If you want the plain unvarnished truth with absolutely no sugar coating, “Some customers lie to get FREE services”! Not all customers, just some. You can usually pick them out once they open their mouths and start spewing their venomous lies and false accusations. The lies most often center around items that are not covered under warranty or they have damage on their vehicle and intentionally blame your dealership or repair facility for the damages trying to get repair restitution on items that clearly your facility has no responsibility to cover.
Let us cover a few examples of customers that have blatantly lied. There was a lady who came into the dealership with not one but two blown out front tires. Upon inspection it was determined that the rims were bent from an impact and the tires both had two huge sidewall bubbles. My advisor proceeded to price the customer two tires and two rim straightening repairs. Once the estimate was presented to the customer she threw a verbal and physical temper tantrum in front of other customers. She screamed, she cried and then she became downright nasty swearing and name calling when she didn’t get her way.
She had started out by saying that she had felt vibration and lack of control since she owned the vehicle and therefore the tires and rims should be covered under the warranty. I asked her when exactly she started to experience this type of ride and she indicated it started the day she took delivery of the vehicle. While she was talking I was reading the work order, she took delivery two years prior and twenty-eight thousand miles ago. We offered her 10% off the prices to try and appease her sensibilities and that didn’t work either!
I proceeded to tell her that tire manufacturers only offered warranty on defects in material or workmanship unless she had purchased road hazard warranty. She again started swearing and name calling. I asked her politely three times to calm down. She would not. I finally asked her to leave and take her business elsewhere as we were not about to give her free tires and rims. She made sure she screamed at the top of her lungs before getting into her vehicle and streaked out of the parking lot with both front tires flat!
There was the customer that purchased a used vehicle from a dealership more than two years ago and also purchased the manufacturer extended warranty. Used vehicles are sold from that dealership with an automatic ten year one-hundred-thousand mile power-train warranty, whichever comes first.
Several months ago this customer came into the dealership for routine maintenance and was quoted a transmission service and flush, upon inspection it was ascertained that the transmission fluid was burnt and the transmission had never had a service, ever. The customer declined the transmission service and all other maintenance recommendations like filters, belts and hoses.
Two weeks ago the vehicle was towed into the dealership due to the fact that the vehicle would not go into gear. Upon inspection the technician found that the burnt fluid contributed to the clutch pack disintegrating and now the unit was full of filings. The vehicle no longer had the manufacturers extended warranty in effect; it had been out of extended warranty for almost a year. The 10 year, 100,000 mile warranty the dealership offered would not cover the transmission as it is expressly written that ALL maintenance MUST be performed at the selling dealer and all servicing must be adhered to keep the power-train warranty in effect.
The customer proceeded to call the manufacturer customer service center and file a complaint. Customer service did not contact the dealership as they dealt directly with the customer and informed the customer of their rights and entitlement under the contract of extended warranty. The customer then called the service advisor and stated that the manufacturer was covering the transmission. It was at this point that the manufacturer was contacted and they indicated that they had told the customer that nothing was covered; the customer was on his own for all repairs. The customer was contacted again by the advisor and the customer yelled, screamed and carried on and called the advisor names. During this time the customer was driving a complimentary loaner vehicle. When the customer was asked to either repair the vehicle or bring back the loaner vehicle the customer became belligerent and called the manufacturer again stating that the advisor was rude and nasty, apparently this was his excuse to ask for assistance with the transmission repair from the manufacturer again. The manufacturer reiterated their findings and again denied any assistance towards the repair.
It took another week to retrieve the loaner car and the customer is still trying to worm a free repair from whoever will listen. This included stating that they were never informed to perform the transmission service in the first place. Thankfully the dealership did document all declined services on their work orders and they are covered. CYA – this MUST be your first line of defense against lying, cheating deceptive customers, “COVER YOUR ASS”!
People are looking for free stuff all the time and nowadays it is becoming commonplace to see and hear people making up lies for any number of reasons to get their way. If you and your staff are not diligent in your record keeping and or your documentation on your repair orders you will suffer monetarily. Due to the high expense of paying for costly record keeping mistakes from deceptive customers it may be prudent to have a meeting with your staff on proper work order documentation and implementation.
I often ask myself if this type of behavior is indicative of the retail industry and if it permeates into other employment sectors as well. For instance, does this type of behavior happen in a doctor or lawyers office? Probably not! Why do we as an industry allow customers to get away with lying, cheating, deception and dishonesty? I realize there is a lot of competition out there to get customers, but are these the customers anybody really wants? I don’t think so!
The next time this type of customer is trying to back YOU into a corner try informing the customer exactly these words, “Obviously we cannot live up to your level of expectations, please take your vehicle to one of our competitors and try their level of service, they may be able to satisfy your needs”! What would you do if you found out your spouse was cheating and lied to you? Exactly! There is no difference here, sometimes you need to divorce yourself from certain customers. You only have so much time in a day to donate to your customers, why not donate quality time in relationship building with those that truly deserve it. Why waste your time and energy on people that will lose you money. Besides these negative people take so much mental energy from you that could be harnessed in positive business building. When dealing with negative people you sap yourself of the positive energy and become bogged down in the negative.
I recently looked up statistics on lying customers and was surprised to find out that roughly 35% of the people you see on a daily basis will lie or become deceptive to get their way. While looking up that information I also found an article from a doctor named Alan Hirsch. Dr. Hirsch’s research identifies twenty-seven verbal and non-verbal signs that indicate when a speaker, (Customer) is lying. Dr. Hirsch’s work includes over sixty references and twenty textbook references validating his extensive research into body language and verbal clues that indicate when someone is lying. Dr. Hirsch’s work is summed up below as a guide to be used to detect when someone is lying to you.
The verbal signs of lying include:
• Qualifiers &modifiers: not necessarily, but, however, almost, generally, basically
• Denials of lying: frankly, obviously, to be 100% honest with you, as far as I know
• Speech errors: this is the old Freudian slip, changing your thoughts and details mid-stream
• Sentence pause-fillers: filling empty spaces with um, err, ah, uh
• Stuttering: a liar gets tongue-tied, runs words together, stammers and slurs his speech
The nonverbal signs of lying include:
• Less finger pointing
• Lip licking
• Lip puckering/tightening of lips
• Increased drinking and swallowing
• Fewer hand gestures
• Hand-to-face grooming
• Sighs/deep breaths
• Hand and shoulder shrugs
• Handling objects or fighting
• Looking away to the side or down
• Touching nose
• Crossing arms
• Closing hands into fists
Dr. Hirsch cautions against making rash or quick judgments based on one nonverbal sign. Several verbal or non verbal signs used by the speaker raise one’s skepticism about the truthfulness of the person’s message, statement or story!
Please use this as a guide to help detect when people are lying to you. Only you can be the judge of what you are hearing and experiencing and each circumstance and customer is different. Knowing some of the signs may be helpful when making the ultimate decision to divorce your dealership or repair facility from a deceptive or dishonest customer.
Below you can find the video Honesty: Auto Mechanic. It is both funny and demonstrates what may really be going on in peoples minds.
David
