Arnold Clark Sucks
Please update your bookmarks.
My background is in management, but decided to take a break and try my hand at sales for a few years. I was a good professional salesman and worked for a few companies. I am now back as a senior manager with a blue chip company and have no hesitation in spilling the beans on the Arnold con game.
Arnold has my vote as the most incompetent Managing Director of the year. The old codger has lost control of his company and has become a laughing stock. He is clinging on and will not relinquish control of the company, when you see his son’s you realise why. He has hired executives on their previous ability to drive sales and not on ability or quality of work. Sure, sales are the lifeblood of any retail company, but good customer service is the pillar that will support it.
The tactics used on the sales floor and back up services directly relate from the Sales Directors requirement to drive sales and the Service Directors need to show an ever increasing turnover of serviced cars and profit retained. THIS IS WHY SO MANY OF ARNOLDS CUSTOMERS HAVE PROBLEMS.
You might think, but any company will want to drive sales and profit, and that’s true but the difference is that they will provide support services to enable their staff to deliver a company vision to the customer. Arnold however, will not spend any of his ill-gotten gains on true staff training and chooses to gloss over this and a good salesman or service manager is only rewarded for the sales or profit from each transaction.
I have read some the e-mails sent in by your website visitors and can relate to the problems they have. I know how the organisation works and I can say that if they keep going about it in the way that I am reading then they will not get very far.
CUSTOMERS WITH PROBLEMS CAN GET RESULTS BY DOING THE FOLLOWING WITH ARNOLD’S;
- Contact the garage first and give them the opportunity to fix the problem. A caution note here, always ask them to contact you with an estimate BEFORE any work or proposed further work is carried out or you will be emptying your wallet or purse at an alarming rate.
- Don’t spend much time or energy on the garage just go on to the next step.
- I know this sounds limp, but contact the Citizens Advice. They know what the law is and the buttons to push and Arnold know this, so when they get a call from them they will immediately adopt a professional approach and you will stand a better chance of getting your problem fixed.
- The next thing to do is find out more about the “Small
Claims Court
” procedures. I do not have time to go into every aspect here, but this is an inexpensive way of getting results. It cost something like £50 - £70 to get your case before this court, but that’s not the point. Pay a solicitor £50 to get a letter sent to Arnold stating that you intend to proceed with a claim through the Small Courts and that you will give him 2 weeks to resolve the matter. You need to resolve all prerequisites for the small court i.e.: give Arnold every opportunity to solve your problem. Because the letter has come from a solicitors, Arnold will have the letter sent directly to his legal advisors as a matter of policy and they will advise Arnold that he will have to fork out £££££££’s for court and solicitor representation (you don’t need any). ARNOLD WILL BACK DOWN.
If after doing all of the above, Arnold decides to defend the case in court then you will have to admit defeat as you are most likely wrong. His solicitors will not have advised him to go unless they are certain of winning the case and will not go to court if there is any possibility of loosing.
I hope this will help some of you. 5.10.2003
