Month: May 2010

Toyota pays for my dead battery

A few months ago, I wrote about the hybrid battery that failed in my 2001 Prius at 71,000 miles, generating a $3700 repair bill because the battery was recently out of warranty. It’s time I explained the reason for my lack of follow-up posts.

Back in mid-February I got a call from the general manager at the dealership which had done the repair. He was calling not because of the rather robust online discussion of my experience, but because I had given the experience an unfavorable rating in a mail survey. (Yes, good to know at least someone at Toyota is paying attention to what their customers think.) After we discussed my issues he agreed that the matter had been handled inappropriately at his dealership and said he’d go to bat and try to get at least a partial reimbursement from Toyota. He also asked me to forward to him the letter I’d sent to American Toyota President James Lentz, summarizing my issue.

Two days later, on 2/18, this manager emailed me that:

Just got done speaking with my Toyota Factory Representative, she agreed with my assessment of the issue as well she agrees with your points you made to Mr. Lentz.

Based on that conversation it’s my guess you will probably receive a 100% reimbursement check in about 8 weeks at your Saratoga Springs address. Please understand I’m making no promises, but I feel it looks real good.

Based on that 8 weeks, I would have received the check in mid-April. When it didn’t arrive, I checked in with him and heard that:

Money is coming soon, should be no problem…..

Well, the money finally did arrive, on 5/25/10, and it was indeed a full reimbursement. I’m happy not to be out of pocket $3700, but I’m also happy that Toyota was willing to pay it which I don’t think they would have done if a huge number of Prius batteries was failing just out of warranty like mine did. (The cover letter made no reference to my history, by the way, just referring to it as a “goodwill check”.) So good news for me and good news for other Prius owners.

Google blows it with new layout

The other day I was talking about the Unique Selling Proposition and how valuable it is when a marketer can distinguish itself by claiming a benefit or feature that cannot easily be claimed by another marketer. I mentioned that often you can do that simply by staking a claim to a generic benefit nobody else is talking about… make it your own, and anybody who later says “we have that too” would look foolish.

Google, though we take them for granted today, has a pretty unusual marketing history: they climbed to the top in a competitive field (remember when we all searched with Altavista?) by just being better than everybody else. So it was so very appropriate that Google’s interface also looked different. So stark and simple, just that search box in the middle of a blank page. The drama of unused white space… never a better example.

So now we have the new Google interface that has left this behind. You get a busy page with results in the middle, Adwords on the right, and a menu of related results on the left. But more important, you get a page that looks like everybody else’s search results page.

Not many marketers can claim the high ground that Google legitimately appropriated with its old page. To voluntarily cede your USP…. for that is what they are doing with this new generic interface… is a bone headed decision.

It occurred to me as I was thinking about this that  grandfather was a proud member of the Dallas Bonehead Club. I am not sure of all they did but I know a core value was to be silly and irrelevant. Good for them in that straight laced Southern business community, maybe not so good in today’s competitive business envronment. Bad move, Google.