Two thousand Buick dealers in America could indicate to General Motors whether they wanted to sell electric cars in the future or not. If they didn't want that, they could let GM buy them out. Half of the dealers accepted this offer. And so they apparently save themselves a lot of online nonsense from angry EV drivers.
EV drivers appear to be twice as likely to leave negative reviews with dealers than owners of conventional cars. The research comes from Widewail which looked at 800,000 reviews on Google. On average, 7 percent of online reviews receive one star. But when looking at reviews about EVs, no less than 14 percent of the reviews give one star.
For EV brands that sell their own cars, such as Tesla and Rivian, even a quarter of the reviews consist of one star. That's quite strange, says the head of the research company, Matt Murray: 'Given Tesla's strong brand, high virality and high figures from trusted customer media, it is surprising to see that their Google reviews show such a high percentage of dissatisfied customers . More surprising was that EV buyers from traditional dealers left substantially more negative reviews.”
Why do EV drivers more often give negative reviews?
The research company also investigated the reason given for the review. 80 percent of all reviews were about the staff. Of these, 70 percent are positive. Most negative feedback was due to poor customer service communication, poor repairs, high or surprising costs and long waiting times. Supply shortages will therefore not have helped.
The research provides another explanation. You can order a Tesla online and a mechanic can visit you for minor repairs. People will not give their driveway a bad or good review. The challenging jobs happen at a branch, and these are precisely the jobs that take (unexpectedly) long or turn out to be expensive. And then the chance of a negative review is greater.
It is important to mention that owners of electric cars provide much less feedback. Tesla customer service receives an average of 2.6 reviews per month, while the industry-wide average is 9.6 reviews per month. A bad review therefore also has a greater impact on the average for an EV manufacturer.
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