Help show Consumer Reports how it's done

[tazcaddy]

i just signed up as well.

[danjessee]

I am in! Just waiting for survey /confirmation

Got it in 10 minutes :0 Filled in Gas survey, no repairs yet

[mkaresh]

Thanks, guys.

Since you joined after the middle of the month, you'll receive your first email for the main survey early next month, covering April.

Vehicle reliability research

[mkaresh]

I recently posted here about the high repair rate the 2008 CTS has been experiencing. Some people were upset about the post, some were "don't I know it."

I believe that GM is working on fixing common problems, and might have already made a number of running changes.

To be able to detect these, and measure any improvement, it will help to have as many recently purchased CTSs as possible in the panel.

Everyone is encouraged to participate, but your help is especially needed if you bought your car in the last few months.

Vehicle reliability research

[The Tony Show]

How about you at least pay to support this forum for the car whose reputation you are ruining? Everyone on here should be as outraged as I am that you've filled this forum full of spam begging people to participate and promote your business venture, then you turn around and make 80% of your recent press release about how bad the CTS and GM suck.

Your endgame in all this is obviously to make money off your TrueDelta service, either by selling the results in a subscription form or through advertising on the web site, and all you offer us in return for helping you is diminished resale values and perceived quality by repeatedly blasting GM in your "oh so scientific" results. I'd love to see you thrown off this forum with the rest of the trash, but if people insist on keeping you around, at least have the good decency to become a supporting member in return for the damage you're doing to our brand. It's only a few dollars a month, which I'm sure you'll be able to afford by selling all your Anti-GM propaganda.

Have a great day.

[mkaresh]

Way to take a shot at the messenger, Tony, because you don't like the results.

I support this forum by referring everyone who researches a Cadillac on my site to this forum for discussions by owners and other potential buyers. The recent press release also credited this forum for making the result for the CTS possible.

Let's be clear about one thing: I don't publish propaganda. I post results based on responses from owners, whatever those responses happen to be. I have no control over the results for individual models.

If anyone is ruining the car's reputation--and this will only occur if GM doesn't rapidly identify and fix common problems--then it is GM. GM did not engineer the car thoroughly enough. And quality inspections at both the plant and at dealerships like yours clearly are not catching assembly flaws the way they should be. Too many times, they're either not noticing problems or simply assuming that the buyer won't notice them.

Maybe you thoroughly inspect the cars you deliver. I'd love to hear your comments on this process. The fact is, many Cadillac dealers do not.

Well, many of today's buyers of luxury cars do notice minor problems, and do care about them.

If you want to blame anyone, blame GM and Cadillac dealers. As I said, I'm just the messenger.

Why is the CTS highlighted in the recent press release? Because when a prominent new model checks in with a problem rate about 250 percent of the average, that's news. Plain and simple.

Anyone interested in better reliability information would expect me to provide such news without concern for how others might respond to it. And that's what I've done.

My father owns one of these cars. I happen to personally know some of the executives involved on the program. And I personally like both the car and this forum. So you'd better believe I'd rather have reported that initial reliability was stellar. And I hope to be able to report improvements in future updates.

But this is up to GM and its dealers, not me.

The domestic auto industry got where it is partly because it felt that uncomfortable information should be ignored or rationalized away rather than actively responded to. I refuse to be part of such a process. Aside from being dishonest, it simply doesn't work.

[Cadillac Tony]

We've sold a staggering amount of 2008 CTSs, and the number of them coming back in for complaints such as wind noise, vibrations, and other concerns mentioned here is practically none. Body panel fitment is one I'm especially shocked to see, since I have had 0 complaints about that. Do we inspect our cars throughly? Absolutely. Do all dealers? Probably not.

After a decade in Auto sales, I have seen the Internet go from a non-factor to the huge entity it is today. Dealing with both walk-in customers who will never once even look at an Internet car forum AND the posters here and elsewhere, one thing I can tell you is this: The forum poster or Internet shopper is twice as likely to have complaints about the car, real or perceived. Why is that, you might wonder? Two reasons:

1- The type of personality that drives a person to read and post on Internet forums usually tends to be more meticulous and demanding of perfection. They will pick a car apart for any tiny complaint, then complain loudly about it. Non forum users tend to drive the car and enjoy it, unless there's some very noticeable noise or a warning light on the dash.

2- Internet forum readers are victims of something I like to call "Automotive Hypochondria". They've had their car for months and love it, but then they see a post on-line about something- a panel that's slightly off, a faint noise only audible with the radio off, or even something ridiculous like "If I go 32mph, then press the gas halfway, then floor it, the car hesitates". Then they run out to their car and inspect it with a magnifying glass and say "OH MY GOD I HAVE IT TOO GM SUCKS!!!"

Polling data from Internet forums is going to get you one of two things- largely dissatisfied results, or in the case of imports (like BMW), a forum full of people that are so snobby and proud of their purchase that they will lie about how satisfied with the car they are. I've seen it time and time again, and I know it's true.

All that being said, I pay to advertise here on this forum because I'm here to sell cars and make a living. If you wish to continue to use the members of this forum to collect free data, then turn around and make a profit off publishing it (which you have to be doing- no one would go to that much work out of pure altruism), I'd suggest that the very least you could do is show some class and become a Supporting Member. Just my opinion.

[Cadillac Tony]

It's also worth pointing out that if the fit/finish, noise and vibrations were as bad as your survey results indicate, the CTS would not have outscored the 328i and C300 in the new Consumer Reports.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/c...-sedans-ov.htm

[mkaresh]

To date I have had no direct revenue from the reliability research, and do not know when I will have any revenue from it. This forum provides me with exposure, and I provide it with exposure.

