a question of ethics

marx404 · 03-19-2004, 06:40 AM

This is about ethics, our local Saturn dealership and a perhaps a bit of a rant, so bear with this and please offer any constructive suggestions on how to deal with this.

My family has been long time good customers of Saturn of West Palm Beach, FL. Our service manager has always treated us like family, treating us with the utmost of respect, honesty and quality. If this were a Cadillac dealership, we could ask for no better than him. He is the reason that we all own Saturns and bring our repeat business. Combined, we have spent more than $15K in service alone in the last few years.

I have always been impressed with the Saturn âdifferentâ and âPeople Firstâ approach, ergo, when I was faced with a career change, I wanted to become part of the Saturn family that treated my family so well. I am a computer technician with marketing and sales skills and a people person so I thought this would be a great place to work and sell people something that I too really like, Saturns.

Last May 2003, I applied and was told I was hired at Saturn of West Palm Beach, FL. I was ecstatic. This occurred simultaneously with a buy / sell of all dealerships in this county. Nonetheless I was told to prepare to start work the following week. After not hearing from then for a week, I went into the dealership for a repair and walked in to speak with the hiring manager who told me to be patient because of the buy / sell. I never received a call, post card, how-do-you-do, nothing. I took it upon myself after three weeks to call Saturn of WPB and follow up again. The man who hired me said that he didnât know himself. So I asked to speak to anyone else and was sent thru 15 minutes of back and forth like I was a hot potato between office personnel, each one putting me on hold for the next. Finally I reached a secretary. I asked to speak with the owner and she said, âJ.R. doesnât speak to the general public, sirâ. So I politely asked her what was going on and she said, âwe just decided not to hire youâ. âJust like that?â I asked? âIt has been three weeks and I have heard nothing from youâ. âAt least as a courtesy, donât you send out a post-card, letter or phone call?â. âNo, we donât do that here.â Was her reply and she hung up on me.

I was flabbergasted at the lack of professionalism and respect at this dealership.

Optimist that I am, I decided to apply again in response to a newspaper ad, which stated âNo Experience Requiredâ in July. This time I approached our service manager who gave the sales manager, Joe a very good reference for me and got me in for a brief interview with them. I was promised a reply within that week. Again, absolutely no reply. Again, I followed up with a phone call and they told me to call them back later that week. A week later and two âcall us back tomorrowâsâ from them and I was told âwe decided to go with a more experienced candidateâ.

Three times the charm, so three weeks ago this March 2004; I called our service manager and inquired if I should apply again. He replied that the buy / sell had completed and that this is now a completely âNew Companyâ. After speaking with him, I also thought that trying for a service writer would be good as well as a sales position. So on my third attempt, I came in and completed a new resume and brought in a new shiny resume. I brought this to our service manager and he introduced me to the new dealership hiring manager, Mike. Again, the service manager gave me a very good reference. Again I was told âwe will call youâ by another sales manager. Again, I never received anything at all.

Today, my wife and I had to take her car in. While there, our service manager said to me âhave they called you?â I said âno, nothingâ. He told me that he had again told them that I was a very good candidate for a job there and to at least contact me with some answer. He said that he had approached them three times in the past week.

At this point, I thanked him for all that he has done for my family and me and for his honorable efforts in trying to assist me with getting employment considerations.
Glen, our service manager, is truly is a gentleman and is the reason we have been loyal Saturn owners for over a decade.

But I also politely expressed my displeasure to him in what my family and I consider the ultimate lack of consideration and respect by the upper management and the Sales management at Saturn of West Palm Beach, FL.

I am very upset (not at Glen, he is the best) at this dealership and their lack of respect. They forget that without their customers they have nothing and my family and I are customers. Good, long-time, loyal paying customers.

Our service manager has been promoted now and will no longer be taking direct care of my family and me. We donât trust anyone else with our cars. We have dealt with the others and donât trust them to be as honest or knowledgeable as Glen is.

I have decided that not only will I be sending this letter to Saturn Corporation, SuburbanCollection.com- the new owners, and the dealership at WPB themselves.
I have also decided that as soon as we can find a private mechanic, we will no longer be patronizing Saturn. Furthermore, our cars are more than 10 years old, ergo we will most likely be purchasing new cars soon. I have already been looking at the CS ratings of Hyundai and Ford and will be considering them for my family.

Not just I, but our three families are very upset with their lack of respect. If they didnât want to hire me or had an actual valid reason, why couldnât they just tell me? Why the runaround and the lies? I have been personally insulted, my intelligence insulted and my time wasted. Is this the way that the new Saturn is âPutting people first?â

marx404

n_rodgers82 · 03-19-2004, 07:58 AM

wow thats messed up

KAdams4458 · 03-19-2004, 03:24 PM

It's not just that dealership... Just about every company in this country will do the same thing.

I've been a full-time job hunter for most of the past three years, and I can't tell you how many times I've been "hired", only to be completely ignored the following week. I've even moved to other states three times in order to take on new jobs, only to be told that I'm not needed before I even get a chance to start working. Welcome to America.

monkeyracing · 03-19-2004, 05:11 PM

I think to look at this objectively, you have to separate the two areas at hand.

