YouTube — power to the people
Who said little consumers don’t have any power against big businesses?
Never before in the history of the world has a single person enjoyed the ability to take on a huge corporation for as little money as it takes today. Welcome to the YouTube generation.
For those of you just waking up in the 21st century, YouTube is a phenomenon in which ordinary citizens post their own videos that others can watch over their computers. You can watch silly things, serious things and the most ridiculous time-wasting material to ever clog the information super highway. You can post a video of your wedding, your kid crawling, your father snoring, your dog smiling pretty, and your RV dealer scamming you out of your hard-earned money. The Internet is filled with videos and stories about people who are unhappy with their RV or their dealer. For example:
One complaint about Recreation Plantation in Illinois was viewed 196 times. Check it out here: http://www.thesqueakywheel.com/complaints/2007/JUN/complaint14351.cfm
A Canadian RVer took issue with the construction and amenities inside all RVs. Read his review here: http://www.ucalgary.ca/~schultz/culling.html
A customer from Todds RV in North Carolina looked for others who had similar poor service problems. See his complaint here: http://www.rvusa.com/forum/mbbs22/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=6009
The point is that all this was found in less than five minutes by doing a few Google keyword searches. In the past, people who bought a lemon had little recourse other than painting their unit yellow and driving it around town bearing a sign saying “I bought this lemon at XYZ RV.”
Today, they can take a $100 video camera or free cell phone and prepare a walkaround video showing everything wrong with their RV. Or, they can launch a sneak attack on a dealer by recording a service call conversation or a sales conversation trapping a dealer in a lie or a hostile response, only to post that conversation on the Web for everyone to hear.
But, isn’t recording a conversation illegal? Yes and no. Most states require that only one party in a conversation consent to being recorded. The federal government and 27 states don’t have any laws prohibiting “hidden cameras.” You can check out your state’s laws by clicking here.
For $20 and a seventh grade understanding of technology, anyone can purchase a domain name and publish a Web site in 45 minutes that will be indexed by Google and available around the clock to people throughout a specific marketplace or the world. The Web site can document every phone call with a dealer, every broken promise, copies of invoices, sales literature, letters, service contracts and photos of every problem with an RV. RV owners can even place hidden cameras in their units to catch service techs rifling through drawers.
Big deal, you say? It is — really.
For another $20, any consumer can purchase 2,000 links to appear when anyone Googles a specific dealer name or manufacturer. If they are really mad, for a few dollars more they can buy top position in the search engine results. Heck, if they generate enough traffic, they can pay for the site by posting Google ads linking to your competitors.
Imagine Joe Consumer looking for XYZ RV’s website — the dealership he passes every day on the way to work. He enters XYZ RV in Anytown into his Google search bar. Less than a second later, up pops a bunch of potential sites, including:
Which site do you think he’ll visit first? How about second? And let’s not get started on blogs and forum sites. Every week, I get alerts from Google and Yahoo in which their electronic web spiders have stumbled upon another disparaging remark in a blog or forum directed against a specific RV manufacturer or dealership.
You’ll sue ‘em, you say? Sure. Three years and $20,000 later you might convince a jury of consumers to support you in the action, but only after the irate customer posts a daily blog about his underdog case against the big, bad dealer/manufacturer.
So what’s the point? Be careful. Train your staff to deal with disgruntled customers. They will never know when they are being recorded. And work hard to resolve EVERY customer complaint to the point if he isn’t completely satisfied, at least he won’t be blogging about the transaction with his faceless buddies around the globe.
October 16th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
YouTube is just additional way to complain about something. Just posting text is equally effective, if not more. The good news about YouTube is that anyone these days with a video camera — even the least expensive one — essentially has his or her own “TV network.” We have been posting how-to videos to YouTube for close to a year now and some of those videos now exceed 10,000 views each. We continue to experiment with online video and we feel that within a year or two that the videos we produce and post to YouTube and elsewhere will enjoy a greater audience than if they aired on a cable TV network. See our new YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=RVtravel and see our videos and others at http://www.RVvideos.com .
October 13th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
While I agree with the thesis presented here, I’m not sure these are the best examples and I would have liked to see an equal amount of links to some of the excellent comments one can find about RV dealers and manufacturers on the Internet.
As for the couple tht drove to Chicago during a blizzard, to do business with a dealer they never met, and did all their shopping by phone and the web - well they got exactly what they deserved. I do not know the dealer so I can’t comment on the deal itself.
However, this one surely qualifies as a stupid, uninformed, and misguided customer and the dealers that they passed over should consider themselves very fortunate.
An inexperienced RVer that goes this route will almost always be disappinted.
The other rambling didn’t tell us anything that most of us already knew.
As for the one that got removed, I missed it completely and can’t comment one way or the other.
October 10th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Can not believe you caved in to one complaint about the language. No one had to listen to it, I though it was very humorous and relevant to our industry. All you had to do was simple put a warning about it. Big deal oh well everyone caves in I guess you are no different.
