Sometimes A Mistake Is JUST A Mistake

There is something that bothered me throughout my years in the car business, and even though I sold my last dealership more than 20 years ago, it still bothers me today. It's the assumption that when something goes wrong at a car dealership, somebody must have been trying to cheat somebody. I've heard it thousands of times over the years, both when I was running dealerships and during my 25 years on the radio, and I still find myself getting irritated when someone describes a problem and immediately concludes that the dealership deliberately did something dishonest.

Now, before anybody starts sending me angry emails, let me make something perfectly clear. There are dishonest car dealers out there, just as there are dishonest people in virtually every profession. I've spent a quarter of a century warning consumers about deceptive advertising, unnecessary add-ons, misleading financing practices and dealerships that don't deserve their business. I've never hesitated to call out bad behavior, and I'm certainly not going to start defending it now. When a dealership intentionally misleads a customer, I believe it should be held accountable, and if that means losing a customer, paying a fine or facing legal consequences, so be it.

But somewhere along the way, we seem to have forgotten that the people working inside car dealerships are human beings, and human beings make mistakes.

Think about the last time a restaurant got your order wrong. Maybe you asked for a hamburger without onions, and when it arrived, there were onions all over it. Did you immediately assume the cook was deliberately trying to deceive you? Probably not. You figured somebody made a mistake, asked them to fix it and went on with your evening. If the restaurant handled it properly, you probably didn't give it another thought.

Now imagine buying a car and discovering that a figure on the paperwork is wrong, a promised accessory wasn't installed, or somebody in the service department misunderstood what you wanted done. I've heard people describe situations like those and immediately say, "That dealership tried to rip me off." My first question is usually whether they've given the dealership an opportunity to explain what happened and correct the problem, and you might be surprised how often the answer is no.

I ran large dealerships with hundreds of employees, and I can assure you that even with good people, good training and good intentions, mistakes happened. A salesperson might misunderstand a customer's request, somebody in the business office might enter a figure incorrectly, a service adviser might fail to communicate something to a technician, or a parts employee might order the wrong component. None of those things should happen, and every dealership ought to work hard to prevent them, but I don't know of a business anywhere that operates without occasionally making a mistake.

The difference is that when it happens at a car dealership, people often assume there must have been some sinister plan behind it.

I used to get especially frustrated when a customer would come to me angry about something that had happened and begin the conversation by accusing one of my employees of lying. I always wanted to hear the complaint, and I certainly wanted to know if someone working for me had done something wrong, but I also wanted to hear the other side before deciding what had happened. Sometimes the customer was absolutely right, and we needed to apologize and make things right. Other times there had been a misunderstanding, an honest error or a failure to communicate that could be resolved without accusing anybody of being a crook.

There is an enormous difference between saying, "I think something is wrong with my paperwork, and I'd like you to explain it," and saying, "You people are trying to steal from me." The first approach gives everybody an opportunity to find the problem and fix it. The second puts people on the defensive before anyone has established what actually happened.

I also think people sometimes forget what a complicated business an automobile dealership really is. A single vehicle sale can involve a salesperson, sales manager, finance manager, title clerk, accounting department, lender, insurance company and sometimes employees in service or parts. A repair can involve a service adviser, technician, parts department, warranty administrator and manufacturer. That's a lot of moving pieces, and every time information passes from one person to another, there is an opportunity for something to be misunderstood or entered incorrectly.

I'm not suggesting consumers should overlook mistakes simply because the process is complicated. Quite the opposite. When you're spending tens of thousands of dollars on a vehicle, you have every right to expect accurate paperwork, honest answers and professional service. If a dealership makes a mistake, it has an obligation to acknowledge it and correct it promptly, even when doing so costs the dealership money. That's part of being in business, and it's certainly what I expected when my name was attached to the building.

But I also believe people deserve the benefit of the doubt until there's a reason to believe otherwise.

One of the things I learned from managing people was that most employees don't come to work in the morning looking for an opportunity to make somebody's life miserable. They want to do their jobs, take care of their families, earn a living and go home at the end of the day. Dealership employees are no different. Most of the salespeople, technicians, service advisers, office employees and managers I worked with were good, hardworking people who took pride in what they did. Some were better at their jobs than others, and some occasionally made mistakes that caused me considerable grief, but that didn't make them dishonest.

And here's something else worth remembering: When an employee makes a mistake, the dealership itself often pays the price. I can't begin to count the times we absorbed the cost of a problem because somebody misunderstood something, made an incorrect promise or simply failed to handle a situation properly. Sometimes it was an expensive lesson, but we took care of it because the customer deserved to be treated fairly, and because protecting our reputation mattered more than winning an argument.

I know there are people reading this who have had genuinely terrible experiences at dealerships, and I would never suggest that every complaint can be explained away as an innocent mistake. If a dealership refuses to correct an obvious error, changes its story repeatedly, conceals important information or continues a practice after being warned that it's wrong, those are legitimate reasons to question its integrity. Intentional deception is a very different matter from an employee making an honest error, and the distinction matters.

That's why I've always believed the most revealing part of a problem isn't necessarily the mistake itself. It's what happens after the mistake is brought to someone's attention. Does the dealership listen? Does somebody take responsibility? Do they make a reasonable effort to investigate and correct the situation, or do they dismiss the customer, make excuses and hope the problem goes away? You can learn a great deal about the character of a business by watching how it handles something that didn't go according to plan.

And frankly, this isn't just about car dealerships.

We live in a time when people seem increasingly willing to assume the worst about somebody they've never met. A mistake becomes evidence of dishonesty, a misunderstanding becomes an insult, and an ordinary disagreement becomes proof that the other person must have bad intentions. We sometimes make these judgments before we've heard an explanation, and once we've decided somebody is dishonest, it becomes awfully difficult to consider any other possibility.

I wonder how many unnecessary arguments, ruined relationships and damaged reputations could be avoided if we simply gave people a chance to explain themselves before deciding they meant to do us harm.

After all these years, I still believe consumers should be careful when buying or servicing a vehicle. Read everything before you sign it, ask questions when something doesn't make sense, insist that promises be put in writing and never be afraid to walk away from a business that refuses to treat you fairly. Those are principles I've preached for 25 years, and I stand behind every one of them.

But I would add one more piece of advice, and it applies just as much to restaurants, doctors' offices, banks, contractors and every other business we deal with as it does to car dealerships.

When something goes wrong, start by finding out what happened instead of deciding why it happened. Give the people involved a reasonable opportunity to explain and correct the problem, and then judge them by their response. If they demonstrate dishonesty, hold them accountable. If they made an honest mistake and work to make it right, perhaps they deserve a little understanding.

I spent enough years on the other side of the desk to know how frustrating it can be when someone assumes the worst about you before you've even had a chance to speak. I also spent enough years dealing with customers to know how important it is to listen carefully when somebody believes they've been wronged. Both sides deserve to be heard, and neither side should have to begin the conversation by proving they're not a liar.

I've always said that trust has to be earned, and I still believe that. But I also believe there's a difference between being cautious and being cynical, and we do ourselves no favors when we automatically treat every mistake as evidence of somebody's bad character.

Sometimes a mistake is exactly what it looks like.

Just a mistake.

Straight Talk and Honest Answers — always.

-Jerry