Herb Chambers complaint, commentary & update
21 08 2005A lot of you have IM’d me, e-mailed me, and a few brave souls have left comments here about issues you’ve had with Herb Chambers. For those of you who don’t know the history, I’d gone through a series of issues with Herb Chambers a while back with my Infiniti. After getting a very unacceptable con job from their service department, I was subsequently ignored, passed around, bullshat, blown off, lied to, then ultimately made fun of by the staff there.
In Herb Chambers’ response to my letter (authored by their executive Jeff Wilson), they smugly denied any responsibility and referred to the fact that I’d blogged it for “lack of something better to do.” Jeff even enclosed a convenient printout from my site, with the relevant text circled. I appreciated this not only because of its usefulness as a tool for following along, but also because until he did that, I’d never seen one of my own blog entries printed out before.
But I’m sure Jeff meant it all in a nice way – after all, he didn’t know about the DigAtari 2600, and probably thinks Google Cred is some kind of pizza. Nor is he aware of the fact that I sometimes eat hash brownies and hide in a cold dark basement and write in my blog over stolen WiFi. (The fact that no one reads it makes me feel much safer saying so.)
The thing is, I thought I was all alone in here, all by my creepy pathetic blogging self, then suddenly I’m dealing with gobs of inbound traffic via search terms like Herb Chambers Infiniti and finding myself in the top results for almost any relevant term one might use when researching their BBB-decal-displaying organization. All because I had time between my Warcraft tourney and masturbating to Lord of the Rings videos to jot a note in my cute little diary.
I had planned to take legal action against Herb Chambers Auto Group if they didn’t offer to make things right. I really didn’t care about the money. It was about the way I was handled and treated, and the poor quality of service. But with no time or energy to pursue anything more formally (much too busy surfing for ceramic cats on ebay), I had let the matter sit on the shelf since March.
And over that time, I have noticed a constant hum of feedback from people who’ve found themselves in various pinches with the Herb Chambers group, with issues ranging from sales tactics to warranty service.
And having just, late last week, received word from yet another person who read my blog and actually decided to take their Saab purchase elsewhere, I realized that my blog is having a much greater impact than any legal action would.
The latest customer relayed to me that when he called the salesperson to call the deal off, the sales guy said, “are you going to believe some guy on the Internet, or are you going to believe me?”
Perfect.
“Hello?”
[If you have any Herb Chambers complaints, please share so that others might learn from your pain.]