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Let's get something straight first. Bad things happen constantly, and some companies mess up worse and more frequently than others. It's how they deal with the following backlash that counts.
Do you remember how some, if not most, mainstream carmakers used to care a whole lot more about their customers in the old days? By “old days” I don't want to make you go too deep into immemorial times though, just a couple of decades or so. Heck, some still do provide flawless customer services, but it's not the point I'm trying to make.
There was a time when if a carmaker severely messed up with something that in some way or another caused harm to its customers, appropriate measures would then be taken to fix said situation and then move forward.
Look at Ford, who had to settle a whole bunch of lawsuits in the 1970s concerning the so-called Pinto Fuel Tank Controversy, which originally made just about everyone think that the Blue Oval had put its profits above the value of its customers' lives.
Older folks may remember that the “Ford Pinto Memo” was simply an attachment from a letter that Ford had sent to the NHTSA, and its content was largely based on the safety organization's own regulations about the value of human life.
In other words, despite all the hate that Ford received from everyone in the 70's, it hadn't actually done something as wrong as engineering and selling a death trap on wheels. At least not in a worse manner than other U.S. carmakers back then, considering most four-wheeled creations coming out of Detroit were adorned with huge amounts of plastic chrome while their performance specs would perfectly adhere to the term “gutless.”
That said, Ford paid the price - in both money and image - but it also tried to make things better for both its future clients and its business. It survived somewhat well, at least until the Explorer/Firestone Tires controversy in 2000.
Once again, the American carmaker had to settle hundreds of lawsuits regarding the alleged lack of safety in one of its models. And despite what most media outlets were reporting back then, Ford wasn't actually directly culpable for the 250+ deaths and over 3,000 catastrophic injuries resulted from Ford Explorers rolling over.
Despite a subsequent NHTSA investigation showing that said SUVs were not more likely to roll over than any other SUV, with or without those dreaded Firestone tires, Ford still paid the price to make everything right again.
It's all about business or corporate ethics, and some of these elements can be hard to understand by us commoners, who have regular jobs and aren't running billion-dollar companies. We look at some, if not most carmakers as singular entities when they are in fact ran by tens or hundreds of people who need to have a profit-maximizing behavior for the sake of their shareholders.
The profit-driven way of running a business is a bit antithetic to how every car giant should behave from an ethical point of view. Especially with the people that can technically make or break its success in the long run: its customers.
Unfortunately, folks in charge of Volkswagen's upcoming destiny seem to be a tad detached from the realities that are faced by its clients. At least those clients who are affected in one way or another by either Dieselgate or the CO2 emissions scandals.
Before you jump and call me Chicken Little once again, let me extrapolate on those “realities.” Let's leave the indirect evil caused by those increased NOx and CO2 emissions aside, and focus instead on an average VW owner.
Say you've been happily driving a VW Golf VI 2.0 TDI for the last couple of years or so. Because of Dieselgate (and the CO2 scandal as well if you're living in Europe), you now find yourself in a pretty dire situation if you're thinking about your car's value on the second-hand market.
Plus, if you're European, Volkswagen has nothing but bad news for you. At least in the U.S. the carmaker offered those with affected cars two coupons worth $1,000 together. In Europe? Zip, nada, zilch.
I'm not trying to paint a better picture of Ford in this type of scenario, but it looks like VW works by entirely different crisis management rules. Plus, look at Tesla if you want a great example of someone who (may have) messed up, and yet it's doing everything in its power to make everything right again.
A few days ago, Elon Musk's coveted automotive startup announced that it would recall all the Model S sedans it has ever built. Why? One of them had a faulty “seat belt that was not properly connected to the outboard lap pretensioner.” A serious problem, yes, but I must reiterate that a single car was affected and nobody got hurt.
Tesla already checked 3,000 Model S vehicles and discovered nothing similar, yet it decided to recall all of them just to make sure.
Meanwhile, VW is trying really hard not to lose the money it is expected to lose, and so far it appears it is still more concerned with its downsizing profits. Every single public statement following Dieselgate and then the CO2 emissions scandals have been made mainly to reassure its stakeholders, not its customers, that the company will make things right in the end. Will it, though?
Are those the right priorities considering that the quest for higher profit margins and sales is what brought Volkswagen in this situation in the first place? I think not, but then again, I'm not in charge of a multi-billion global car company. I'm just a lost customer.
If I were one of the people in charge of cleaning up this mess, the 11 million something "clean diesel" owners would be my first priority, not my last. I'm not even talking about giving all of them coupons or free money because that would be wrong from both an ethical and financial point of view.
No, I'm saying VW should make sure that they remain loyal to the now-tarnished brand. How about more transparency in how it's dealing with the upcoming recalls? How about a well-put-together buy-back program that doesn't make those owners feel like they're being played once again?
