Hondas and Surveys

My 2003 Acura had given up the ghost and after a scant 18 months of research I bought the first car I considered at the beginning of my quest:  A 2012 Honda Accord EXL V6.  I've owned no other make of automobile since 1986 but I looked at every Korean and Japanese import, some German and Swedish and even considered a Ford.   Ultimately I came back to the tried and true; a habit I find more and more is part of my routine.  I used to look forward to finding and purchasing a new vehicle.  Now I approach the process with all the enthusiasm of gulping down the putrid contrast used in a colonoscopy.  There is a reason I kept my old car 9 years and has little to do with how fond I was of the deteriorating paint.

Throughout the 5 hour process of selecting the car, negotiating the price, haggling over the value of my priceless trade-in and arranging the financing I was reminded no less than 150 times that a "Survey" would be conducted by Honda of America a few days after I took delivery of my new ride.  It was impressed upon me that nothing less than a perfect score was acceptable.  In fact, the very survival of the families of the salesperson and the finance guy was dependent upon that flawless report.  The concept was burned so deeply into my brain that I awoke each morning following the delivery of my new vehicle with the impending "Survey" in the forefront of my consciousness.  Daily followup telephone calls from my the salesperson ostensibly to see "how I was doing with my new Honda" always ended with a  reminder about the looming "Survey".  The panic in the delivery of that reminder was scarcely camouflaged.

Exactly one week after I took delivery of the shiny new Accord another call came into the office.  The highly anticipated "Survey" was to be delivered imminently through my email.  Multiple polite requests to make sure no scores other than the ultimate were satisfactory along with reminders of the mandatory execution of the salesperson and finance manager if anything less was recorded.  Thinking that the impending interrogatory would be a few simple Yes or No queries I was nothing but eager to complete the task.

The truth is I am very happy with the new Honda.  I think I negotiated a reasonable price for the new car.  I got taken on my trade but it wasn't worth the hassle to me to deal with the inevitable craigslist phone calls and missed appointments so I guess I can chalk that up to convenience.  Got my 2nd choice of color, 100K bumper to bumper warranty at 60% of the price originally offered by the salesperson and darn good financing.  When I picked the car up it had a full tank of gas and was still dripping from the requisite washing.

Within minutes my computer alerted me of a new email message.  The ominous looking sender:  "Honda Corporate Headquarters"; the title: "Honda Survey Invitation".  Invitation?  Keerist, an invitation is something you can gracefully decline if the timing isn't right.  I was lead to believe heavily disguised men with flaming rags on the ends of pointed metal rods would occupy my front yard if I didn't complete the interrogatory as prescribed within minutes.  Anxious to to be done with it I opened the body of the email to a reasonably pleasant message, thanking me in advance for sharing my "experience" and assuring me my "privacy" was of their utmost concern.  I figured the odds of my being able to complete the survey anonymously was akin to the Pittsburgh Pirates winning the World Series.

Now I don't remember the questions exactly but I can tell you that the scoring system was based on a scale of 0 to 10 with 10 being best (which I had previously been advised by my new best friends was the ONLY acceptable score).  I think the guidance in the actual survey as to the meaning of the scores was that a 0 was a recommendation of a public execution of the staff at the Honda dealership and a 10 was what Mother Teresa would have earned for her work in India's orphanages.  The 25 or so questions, then, were worded in such a way as to have any lawyer that babbled in court using similar language disbarred for witness leading.  To wit:

"Was your experience (there was that word again) at Honda of Your Town such that you would equate it with the birth of your first child?"  And, "Did your salesperson and finance manager pull the pockets out of their pants and jackets and shake them vigorously in your presence to prove that you left absolutely no money on the table?"  Then, "Was your new Honda delivered in such a manner that you could have eaten 3 consecutive meals from any external surface, including the tires?"  Ultimately, "Did your salesperson explain every gizmo and gadget in easy to understand terms and read the entire owner's manual to you aloud and include the exact spelling of any word longer than 2 syllables?"

I started to hyperventilate.  I assumed that my answers to a few innocuous questions to provide an appropriate ATTABOY for the 2 faces of the Honda dealership with which I dealt would be a little less confrontational.  They were nice guys; I think I got a fair deal; The car was nearly the one I wanted and it was reasonably clean when I picked it up.  However, to live up to the standards of a "10" as described in the survey would have required a performance worthy of a standing ovation - theirs was more like a golf gallery clap.

In retrospect, I don't think Honda of America gives a tinker's damn about how happy I was with my "experience"; I think the process is designed to identify who the best salespeople are based on whether or not they can convince their customer to give them all 10's on the survey.  Strangely, since I completed the questionnaire I haven't heard from my salesperson at all ....