that bad:
5 yrs/100,000 miles drivetrain, transferable
5 yrs/100,000 miles roadside assistance
5 yrs/100,000 miles courtesy transportation
3 yrs/36,000 miles basic warranty (Chevy, GMC, Pontiac, Saturn)
4 yrs/50,000 miles basic warranty (Buick, Cadillac, Hummer, Saab)
KS
GM is already ‘broke’.
Make sure the insurance is up to date and cut a tree down on top of it. Failing that, your probably stuck with it.
Bankruptcy is not an option but you could stop paying for it and have it repossessed. That would at least get it off your lawn for you.
Maybe an independent repair shop could figure out what is wrong. Seems to me the dealer is running you out of patience and waiting for C11 protections or something like that.
I like the idea of taking the $6500 bucks and buying a different vehicle. I mean I rather have a used 528i in good shape then most any GM product (G8, Z28, CTS and ZR1 are great btw). I won’t get my other $18k back, but with depreciation, its maybe more like $12k, then there is the driving experience. What price can I put on going from an Equinox to a 528i manual with 17″s?
Nope. GM is clearly burnished by its past and now its future if there is one being now known as Government Motors.
NO??? Until NewGM learns to build a “global” product, they will be Fd. That means chasing German market-share with 4&5 cylinder turbodiesels and the Asians with believeable hybrids. Are they even attempting either? Not to my/our knowledge. An unproven $40K Volt is somuch pie-in-the-sky. Dummy-up MFs.
Let me be more clear on my warranty idea:
1) The customer is responsible for making sure all maintenance is done by-the-book.
2) The customer is responsible for normal wear items (tires, brakes, wiper blades, etc.).
3) GM warrants everything else for 10 years or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first. This is actually a little better than Hyundai’s current warranty.
Such a warranty puts the financial responsibility for designing and building a reliable vehicle clearly in the hands of the people designing and building it. A properly designed, manufactured and maintained modern vehicle should not have any mechanical failures over a 10 year/100,000 mile time span.
This is the kind of dramatic action it would take to put GM back onto the consideration list for the tens of millions of former customers who have previously joined the Never Again Club.
I’ve been pitching this idea online for over 10 years now, starting on the GM usenet lists. GM loyalists always said it wasn’t necessary to get down in the mud and compete with Hyundai. To quote a line a previous boss once used in a very different context: “I was right then, and I’m right now.”
Can you guys change the pic to the actual Equinox referenced in the story? The one pictured isn’t even out yet, so its pretty hard to determine how reliable it will be.
acurota :
June 25th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
@Strippo –
I don’t know a single “blue collar” who puts up with such crap from their cars. Especially since they’re the ones most likely to take a peek under the hood. If anything, it’s blue collar America’s lost trust in the D3 that has brought them where they are.
Think what you will about organized labor, but these people aren’t fools…
Those fools tolerate Fisher Price interior plastics, orange peel paint, misaligned body panels, floaty suspensions, numb steering, and Budweiser beer from a can. My impression is GM cuts corners in part quality to cover the cost of UAW benefits. Then GM workers assemble the cars with all the care of disgruntled postal workers. The result is a car that looks cheap when new, but is just reliable enough to keep warantee claims down.
Warranty or not, when I buy a new car, I’m not buying a relationship with the dealer’s service department – if GM can’t design and build a car that stands in good stead with the customer, they’re doomed.
They’ve got their second (last) chance – I’m thinking about taking a chance on another GM myself, but it’s against my nature to gamble; I need more assurance that they’ve learned their lesson.
You are getting roughly the same treatment that my friend got with an equally flawed Trailblazer.
Which is why GM shall remain indefinitely on my ‘no way’ list.
@bluecon…..I like your suggestion, all the Democrats and the Liberals buying union made GM products? Really,thats about 50% of the population. Sign me up.
Mikey,
I shouldn’t put any words in Mr. Bluecon’s mouth but liberals are about 20% of the population. Registered Democrats are much more, but many of them are swing votes. So my guess is he meant the 20%, which of course is now the ruling class, so I guess Government Motors is appropriate. Until now I have never used that term myself.
Great site, and I love cars! I had to register just to throw in my 2-cents. John Horner has it exactly right – the only way to make happy customers, short of making a truly reliable vehicle, is to fix the damned thing when it breaks, and make the owner feel like getting it fixed wasn’t akin to having hemorrhoid-surgery without anesthesia.
