May the Best $500 on the Hood Win

by Edward Niedermeyer

Published: September 18th, 2009

We don’t have any numbers yet on GM’s 60 day money-back guarantee, but according to GM dealers speaking to Automotive News [sub] it’s not generating a lot of interest. “If [customers] like the car, if they test drive the car, most of the people would rather have a car to keep,” explains one dealer. Which makes a certain amount of sense, and which is why dealers insist that the number of buyers taking GM up on the offer doesn’t matter. “It’s more important to talk about the money-back guarantee. It conveys confidence in the vehicles,” says another dealer. “It’s not about the deal, but rather it’s about the world-class products.” That sounds good in principle, but the reality is that it actually is all about the deal. Again. Still.

A little known fact about GM’s 60-day money-back guarantee is that you don’t have to take it. If you go that route, GM will give you a $500 cash rebate to waive your right to return the vehicle. And it’s no shocker to learn that this extra cash on the hood is a lot more enticing than the ability to return your vehicle within 60 days. Unfortunately, it also cements the reality that GM is shopped almost exclusively for a deal and that incentives are still the only thing moving the metal.

Considering how corrosive this reality is to GM’s perception-gap-fighting efforts, something has to be done. And so it’s up to dealers to not give consumers what they came for and hide the $500 option as well as they can. “Our salespeople are not permitted to talk about the $500. That is going to be disclosed in the business office,” says one dealer. “For this program to be successful, it’s more important to talk about the money-back guarantee. It conveys confidence in the vehicles.”

#GM #Incentives #Perception #Quality

Edward Niedermeyer

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Golden2husky on Sep 18, 2009
When GM realizes that quality begins beyond the Friday morning internal Cost Savings meeting, I may start looking. E. g. the little black plastic ‘Christmas’ trees they use that allow really fast install of door panels, yet fail 2 years later, etc, etc ad nauseum.... I never understood the use of those damn Christmas trees on parts that may need to be removed. And it is not just GM who does this...

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Rudiger on Sep 19, 2009
texlovera: "How long do you think it will take for GM to claw back enough market share to again become viable? And do they have that amount of time available? I don’t think they have enough time. And that’s even under a best-case scenario."In the last 50 years, (beginning with the cost-saving engineering of the 1960 Corvair rear suspension), GM has consistantly managed to piss away all the trust they'd earned with the American consumer during its first 50 years of existance. There isn't any kind of short-term marketing gimmick that's going to change that, certainly nothing as lame as being able to bring back your new, POS GM product within 60 days of purchase. It's worth noting that for most of the 40 of those last 50 years, the company was still hugely profitable. As late as 2000, GM stock traded at an all-time high of $94.62/share. It's now virtually worthless. The sad thing is that all those truly responsible for GM's steady decline and demise have long since retired or died, one sterling example being none other than the infamous eighties' financial wizard CEO, Roger Smith.

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