How many people have gotten a bad review? Yes you suck! There is somebody out there who’s going to say you suck. You don’t. You’re no better or no worse than the dealer, restaurant or hardware store down the street. I hope your better. But you are going to get a bad review. You cannot satisfy 100% of the people all the time. But, A BAD REVIEW IS A GOOD THING!!!! If all you have are good reviews you are less believable. If you went to a restaurant website and all you saw were good reviews, not one criticism, would you believe them? Think about it. Have you ever had a less than perfect time at your favorite restaurant? The criminal thing isn’t getting a bad review; it’s about how you respond to the bad review. If you have 90% good reviews and 10% bad reviews you have no problem. If you respond, as you should, to all your good reviews and you ignore a bad review, then you’re in trouble. Because people are going to look at that bad review and they’re going to give the bad review more credence than the good reviews. If you respond to the bad reviews then it just becomes somebody who’s disgruntled, who can’t be pleased, whose miserable (but enough about me). You need to deflect people to locate your good reviews. You can do that in how you answer your poor reviews. What do you do? You answer a bad review. When? Well, what’s the old saying? There is no time like the present. Answer them right away. People want to do business with people they like and they trust!! It’s about the people, people!!!! You can gain trust with a proper response to a poor review.

Here is a great “what not to do”. Public response on DealerRater from a dealer who got a bad review.

  Added: 8/30/2011 11:08:48 AM
Where did you learn your grammar skills? Overall, we couldn't make a deal with you because of $300.00 difference between your $14,700.00 and our $15,000.00. Does this make us a bad dealership (by the way, this is the correct spelling, NOT DLR SHIP, you moron...)? But I guess wrting bad reviews is your constitutional right, just like living your life in total ignorance. Goodbye and good luck. Oh, and if you need grammar lessons, we can recommend several places where they teach English as second language, you illiterate nincompoop.

Now how many people, after they read that review and then the response, who are they going to trust? The reviewer or the dealership that’s giving this response? Are they going to come to this dealership? Are they going to visit their website? Are they going to give them a chance? Not a chance. Not a chance in hell.

Now there are a couple of things I want to hit on before we talk about this next review. This guy gave us a bad review but we can learn from a bad review. One of the things in here that he says “I did not feel valued as a customer.” Can we learn from that?

You can look at your bad reviews and learn from them. Pay attention. That’s where somebody’s going to tell you what they want to hear. Look at other people’s reviews. And you’ll find wonderful marketing tools. People will tell you in the bad reviews what it is you need to say to them in your marketing. So use it to your advantage.

Let’s get back to this bad review we received.

}  Reason for Visit: Sales (New)

I recommend this dealer: Yes

My Review:
I went to this dealership to buy a brand new Jeep. I was interested in pricing and different payment options. I was handed the payment estimate and was told that the prices would not change and there was no room for negotiation. He also said if I'm looking for something lower then "We're done here" and was rushed out of the store. He also got quotes from his boss and refused to go back to speak with him due to his offers being like "Christmas presents" to me. There was also a $5000 rebate available on the car that I was never told about. The next day, I went to a different dealership and bought the same exact car at a way better price! I did not feel valued at all as a customer & will NEVER recommend this dealership to anyone.

This was our response to this review.

Response from: Papa's Dodge Chrysler Jeep
Added: 7/30/2012 11:30:19 AM

I'm not sure what happened here. We almost never end up not selling a vehicle because of price. Knowing the salesman involved, he would never had said that it was a rock bottom price unless he was sure. Possibly the vehicles were not identical? Possibly we appraised your trade wrong...we aren't perfect even though we strive to be. Maybe the other dealer made a mistake in your favor? This is all conjecture. Just wanted to apologize that we didn't give you the car buying experience you deserve. As you can see from the reviews on this page that doesn't happen very often. Thank you for your constructive criticism, Dom Papa

