Observation chamber
Written by | Liu Jihao
As Volvo's thigh, the XC60 seems to be in constant trouble, and the "resonance gate" incident of two years ago has not completely faded from people's memory, and now it has a new thing.
A few days ago, the author found on a car complaint website that since January 1 this year, the Volvo XC60 ranked second, the number is second only to the Euler good cat that fell into the core change storm at the end of last year, what is the reason why the number of complaints about this second-line luxury SUV with monthly sales of 45,000 units exceeds that of Volkswagen and Toyota, which sell tens of thousands of models every month?
Further exploration can be found that in the 106 cases of Volvo XC60 complaints this year, nearly 70% are "suspected de-allocation", and the parts of the de-allocation are also concentrated in the tailgate, specifically the induction opening function of the electric tailgate has been mysteriously castrated.
This thing is not authentic, and it is not done smartly.
Quietly carried out the reduction, 4S store said that it did not know in advance
This kind of thing is not uncommon in the circle, especially in the special period of chip shortage in the past year, many car companies have adopted the method of reducing allocation to deal with it. However, in the way of reducing allocation, everyone is somewhat different, most car companies will inform customers in advance, how to reduce, how to make up for the follow-up, and what the corresponding subsidy scheme is. This kind of open and honest approach, the market has proved to be understandable and accepted by the vast majority of people.
But volvo is different, similar to the euler cat mentioned at the beginning, because they both "quietly enter the village, for fear of disturbing the villagers."
According to the complaints of car owners, the author roughly sorted out the context of an incident.
The vehicles complained about are concentrated in mid-October to the end of November last year, and the delivery time is from the end of November to the beginning of January this year, which is basically the 2022 B5 four-wheel drive Zhiyuan version - this is the best-selling model of the XC60. For this model, in the manufacturer's promotional materials, as well as in the 4S store's expression to customers, the tailgate sensing function is standard.
The first to find the tailgate induction function (commonly known as "a kick") is gone and complained, is a car owner in Shantou, he ordered the car before the National Day last year, when various promotional materials showed that XC60 Zhiyuan edition has this function, the result was that when the car was picked up at the end of November, it was found that there was no such function in the 4S shop delivery inspection link (it was said that he only knew after other owners said it). The 4S store told the owner at the time that they did not know that this was entirely the behavior of the manufacturer, and there was no compensation measure.
There was no prior notice, and there was no verbal measure afterwards, and the owners naturally did not agree.
In order to understand the truth of the matter, the author recently visited two local Volvo 4S stores.
The sales consultant of one of the stores said that the reduction did have this matter, but it was limited to the XC60 produced in October and November last year, and the manufacturer did not inform them in advance, nor did they inform the customers who ordered the car, and they also knew after the owners made a fuss, the reason was because of the shortage of chips at that time, but before October, and in December, the car that began to be produced did not have this problem.
In another store, the sales consultant even said that some of the inventory in their store was produced last November, and the delivery was random, because they didn't know which one didn't have the tailgate sensing function...
It cannot be reloaded later, and the compensation measures are doubtful
The customer service staff informed that the reduction of the corresponding batch of products is a normal measure for manufacturers to deal with supply chain problems, there is no false publicity, and some time ago, 4S stores have been notified to do a good job of customer pacification.
But in terms of the most core remedy, the manufacturer said that the function can not be reloaded later, because it involves the entire electrical system (I feel that the good cat with Euler can not replace the chip in the later stage), as for whether there is compensation, it is necessary to take the 4S stores and customers around the world as the standard - the implication is that whether you can get compensation depends on your personal ability. You know, what the author learned from the 4S store is that they don't know it at all, and they don't have any means of compensation.
Strictly speaking, the 4S shop is sandwiched in the middle, and the taste is actually more disturbing than the owners. After all, even if the manufacturers inform them afterwards, let them do a good job of appeasing, but can not be reloaded, and there is no substantial compensation, what they can do is to grind their lips, so that the owners of the car to dissipate - if not, then come back another day.
In this regard, the owners have actually been angry, some car owners said, "the manufacturer has not responded positively so far, shouting to find a 4S shop to solve, but the 4S shop is said to be the manufacturer's behavior, the two sides of the ball kick around, is not to solve the problem, when we are leeks." ”
『 Final Remarks 』
Whether the owner of the car is a leek or not, this matter is really difficult to say. After all, the big shop bully usually only happens to those really strong brands, and Volvo has been hovering in the middle and back of the second-tier camp of luxury brands for so many years (last year's domestic sales of 140,000 units, ranking behind the BBA and Hongqi, Cadillac and Lexus), which has shown that similar things should not happen to it.
Strictly speaking, "one kick" is not a configuration that can't be missing, at best it is the icing on the cake, and it can't be used several times a year, but Volvo's low-level practice of "quietly entering the village to shoot a gun" makes people feel like eating a fly, and no one is happy.
So far, the XC60 owners who have taken measures on the complaint website are less than a hundred people for the time being, and on this point, perhaps the manufacturer thinks that they can't turn over much of a splash. But manufacturers may forget that from the sales data of XC60 last year, the total sales volume of the two months at the end of the year exceeded 10,000 units, and according to the proportion of sales of the Zhiyuan version, the actual affected owners should be more than half, up to thousands.
What's more, after the Spring Festival every year, it is 3.15, an important node for the whole industry, and I believe that any car company does not want to be related to it.
The establishment of the brand is quite difficult, especially the positioning of luxury high-end brands, in addition to excellent technical strength and design skills, there is no decades of word-of-mouth accumulation can not do the real head, but a brand is destroyed is quite easy, a few bad experiences can make people reject it. This truth, I believe that Volvo is more experienced than ordinary users, we look forward to the problem can finally be satisfactorily resolved, the state will continue to pay attention to the progress of the incident.
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