It might be hard for you to personally understand, perhaps because you'd never do anything if you didn't earn money from it, but sometimes people do put a lot of effort into something not for money but simply because they want to see something done, and no one else is going to do it.

As for the forum effect, most of my data so far comes from forum members--and yet owners of virtually every other model do not report nearly as many repairs per car.

To chalk this up to "hyperchondria" for the typical Cadillac owner and "snobbishness" for the typical BMW owner is typical Detroit think. It's called a rationalization, and one without any actual evidence.

The basic facts, as I've explained elsewhere here:

--the great majority of repairs occur after people join the panel, and I assume they can't predict the future

--if cars don't have problems in the first place, then people cannot complain about them

One clarification: the problem reported isn't with exterior panel fits, it's with interior trim fits. Such as the A-pillar trim issue discussed elsewhere on this forum. If that trim piece had been properly manfuctured, or if defective ones had been replaced at the factory or during the dealer's PDI, then there'd be no problem.

But too often neither is the case. Instead, GM and many dealers are letting such issues slide, assuming or hoping that the buyer just won't notice.

How often do you catch and fix such problems before the customer can see them? Or do you assume that most buyers won't notice or care about minor trim issues? Well, except for the hypochondriacs, of course. Which we assume are not the typical buyer...

[Cadillac Tony]

It's very rare that we have to correct a factory issue- the cars are very well built

Originally Posted by mkaresh

perhaps because you'd never do anything if you didn't earn money from it,

Oh please. Everyone goes to work to make a living and feed their families, Salesmen are no different. I won't even dignify your insulting remark with any more of a response, save to say that it's one of the cheapest shots I've encountered here.

[mkaresh]

Originally Posted by Cadillac Tony

It's very rare that we have to correct a factory issue- the cars are very well built



Oh please. Everyone goes to work to make a living and feed their families, Salesmen are no different. I won't even dignify your insulting remark with any more of a response, save to say that it's one of the cheapest shots I've encountered here.

You questioned my motivations. In my experience, people tend to project their own motivations onto others. It has nothing to do with you being a salesman.

If my primary motivation was earning a living, then I would have never developed this research.

Needless to say, my wife is not a fan of this project.

[mkaresh]

Originally Posted by Cadillac Tony

It's also worth pointing out that if the fit/finish, noise and vibrations were as bad as your survey results indicate, the CTS would not have outscored the 328i and C300 in the new Consumer Reports.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/c...-sedans-ov.htm

Consumer Reports' road tests do not consider reliability. For reliability, they rely on survey responses. They'll have their result for the 2008 CTS in late October or early November.

A major advantage of TrueDelta's system over theirs is much quicker results, and updates four times a year. Around the time they have their first result, for owner experiences through April or so, TrueDelta will have its fourth result, for owner experiences through the end of September.

The reason CR's road tests don't consider reliability issues is that they test only one car, and they know better than to reach a conclusion about reliability from a single car.

Many CTS buyers do get perfect cars. The problem is, too many of them do not. These days it's not a matter of the number of problems per car, but the number of owners who have even one problem. This percentage has been much higher for the 2008 CTS than for nearly every other 2008 model I have data on.

And the runner up is the 2008 Saturn VUE, another first-year GM design.

[Cadillac Tony]

*sigh*

You shouldn't be ashamed of trying to start a business up- more power to you. Whether you maintain the business yourself and sell advertising on your site or you sell the results to someone else, the bottom line is that it's a business venture. You can't honestly expect anyone to believe that you'd pay the cost of maintaining a web site and spend the time collecting and organizing this data for the betterment of the world. Your press release AND the post above this one tout how fantastic your method is, which is obviously an advertisement. It's insulting the intelligence of everyone reading this train wreck to suggest it isn't.

I have no problem with you eventually making money off this- it's the American dream, and I hope you succeed. Now pay CadillacForums.com for all the bandwidth you use collecting your data and advertising your service, and reconsider your data collection methods to include a broader demographic than just the Internet forum poster.

[mkaresh]

Press releases in general communicate the advantages of whatever an organization is doing. Yet they're not technically ads. Many media outlets essentially reprint press releases without labeling them as ads. And they never charge the company that issued the release for posting an article based on the release.

Tony, you are not the owner of this forum. Sal is. A couple years ago I asked Sal for permission to post here, and he granted it. If memory serves, he encourages people to participate near the top of this thread.

I'm very grateful for Sal's help. In return, I help spread awareness of his excellent forums.

This isn't really your business (no pun intended). You're just making it your business because you don't like the result for the 2008 CTS.

Heck, I don't like the result either. But I also think that future Cadillacs are more likely to be higher in quality if I publicize these results than if I'd buried them. GM and Cadillac dealers need to learn that many luxury car buyers have high expectations.

The fact of the matter is, many picky owners still won't even consider a Cadillac. If you don't see many of them in your dealership, it's because they're buying cars elsewhere.

[Cadillac Tony]

Don't turn this around to be about me- support the forum that you're mining for free data and advertising on. I don't own the forums, but I am certainly entitled to posting my opinion. You're also absolutely right that I don't like YOUR results for the CTS, since they're biased and skewed. They disagree with nearly every review posted of the CTS, and if there were that many with problems then at least ONE review would have commented on a-pillars, wind noise, rumbling, etc. Your data falsely represents the minority as the majority.

Not only do I pay to advertise here, but in addition to offering low prices on cars to forum members I also provide useful technical information to people who need help operating features on their cars, regardless of where they bought. In return for the sales I make here, I support this forum both financially and with information. It would be real easy for me to post nothing here but blatant advertisments, but I instead spend a lot of time answering questions which pays nothing.

Step up and give something back to community while you're busy ruining their resale values.