Like many Australians, Chris Ward makes a living from his car. He is a hire car driver and his office is a 2013 Holden Caprice he bought new from a leading dealership in December 2013.
In November last year the car lost power. Chris took it to the dealership, whose tech staff told him there was nothing wrong. Last month, driving from Canberra to Sydney on the Hume Highway, the Caprice lost power again, this time seriously and dangerously. Chris spluttered into McDonald’s, the official pit stop of the Hume Highway, waited an hour, then limped the 100km home with a long line of unhappy motorists behind him.
This time, the service staff could see there really was an engine problem. Given the car was under warranty the dealership pit crew had to take their orders from Holden, which told them to flush the head to clear any carbon. After a day the men from the dealership knew this was a waste of time because it was clear there was no pressure at all from one of the valves.
But the good folks at Holden HQ told the techs to keep flushing. They did. For another three days. Six days later Holden told them to pull down the motor and check the valve.
In all this time Chris’s office had been off the road and his income had been less than zero since he still had to make the lease payments.
On the ninth day the techs found a hole as big as a 5c coin in the valve. Despite the fact the car was Chris’s money maker, there was no urgency to get it back on the road. Three valves were replaced. On the 14th day, or eight days longer than God took to create the world, make heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is (they wrote differently in those days), Chris was back on the road.
Now, a reasonable human being would think that taking 13 days to fix a problem that was no fault of the driver would entitle Chris to some sort of compensation. Well, initially his Holden case manager thought so, too. But then she went on holidays and finally, after four or five phone calls, the new case manager made the very generous offer of a $267 service.
Hire car drivers don’t make a lot of money but you would have to think it would be more than the equivalent of the $20 a day Holden offered.
So we decided to ask the Holden public relations team a few questions. Is the valve problem a systemic issue with this engine? Why did Holden order the dealer to keep flushing the head for four days when it was clear that this wasn’t addressing the problem? Given the circumstances and the fact Chris relied on the car for his income, why did the job take so long? Does the company believe $267 is adequate compensation?
We found it hard to contact anyone who could be corporately communicative. Finally, a Google search revealed the name of the director of communications. He, you’ll be pleased to know, holds responsibility for all internal and external communications at Holden nationally.
So we sent him an email with our questions but as of our deadline we hadn’t heard a squeaky valve’s worth of noise from him. If you have had a similar experience to Chris with Holden, send me an email.
Read the rest at The Australian.
