JeepCares??? Not so much...

[CohuttaDen]

I sent this as a PM to @JeepCares, but if anyone agrees with my admittedly neurotic sentiments, please post here.

Here is what I sent-


@JeepCares

Please provide the following feedback to your superiors for analysis and customer modeling. They need to see it.

Jeep- You should be ashamed of yourself for going after the tracking service and forcing it to be shut down on this site. I would like to point a few things out:

1. It is 2018. There is absolutely ZERO valid reasons that individuals who paid good money to wait in line for a new jeep should not have a self service portal, with detailed updates and projected times for delivery. As a matter of fact, there is NO REASON we should not have more than that, for example, itwould be SO EASY to integrate a snapshot of the Jeep as it exists framing, paint, etc, and this would really connect your customers to the process and brand. Stories are important when you are striving for loyalty on a premium brand.

2. My jeep just went to framing. I know this because I paid for 3 different services to track it. I am a member of the Underground Railroad to just see what’s up with my purchase! Before you say it, I CONTACTED the jeep cares hotline 2 days ago and they DOWNGRADED me to no longer having a date where i hadpreviously had a date of week of MAY 14 to begin production.Thankfully, the tracking sites you have not yet shut down give me reliable updates. Your jeep cares process, staffed offshoreapparently, simply provides wholly inaccurate updates - probably because they are in a call center driven by call counts and closure times, not accuracy,

3. The admin on this site was PROVIDING A VALUABLE SERVICE, and a friend of the community. To be honest, you should have been giving that guy a bonus. Everyone wins with his service. Now, I assume when I call Jeep cares in a week or two the information will remain inaccurate.

4. I have to fly to pickup my jeep. Accuracy of reporting translates to me saving money on airfare. That could mean more expensive accessories for my Jeep, and a nice road trip planned with myfamily. Instead, like so many others, I expect ALL SOURCES will indicate my jeep is not yet started, but at some point I will get a call saying it has arrived at my out-of-state dealer. I will then just get a single one way ticket and run it back myself rather than having a nice and planned out vacation with my wife and kids. The tracking service on this site was my best hope of gettingeverything lined up.

Your new wrangler email and hotline process is inaccurate, which for me makes it worthless and a waste of time. The service here was accurate, timely, and cost you nothing.

Shame on you for shutting this down. If you shut down my otherunderground tracking services, I will consider very seriously canceling my order. You have taken the very little bit of “fun”associated with this considerable wait, and crushed it.Congratulations.

Sponsored

 

[NCSUSTATS]

I sent them a pm a couple days ago...about never getting any emails back from my ‘escalated’ delivery issue...and, not surprisingly, have not heard anything back.

 

[TReed]

The allnewwrangler email/phone number is a joke.

 

[CohuttaDen]

The allnewwrangler email/phone number is a joke.

I forgot to mention in my original post.

I am NOT asking for a refund. The admin earned that money and should keep it. I am going to write that 20 bucks off and wear it as a chip on my shoulder to remind me that no good deed ever goes unpunished.

 

[GoldenSky]

I sent this as a PM to @JeepCares, but if anyone agrees with my admittedly neurotic sentiments, please post here.

Here is what I sent-


@JeepCares

Please provide the following feedback to your superiors for analysis and customer modeling. They need to see it.

Jeep- You should be ashamed of yourself for going after the tracking service and forcing it to be shut down on this site. I would like to point a few things out:

1. It is 2018. There is absolutely ZERO valid reasons that individuals who paid good money to wait in line for a new jeep should not have a self service portal, with detailed updates and projected times for delivery. As a matter of fact, there is NO REASON we should not have more than that, for example, itwould be SO EASY to integrate a snapshot of the Jeep as it exists framing, paint, etc, and this would really connect your customers to the process and brand. Stories are important when you are striving for loyalty on a premium brand.