One is your position as a customer. The other is your position as a potential employee. I can guarantee you that the persons in power at that dealership view them very separately.

I had a similar situation a few years back at a shop where I'd been, and still am, a customer of many, many years. The idea got into their head that they wanted to hire me for a sales position, but it didn't seem to work out that way in the long run.

The bottom line (for me) is that the level of customer service I received never deteriorated. I know that I should have received more information than I did regarding my application, but I didn't give it too much thought as a customer.

Now, if the service you receive changes, then you certainly should take action of some nature, but you have to be careful to keep the issues separate, otherwise you risk looking like a fool.

Hope that helps,
Jim

lysis · 03-19-2004, 06:43 PM

my thoughts exactly. you need to look at things from two different perspectives. i had the same problem with staples; now i never really did shop there, but i'm not saying i would never shop there because they gave me the run around. hell; it's just like my car club i'm in. the president doesn't want us going to the car toy store ( www.thecartoystore.com lol) because "i've heard of some of the work they've done" he says. they have never done me wrong; i'll keep going up there and buying ****. plus, it's not like i'm having them install it, so what do i care how terrible of installers they are? now granted these are two very different situations, but they're similar in the sense of having bad experiences and good experiences. as the customer, your experiences are great; and i'm sure they will continue to be. as the dead beat looking for a job, they didn't want to hire you. somebody was better. go to college you bum. lol

and as far as buying a hyundai or whatever, why would you judge saturn as a whole based on bad experiences with ONE location? they've got hundreds of locations all over the US.

hope that may have helped buddy.

Coldsolderjoint · 03-19-2004, 09:28 PM

people always say, well call you, they never do..

i got hired at this local sandwhich shop while they were still building it... they said they would call me in a week.. ok, week and a half go by, i call them, they say our contractor is messing with us, call in a week, goes on like this for like a month.. then i drive by and the store is open! i go in, and they are like, oh, we hired all new people, its like WTF!? so i would say to get over the job part.

as far as the customer part, kinda the same thing here, my mom loves to go to saturn for work, and she pays thier rates.. shes been leasing cars since like 94 or so, and if anything goes wrong, they did all the service so they cant say anything.. i went to buy my used sc1, and they pissed me off alot... i go to a private mechanic now...

marx404 · 03-20-2004, 05:13 AM

thanks for the input. as said, it's about ethics and respect and nothing more.

This dude wasn't born yesterday and distinguishes between customer and employee.

Lets not get into the college discussion, k? With a degree and 10 yrs in IT, let's just say Bangladesh wasn't an option and I'll let you guys figure that one out.

So I do have other skills and Marketing and Sales are some things that I do quite well. The same ppl own every Saturn dealership within a 100 mile radius here, so I gave it a shot.

I do discern between customer and employee , but I don't discern between people and respect. Respect is not a one way street in my book. This is no game, no play.

Would I look like a fool for openly asking someone to be honest and respectful to me? Perhaps to a crook or a player, yea. Ya know what? when ya reach a certain age in life I find that dealing with ppl like that are about as much fun as stepping in dog cr*p with new nikes.
(hey, so I tried the lawn 3 times and found the same old cr*p, thats distasteful enough for my family to take our business elsewhere).

So as a customer, as a potential candidate, as a person - damn right I reserve the right to be upset if ppl have the right to play games.

Dont piss on my right leg and tell me that I still have a left leg.

If anyone knows of a Saturn mechanic in the WPB, FL area, please post, it's much appreciated.

jeep45238 · 03-20-2004, 07:19 AM

Marx....almost the same boat bro. I was hired as a lot tech there. Cool for the first little while....but then it started going downhill. My 2 bosses would call me up front and ask me what I'm doing, and I'd reply "washing some bird crap off of some cars". Fair enough, on my way.

Soon, most of the lot was clean. The lits they gave me to do that was supposed to take all day took 3 hours. I was working the shifts they gave me, which was as much as I wanted. That would be every opening/closing hour of the sales department.

Long story short, I had to take 3 or so days off because of getting my wisdom teeth taken out. The day before I had detailed a QC, Vue, an L series, and a ION 2, on a Saturday when we were dead, and was told to put these in the show room.

I got back, and was working for an hour or so and asked my boss what needed to be done for the day. He said sit down. I did, and he said effective immediately I was fired. WHAT!?!?!? I didn't snap till I got home....shock I guess.

He said it was a "buisness decision", and then when I asked him for reasons he started saying there was wax on the cars in the show room.....BULL****, I went over every panel 3 times and then took 'em inside.

Winds up one of them asked my dad if he knew I was working this much, and he said yes (50+ hours a week). Winds up my boss slipped that they only had a budget for 40 hours a week for lot tech..... They never cut my hours, sent me home early, NOTHIN, just fired me and stabbed me in the back when I was depending on that job for college money.

Most people I've talked to that have worked in the Sales department HATED it. Service....liked it.

**** employment for Saturn Sales. I almost sold a QC and was going to get a sales person to fill out paperwork and everything when my boss yanked me aside and started yelling at me. Gee....I'm sorry. I cleaned all the showroom cars already. They asked a question. I answered. They wanted to know about buying it. So sorry to almost get a sale for you.