Now a potential PR issue for Land Rover
It looks like Adrian Melrose's sorry tale of his experiences with his Land Rover Discovery just took a turn for the worse.
From a post this morning on Adrian's blog:
[...] So after months of campaigning for Land Rover to take me seriously about the defects in my first Discovery 3 and to agree to replace the first build model with a second build (at considerable cost to me), I took delivery of the car a week ago and the same thing has happened with only 432 miles on clock - electronic melt down!
I've posted about Adrian's experiences a few times this week from the customer relationships and PR points of view. Shel and I discussed this in show #50 of our bi-weekly business podcast on Thursday, addressing it from the point of view of what should an organization do (or not) when confronted with a very dissatisfied customer who has a blog and who is using it to loudly express his extreme frustrations and air his grievances.
As Adrian's now asking visitors to his blog to take a quick poll on what alternative SUV he should buy - he says he's looking at a Volvo XC90, BMW X5, Mercedes ML or Volkswagen Touareg - this has the potential to become an uncomfortable PR issue for Land Rover.
I wonder how long it will be before mainstream media pick up on this.
Related NevOn posts:
As a professional communicator from the pre-internet world,(there was one) I read with interest your comments on corporate awareness of modern communication and maybe indiscriminate exposure to blogging.
To see if the Australian end of LandRover is any more savvy or if worldwide coprporations do communicate with each other I have written to the CEO in Australia. If he responds to my request for a meeting, then I feel LandRover is making an effort even if they are faced by a technology bug. After all, Microsoft and other software developers have survived significant failures in their products over more than a decade.
I will be happy to post any positive response, even though my personal experience has been life threatening.
Posted by: Richard Jones | 17 July 2005 at 08:04