Ford Eco sport has always been my dream car and I have been saving up for the last one year to own the top end DCT model. I decided to even let go of my beloved Honda Brio after just 3 yrs, only to own a Ford Eco sport . But the dealer guys of Vardhaman Ford, Supela, Bhilai have made me go through literally the most horrifying experience of my life. While taking test drive of the car(which was scheduled on their convenient date, which happened to be our marriage anniversary, near a hospital that we went for), we have given our vehicle to the ford driver to follow us up to a junction en-route, from where we thought we could part ways. But what followed is the worst nightmare of my life!
My husband after driving just for barely couple of minutes, slowed down due to the traffic upfront and the driver behind has jammed our car into the Ford Eco sport which we were test driving. The salesman, who until that point was kinda polite, started to show his true colors and he started to blindly support the reckless, irresponsible driver. Even after the intervention of a police officer on patrol who has out rightly condemned the driver for not maintaining sufficient gap while driving as per the stipulated traffic rules, the salesman stuck to his fallacious argument. We have waited on the road for almost an hour for the manager of the showroom to arrive at the scene while putting up with the rubbish of the salesman who at this point was trying to exploit his’local advantage’ against us non-locals.
We were in for the shock of our life, when the so called manager showed up, met his people and just left the scene without even talking to us and asked the other two also to abandon the scene with their vehicle. Everything else is secondary, but the so called manager did not feel even an ounce of moral responsibility for the accident, nor did he own the actions of his employees. We have even called him up asking to come back to the scene, to which his reply was out ragingly rude not just for a sales person, but for a human. I am an officer myself and we in our company are taught to own up the actions of our subordinates and we are even legally obliged to take responsibility for whatever happens in our shifts. How can this so called manager be so irresponsible and resort to not own up the actions/misdoings of his own subordinates while they are on duty? Is this the policy of FORD? This is just beyond my understanding!
Finally I have pressed charges and decided to proceed legally and the manager had to finally show up at police station after the officer in-charge has asked him to. NOT EVEN A MINUTE BEFORE! The police officer has given his 2 cents to the manager and declared the driver guilty for not maintaining sufficient gap as per the stipulated traffic rules. Then we were in for a second round of hassle and harassment with the arrogant manager when the officer has asked us to try for a mutual settlement & salvage the situation before filing the complaint.
At the end of this gruesome ordeal what I have learnt about is how not to run a corporate. This is not how you hire employees in a world class corporate. Your employees are a reflection of the values you share and believe in! I am fully convinced that the ideology of FORD dealers is purely money centric and its employee training policy/framework is almost destitute. Despite the fact that Eco sport still remains to be one of my most favorite cars, the dealers of FORD have turned what is supposedly one of the special days of my life into an absolute nightmare!
FORD - I thought you were truly world class! I thought so would be your employees! But what I have come to see instead is an utterly poor HR management & training framework and highly unprofessional bunch of people who would never qualify to be in a sales profession otherwise.
MONEY is not everything! You cannot run a world class corporate without a distinguished work ethic fabric running through your company. You cannot sustain in the market with such poor customer service and such skill less employees devoid of any business or even human values per se, who would not only harass and drive away your customers but would also reflect poorly on you.