I think that carmakers in general and Volkswagen in particular should make their customers feel less mistreated, especially when something like this happens. A car is a pretty expensive means of locomotion for a lot of people out there, and without them, the companies themselves wouldn't exist. Why aren't carmakers friendlier then?
There was a time when if a carmaker severely messed up with something that in some way or another caused harm to its customers, appropriate measures would then be taken to fix said situation and then move forward.
Look at Ford, who had to settle a whole bunch of lawsuits in the 1970s concerning the so-called Pinto Fuel Tank Controversy, which originally made just about everyone think that the Blue Oval had put its profits above the value of its customers' lives.
Older folks may remember that the “Ford Pinto Memo” was simply an attachment from a letter that Ford had sent to the NHTSA, and its content was largely based on the safety organization's own regulations about the value of human life.
In other words, despite all the hate that Ford received from everyone in the 70's, it hadn't actually done something as wrong as engineering and selling a death trap on wheels. At least not in a worse manner than other U.S. carmakers back then, considering most four-wheeled creations coming out of Detroit were adorned with huge amounts of plastic chrome while their performance specs would perfectly adhere to the term “gutless.”
That said, Ford paid the price - in both money and image - but it also tried to make things better for both its future clients and its business. It survived somewhat well, at least until the Explorer/Firestone Tires controversy in 2000.
Once again, the American carmaker had to settle hundreds of lawsuits regarding the alleged lack of safety in one of its models. And despite what most media outlets were reporting back then, Ford wasn't actually directly culpable for the 250+ deaths and over 3,000 catastrophic injuries resulted from Ford Explorers rolling over.
Despite a subsequent NHTSA investigation showing that said SUVs were not more likely to roll over than any other SUV, with or without those dreaded Firestone tires, Ford still paid the price to make everything right again.
It's all about business or corporate ethics, and some of these elements can be hard to understand by us commoners, who have regular jobs and aren't running billion-dollar companies. We look at some, if not most carmakers as singular entities when they are in fact ran by tens or hundreds of people who need to have a profit-maximizing behavior for the sake of their shareholders.
The profit-driven way of running a business is a bit antithetic to how every car giant should behave from an ethical point of view. Especially with the people that can technically make or break its success in the long run: its customers.
Unfortunately, folks in charge of Volkswagen's upcoming destiny seem to be a tad detached from the realities that are faced by its clients. At least those clients who are affected in one way or another by either Dieselgate or the CO2 emissions scandals.
Before you jump and call me Chicken Little once again, let me extrapolate on those “realities.” Let's leave the indirect evil caused by those increased NOx and CO2 emissions aside, and focus instead on an average VW owner.
Say you've been happily driving a VW Golf VI 2.0 TDI for the last couple of years or so. Because of Dieselgate (and the CO2 scandal as well if you're living in Europe), you now find yourself in a pretty dire situation if you're thinking about your car's value on the second-hand market.
Plus, if you're European, Volkswagen has nothing but bad news for you. At least in the U.S. the carmaker offered those with affected cars two coupons worth $1,000 together. In Europe? Zip, nada, zilch.
I'm not trying to paint a better picture of Ford in this type of scenario, but it looks like VW works by entirely different crisis management rules. Plus, look at Tesla if you want a great example of someone who (may have) messed up, and yet it's doing everything in its power to make everything right again.
A few days ago, Elon Musk's coveted automotive startup announced that it would recall all the Model S sedans it has ever built. Why? One of them had a faulty “seat belt that was not properly connected to the outboard lap pretensioner.” A serious problem, yes, but I must reiterate that a single car was affected and nobody got hurt.
Tesla already checked 3,000 Model S vehicles and discovered nothing similar, yet it decided to recall all of them just to make sure.
Meanwhile, VW is trying really hard not to lose the money it is expected to lose, and so far it appears it is still more concerned with its downsizing profits. Every single public statement following Dieselgate and then the CO2 emissions scandals have been made mainly to reassure its stakeholders, not its customers, that the company will make things right in the end. Will it, though?
Are those the right priorities considering that the quest for higher profit margins and sales is what brought Volkswagen in this situation in the first place? I think not, but then again, I'm not in charge of a multi-billion global car company. I'm just a lost customer.
If I were one of the people in charge of cleaning up this mess, the 11 million something "clean diesel" owners would be my first priority, not my last. I'm not even talking about giving all of them coupons or free money because that would be wrong from both an ethical and financial point of view.
No, I'm saying VW should make sure that they remain loyal to the now-tarnished brand. How about more transparency in how it's dealing with the upcoming recalls? How about a well-put-together buy-back program that doesn't make those owners feel like they're being played once again?
I think that carmakers in general and Volkswagen in particular should make their customers feel less mistreated, especially when something like this happens. A car is a pretty expensive means of locomotion for a lot of people out there, and without them, the companies themselves wouldn't exist. Why aren't carmakers friendlier then?
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