October 10th, 2007 at 8:53 am
Gene made a valid point about the taste of one of the links I had included in my original blog — that being the one of a dealer uttering a five-minute string of profanity while trying to film a commercial.
Last night, I reviewed that video again and agreed with Gene that it really isn’t in good taste to post it here. Although it is available all over the Web, its home is better suited for the everything goes, no holds barred, we can say-do-act anyway we’d like YouTube environment than it is a business-to-business site.
So I made the decision to remove the link to that video. But its existence in cyberspace speaks well to my original point. Be careful. What you say or write to someone in haste or anger this morning may be broadcast all over the world this afternoon.
The fact that a video made a decade ago or longer enjoys new life in the 21st century speaks to another unfortunate fact. The Internet is forever. Anything posted in fun today will be archived by someone tonight and re-released in the future, often at the most inopportune time.
Just ask Vanessa Anne Hudgens.
October 10th, 2007 at 7:02 am
Gene, please say that you are not an rv dealer. “Let the buyer beware” has got to be the most redicules statement anyone can say. That attitued is what is going to make you-tube successful and the rv business look even worse.
When the dealer starts to get bad press on the internet it won’t take long for him to start applying the pressure to the manufacturer. They have expected us to settle for less and we have, but the buyer today is younger and has greater expectations and will not settle for the old “Thats just the way RV’s are”. The new buyer demands value and will shout from the roof tops when his or her expectations are not met and the internet is a roof top within hearing distance of everyone in the world.
Great article.
October 9th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Good article, Greg! It’s about time the customers have an outlet to vent their frustrations with the RV industry! Quality control is sorely lacking in many areas. Viewing the RV.Net forums, you’ll find complaint after complaint about just about every RV manufacturer. And if it’s not the manufacturer, it’s one of the component products.
Take Al-Ko axles, for instance. They KNOW they have a problem with their axles from the 2003-04 model years, yet instead of stepping up to the plate and replacing the axles, they are denying folks left and right because they’re “out of warranty.” What a cop-out. Must be the bean counters who said that it’d be less expensive to pay off a couple lawsuits than to voluntarily recall their defective product!
What can the consumer do when manufacturers and component suppliers refuse to stand behind their products? Shout it from the rooftops on the internet! It WORKS!
Yes, we all have to deal with lousy customers as well, and we’d all like to videotape them and post what idiots they are, but we all know we can’t do that. Take good care of your customers and they’ll remember it and will tell others. It’s quite simple. Unfortunately, until the manufacturers are held to a higher standard, it’s the dealer that will have to bear the brunt of most of the irate customers.
October 9th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
I could not stop laughing at the moron Winnebago dealer. That was just too funny. If you found it offensive then you could have turned it off after the first inappropriate word. It is hard for anyone to control this type of media and no one should control it, true freedom of speech thank God we have it. There are good customers and bad customers, good dealers and bad dealers. If you just do the best you can for your company, employees and customers then you should be able to shrug off the bad ones.
October 9th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Good article Greg, but not in good taste. I find the ranting of the fellow in the Winnebago video to be highly offensive. No one in the Industry needs to hear that kind of ranting.
I can understand the frustration that folks may have regarding poor workmanship, etc. But all I can say in response is “Let the Buyer beware”. When you seek out a good product, you will get a good product - at least 99% of the time. There is sufficient room for everyone to make an honest mistake.
You know the numbers as well as I do, thus, for an Industry as large as the RV Industry is, someone will find something to rant about. That’s normal.
Gene
October 9th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Two sides to every coin but only one side has the real voice with U Tube. I am sure dealers, each and every one of them, could fill the pages with stories about rip off customers. You know, the guy who stops in and has you look at a dragging brake, which you fix immediately because he is on the road,and then bad mouths you and writes you up because his engine went bad after you looked at the brakes! Cheeez! Maybe dealers ought to write up every unresonable customer who tries to stiff the dealership. For every U-Tube irrate customer post there should be one from the dealer *about* customers. Maybe customers would understand why some dealers are sceptical about complaints they get. It is a two sided coin.
October 9th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Greg,
It is amazing how the changes in technology and media can give people a voice/outlet that they may have never had before. As you mention above it all comes back to something completely unrelated to technology. Good ole common sense and customer service … no computer needed for that.
However, as the every day average Joe is out searching the Internet for his next RV purchase or trying to decide if he even wants to … RV Manufacturers and RV Dealers can use technology to their advantage as well. The same forums, blogs, and video sites you mention above can all be used to the advantage of the RV Industry.
Encouraging customers to post messages and videos … even the Dealer and Manufacturer themselves. Even though it is basic at the core Monaco Coach is using YouTube.com to host the videos of their products for all to see. See their videos here.
It’s like everything else … good things take time and effort … going after the quick-buck tends to produce bad results everytime.