The first thing I did was talked to the salesperson and the manager. Then we ‘crafted’ our response. We took ownership of it. It was our fault. But we don’t want to sound like bad guys. We didn’t attack the customer. We just discussed the situation. I’m not sure what happened here. I’m confused. We almost never not sell a care because of price. He complained about the fact that our price wasn’t as good as the other guys. We never lose over price. Knowing the salesman involved, he would never have said that it was a rock bottom price unless he was sure. So it was what we felt was a rock bottom price. Possibly, the vehicles were not identical. Possibly, we appraised your trade in wrong. The reviewer doesn’t talk about a trade in but you know who the customer was. Your salesman will track it back to him. We aren’t perfect even though we strive to be. Maybe the other dealer made a mistake in your favor. (the other guy made the mistake) This is all conjecture. I just wanted to apologize that we didn’t give you the car buying experience you deserve. As you can see from the reviews on this page, that doesn’t happen very often. Again you have 90% positive reviews, 10% negative reviews. Have them look at the 90% not the 10%. Thank you for your constructive criticism. We will get better will get better because we got a bad review). (To Mr. Customer whose reading this response…we always try to do best by our customer) Dom Papa.

Here is another one from Google that we answered totally different.

A Google User reviewed 0 / 3
Poor communication and unimpressive customer service. I purchased a certified car there in December and my salesman was not very good at communicating with me. After placing my deposit I had to call them several times before I was able to arrange a pickup time. Now that I have the car, I am still waiting on my registration. Again, the person helping me with that does not call me to tell me why my registration is still not finished two months later. Recently, the certified car I purchased developed a small leak on the exhaust manifold and Chrysler won't fix it under warranty because there are aftermarket parts I was not made aware of. I am STILL waiting to hear back from them on that. They simply don't communicate well. I leave voicemails and don't hear back, I send emails that don't get responded to. I live two hours away, so I can't just drop in. Nice dealership, with cool vintage cars all over, but my experience with customer service is, so far, not a positive one.
Liked: Value
Disliked: Service

“Poor communication and customer service. I purchased a certified used car there in December and my salesman was not very good at communicating with me. After placing my deposit I had to call them several times before I was able to arrange a pick up time.”

We have 2 business managers and deliver 170 cars a month. Do you think they’re not calling and scheduling deliveries? They called him.

Now that I have the car, I’m still waiting on my registration.

It’s an out of state registration, it’s a problem with the fact that he didn’t have his car registered and try to do a transfer. But it’s our fault. Again, the person helping me with that does not call me to tell me why my registration is still not finished 2 months later.

We called him 3 times and told him he had to go re-new his old registration, send it to us and then we would do a new registration.

Recently the certified car I purchased developed a small leak on the manifold.

Funny how that happened after he decided he didn’t want to go to the DMV and re-new his old registration.

And Chrysler won’t fix it. I’m still waiting to hear back from them on that. They simply don’t communicate well, I leave voicemails and don’t hear back, I send emails that don’t get responded to. I live 2 hours away so I can’t just drop in. Nice dealership with cool vintage cars all over but my experience with customer service is so far not a positive one.

Now I have personally responded to this guy on behalf of the dealer principal. I told him to call me, told him we would fix this. The problem is he needs to go re-new is old registration in order for us to register his car in Massachusetts. He finally did it, we finally got it done. Within 24 hours of us receiving his renewed registration we got his new registration done. I could go on line and I could tell people this whole story that I’m telling you. That will not help me sell cars. Sometimes a simple response is the best response.

Christopher, I’m glad you liked the dealership. (He said he liked the dealership) But I want you to like our customer service as well. Please contact A.J. Maida at 860-225-8751 or ajmaida@papasdodge.com so he can help you with this. Thank, Dom Papa.

Which is what we have already done. I’ve already been in touch with him before we posted this response. But it’s simple and what does it tell the other people? This is a dealership who wants to fix a problem.

Remember that when you are responding to a negative review you are not doing it for the benefit of the person who wrote the poor review, even though it would be nice if they gave you a chance to rectify the problem, most will not. You are responding to your negative reviews, for that matter all your reviews (you a responding to all of them, right?) for the benefit of the next customer who is reading it. People want to do business with people they like and they trust!! It’s about the people, people!!!!