Island Chevrolet, going out of business one customer at a time?
GM is in deep trouble. President Obama fired the CEO. Then he told them to smarten up or he would force them into bankruptcy soon.
What kind of trouble does that make for GM dealers? Apparently lots of trouble. Customers worry about warranty work. It’s great if the car is cheap when you buy. Will a bankrupt GM be allowed to assume warranty on pre-bankruptcy sales. That’s why they go bankrupt – to avoid their debts like bond holders, employee pensions and customer warranties.
I think we’re seeing signs of that stress on PEI. The service at Island Chevrolet is in the tank, in my opinion. The new owner, Paul Mifsud, hails from New Brunswick and he doesn’t have two clues about customer service PEI style. I hear rumors you have to sue them to get work done and my encounters with him are pretty poor.
Joe McKenna, one of my business mentors, told me “Look after the customer and the customer will look after you.” He said that if someone’s shirt got ruined in laundry they would go out an buy a new one not just pay money. The service at New Method is always tops. One Sunday night, Joe’s son Terry delivered my clean shirts to the house when he heard I was flying out the next morning. You can’t buy great customer service.
First thing Mifsud did at Island Chevrolet was lay off my salesman, Danny Stanley. I’ve been with MacLennan Motors, then Walter Picott’s since the 80’s when Danny Stanley sold me a car. He was a great guy who always looked after me. I know his brother, his wife and his nephew. They’re all fine people. Danny was deathly sick for awhile but came roaring back. I waited until he recovered to change cars.
In reality I liked the late Cecil Delong and his staff at Hillside Motors a little more than MacLennan’s at first. There was no finer gentleman than Cecil DeLong, a real prince among men.
But Danny Stanley was so good at looking after me, I bought all my cars from him. Back then I always had two vehicles, some of them pretty nice like my ’88 Cadillac and the 95′ Yukon and 99′ Tahoe SUV’s. I just came off owning back-to-back Chevrolet Impala’s. Danny just looked after it. And they let him go. Weird. He was excellent at getting money from my bank account. But life moves on so you just shrug off changes.
I was talking to the sales manager at Island Chevrolet and he suggested I come in and meet the new owner. So I did one morning. Only Mifsud made me wait in the waiting room for over an hour while he gave the service manager a chewing out. You could tell cause all the walls are glass and the door was open. He could have saved that for sometime when it was private or when he didn’t have a customer.
Have you ever sat for an hour in a car dealership? Every salesman wanted to sell me a car. That’s nice but you feel like a fish in bowl after the third guy zones in on you. Lucky for me I knew them all. That didn’t stop them from trying to hook me: they knew I was on the lose with Danny gone.
I got to see Mifsud after cooling my heels and he was OK, more like a guy who wants to play with his laptop than a customer service owner. Walter told me once he never wanted to own a computer in case he got distracted from talking to customers. Smooth man that Walter Picott, always upbeat and smiling. You liked talking to him because he made you feel good.
I tried to follow up on my conversation with an email but Mifsud never replied. He didn’t return two phone calls.
My sixth sense tells me he’s in deep do-do. Islander’s have a great sense for who fits and who doesn’t. He’s not even trying to be an Islander. Add to that nervousness about GM and you got trouble waiting for the right moment to happen.
I’m kinda looking at maybe one of those Toyota Matrix cars or its twin the Pontiac Vibe. Both dealers have great sales and service departments and that’s important. If Cecil was still alive I’d be at Hillsides in a heartbeat. He was a great gentleman.
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