Obama already said warranties would be honored. I’d support the idea that my tax dollars be used to fix the lemons, if ONLY because that customer might then consider a purchase in the future. Make the guy feel like they done him right (even if they DID use his own $ to do it!), and he’ll think they’re at least fixing SOMEthing in that broken company.
This whole death-spiral thing only shrinks the pool of potential customers who must be won over with decent product – by expanding the size of that pool (get those Hyundai buyers for whom the warranty was the enticement to consider), the dealers could afford to have some of them walk away if the vehicle fell short in some other way. As it is, they’ll have to sell a car to every fool that walks in the front door, or they’re toast.
When GM is finished with reorganization, has good reliability reports, builds a car I want to buy, pays back the US government, and there are not people left-and-right getting shafted by them, I might consider a GM vehicle.
UNTIL then….I say put your my money where your mouth is, GM.
At least my 10 year old Chrysler (2000 neon) is holding up.
I was feeling sorry until you mentioned your payment and term. maybe you just want out of the payment and obviously you are upside down a lot. an 07 equinox and 6500 dollars should buy your way out of the problem. I can hear the worlds smallest violin playing beautiful music.
This seems reasonable. I take it that the deal is a different but similar 07 Equinox and $6500. Unclear if the OP is clear at that point or if he continues with the payment schedule (I assume the latter). Consistent with the court ordered $25K or replacement.
Either way he should take the deal, sell the replacement and get something non-GM. This is a buyer’s market for 2-3 yo used cars and SUVs.
I just want to clarify what others have commented on and ask a question…
Is GM offering to give you $6500 in cash and the company walks away?
Is GM offering to take the car back and give you $6500 in cash?
Is GM offering to take the car in trade for another, plus $6500?
If it is option 1, I’d be PO’d, and fight it. If it was either of the other two, it seems more than fair… take it and run!
For those who say longer warranties are a solution:
The problem with that notion is that a warranty that isn’t honored, or is quibbled to death by the dealer, isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. A 100k warranty that is disclaimed by the dealer is no more valuable to the buyer than a 36k warranty that is disclaimed by the dealer.
GM needs to lean on the dealers, hard, to make the warranty worth anything. Maybe even give them an incentive to submit warranty claims so as to keep customers loyal.
The other option might be to take the warranty service business away from the dealers and establish relationships with non-dealer car repair shops that get paid directly by GM for warranty repairs and let them know that any shenannigans will be grounds for GM terminating its relationship with them.
My Toyota came with a great warranty but the greatest thing about it was that I never had to invoke the warranty.
Buy a better car, not a better warranty. If you were duped by GM with your Cobalt, why the heck did you buy another GM product ? Take the $6500, do a little research (since the author has internet access), trade in the Chevy and buy something decent. End of story…
Question.
If GM gets off the hook on it’s obligations to owners of cars bought from the old GM then shouldn’t people who are still making payments to them that bought from old GM be released from their obligation?
What say Prez Goodwrench? Are you a huggy-love liberal looking to “help the little guy” or a corporate tool?
Chuckle.
Bunter
So this idiot had problems with a GM car before, didn’t hold it against them, bought another GM car and had problems again?
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
Funny, a guy I work with that used to be a GM service manager was just telling me today how hard it was to get warrenty approval out of them.
Think I’ll continue to avoid their product for now.
Bunter
GM needs to lean on the dealers, hard, to make the warranty worth anything. Maybe even give them an incentive to submit warranty claims so as to keep customers loyal.From what I’ve seen, that’s exactly what Honda does. Often after my Civic has been in to the dealer for scheduled maintenance, I get a customer satisfaction survey sent to me from Honda’s corporate office – and which is returned to them. It seems quite clear to me that Honda Corporate does lean VERY HARD on service departments to honor warranties and generally be fair with customers because they realize how key that relationship is to getting a future sale.
Warranties are worthless if the dealerships won’t or can’t fix your car.
As one of the victims of being screwed by GM (after owning GM cars for 30 years), my advice to you is to dump the car. Once the dealer decides he doesn’t know what’s wrong and doesn’t have a defined process (GM bureaucracy) to fix it, GM will blame you for tampering with the car and deny all warranty. You’re going to be paying $2000+ in repairs every year on top of routine maintenance just to keep the sorry thing running.
If your car has already passed the JD Powers 90 day initial quality measurement period, GM doesn’t care about you anymore. For every lemon out there, there are 1000 GM cars that are (note the quotes) “fully comparable in quality to Toyota or Honda”. So you aren’t even considered statistically significant to GM. and THAT is why new GM will fail. Customers are not statistically significant to GM.