WARNING: GM's standard operating proceedure

Oh poor misterfact. He's a victim of today's widespread lack of personal responsibility. He feels no snese of responsibility to notify GM, yet expecting that GM may have need to reach him, expects that both GM and the dealership should assume all obligations for locating his whereabouts. Apparently misterfact has never heard of those change of address cards that are *free* from the post office.

Courage? In capital letters? As if your bubble headed irresponsible actions warrant a courageous act on anyone else's part. How about this - if you had taken responsibility for your own affairs you wouldn't be making a fool of yourself in a public forum now.

Actually, there should be no need to notify GM OR the dealer of his address change. Typically GM will use vehicle registration info as the address of where to reach the owner. This info is more accurate than relying on a dealer or consumer to update GM. This implies that the vehicle is legally registered with a proper street address.

Or that the owner took the time to change the address on his registration.

There is a culture that exists with all the big three to deny a problem exists until so far down the line that retaining good will is no longer possible. Eventually, they may pay a bunch of policy claims or court ordered repairs, but the customer is going to a competitor by then. They did not used to care about it because it was like they were all exchanging their underwear. But now there are options beyond the big three, leaving them all without their shorts and exposed more and more.

And this differs from most manufactueres in what way? See Toyota Sludge and Ball Joints. See Nissan transmissions. Etc. Etc. Etc.

This sounds like it was written by a high school student, not a business executive. I don't doubt this sort of thing is done, but the "policy" sounds very amateurish.

I worked for both GM and Ford in this area years ago. It's not so much a policy to defraud so to speak as much as the combined conflicts of the various factions within the companies. Engineering won't admit to an error. Design changes take forever to perfect and in the meantime, production goes on. The financial side can't get approval to make reimbursements. Nobody wants to officially recall anything lest the press have a field day with it. So they end up with a program whereby the noisiest, most litigious customers get something and the rest be dammed.

This is a post that I can believe.

Al, can you tell me why it took so long for GM to stop brazing the body panels below the rear windows?

sent us all sorts or promotional material about buying another piece of crap from them. Did they notify the company of ou new address (Which GM states IS their policy):

No! (Like I have to ntify GM of my new address TEN TIMES before they get it right! yeh, sure!)

It would have to be a high school student who got at best a D in English. An average high school student could do better.

Seconded. While the actions of a large corporation may seem evil or designed to screw John Q. Public, the reality is that big corporations have a really hard time dealing with defective products. Partly because it's not usually the department who is responsible for the error that has to pay for it. If the engineering department made an error it would be easier (not easy, but easier) to get their department to pay than it would to get the PR department to pay for it, though the PR department may end up footing the bill. There are a lot of other reasons as well, and companies should have very clear-cut policies for handling errors as quickly as possible to minimize the damage to their brand name and thus their PR hit, but it's obvious they don't.

Ok, I do know that sometimes executives do make unfair decisions designed to save the company money by screwing some of their customers. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm only saying that incompetence is far more widespread than evil intent.

and sent us all sorts or promotional material about buying another piece of crap from them. Did they notify the company of ou new address (Which GM states IS their policy):