?Reliability has been the Achilles? heel of GM for my entire career,? he said, promising he would focus the company?s engineers around the world on fixing the problem." They already know the problem but have never bothered actually fixing it. It will not be fixed this time either. Just pointless babble about how "we have gotten the message"-will never get fixed and STAY FIXED.
GM global VP to personally call buyers who returned a vehicle
General Motors Co.?s vice president for global engineering will spend the next few evenings calling customers who bought a GM vehicle and returned it during the company?s ?May the best car win? promotion.
GM chairman Ed Whitacre suggested engineering vice president Mark Reuss and his team make the follow-up calls to figure out what went wrong and improve the products.
Less than 0.1%, or 200 of the 220,000 people who qualified for the exchange offer, used it, and only about 20 buyers won?t move into some other GM vehicle. But Reuss jumped at the idea.
?This is about as direct and unfiltered feedback as we?ve ever done,? the 26-year GM veteran said. ?It feels pretty good.?
Reuss planned to call a buyer tonight who returned a Chevrolet Silverado pickup because of dissatisfaction with its interior room, paint and the quality of its finish. ?I want to know exactly why they weren?t satisfied,? he said.
Reuss is troubled by GM?s disappointing performance in Consumer Reports magazine?s recent survey of new vehicles.
?Reliability has been the Achilles? heel of GM for my entire career,? he said, promising he would focus the company?s engineers around the world on fixing the problem. ?It gets down to an individual engineer?s ability to find a problem and leadership?s ability to fix it,? he said, adding that too many GM engineers have been reluctant to point out problems because they were afraid they?d get the blame rather than praise for catching the mistake before customers suffered.
?We have to reinvigorate ourselves around what makes vehicles reliable and valuable to customers,? he said.