2. My jeep just went to framing. I know this because I paid for 3 different services to track it. I am a member of the Underground Railroad to just see what’s up with my purchase! Before you say it, I CONTACTED the jeep cares hotline 2 days ago and they DOWNGRADED me to no longer having a date where i hadpreviously had a date of week of MAY 14 to begin production.Thankfully, the tracking sites you have not yet shut down give me reliable updates. Your jeep cares process, staffed offshoreapparently, simply provides wholly inaccurate updates - probably because they are in a call center driven by call counts and closure times, not accuracy,

3. The admin on this site was PROVIDING A VALUABLE SERVICE, and a friend of the community. To be honest, you should have been giving that guy a bonus. Everyone wins with his service. Now, I assume when I call Jeep cares in a week or two the information will remain inaccurate.

4. I have to fly to pickup my jeep. Accuracy of reporting translates to me saving money on airfare. That could mean more expensive accessories for my Jeep, and a nice road trip planned with myfamily. Instead, like so many others, I expect ALL SOURCES will indicate my jeep is not yet started, but at some point I will get a call saying it has arrived at my out-of-state dealer. I will then just get a single one way ticket and run it back myself rather than having a nice and planned out vacation with my wife and kids. The tracking service on this site was my best hope of gettingeverything lined up.

Your new wrangler email and hotline process is inaccurate, which for me makes it worthless and a waste of time. The service here was accurate, timely, and cost you nothing.

Shame on you for shutting this down. If you shut down my otherunderground tracking services, I will consider very seriously canceling my order. You have taken the very little bit of “fun”associated with this considerable wait, and crushed it.Congratulations.

Very well put and exactly right.

They are the Apple products of offroad fun vehicles and brand loyalty go thru the roof but they have totally botched it. Too bad for them and by extension us.

This is a vehicle I've been dreaming of owning since I was 16. I've been waiting 98 days for my Turbo Sahara and 20 days in JS and they continue to take away the specialness of making my Dream Vehicle a reality. And on top of that costing me money and aggravation as I sold my car on 4/30 thinking i would be in my Jeep by now. The tracking service was very helpful to allow me to plan around my Turbo Sahara delivery.

Thanks for taking that away

 

[CohuttaDen]

Very well put and exactly right.

They are the Apple products of offroad fun vehicles and brand loyalty go thru the roof but they have totally botched it. Too bad for them and by extension us.

This is a vehicle I've been dreaming of owning since I was 16. I've been waiting 98 days for my Turbo Sahara and 20 days in JS and they continue to take away the specialness of making my Dream Vehicle a reality. And on top of that costing me money and aggravation as I sold my car on 4/30 thinking i would be in my Jeep by now. The tracking service was very helpful to allow me to plan around my Turbo Sahara delivery.

Thanks for taking that away

This is the worst part of it. I work for a premier consumer brand company, one that derives all value from intangibles. Memories of consuming the product with friends as a child, for example. With brands, like jeep, everything depends on the stories remembered while consuming the product. This is my third jeep. My first was a red two door, I could not afford ac or even the rear bench seat. My friends would ride the Atlanta highway up to Athens from Georgia tech huddled. On the floor, top down in the winter, and under sleeping bags while I drove as fast as I could to get where the proper college bands played. Georgia tech was for the nerds, Athens was where the weekend magic would happen.

My new rubicon is also red. I am hoping to let my college age sons run it up the road to Athens and see what happens for them!

Jeep needs to fix this and not create crappy stories and memories!

 

[Scott1911]

This is the worst part of it. I work for a premier consumer brand company, one that derives all value from intangibles. Memories of consuming the product with friends as a child, for example. With brands, like jeep, everything depends on the stories remembered while consuming the product. This is my third jeep. My first was a red two door, I could not afford ac or even the rear bench seat. My friends would ride the Atlanta highway up to Athens from Georgia tech huddled. On the floor, top down in the winter, and under sleeping bags while I drove as fast as I could to get where the proper college bands played. Georgia tech was for the nerds, Athens was where the weekend magic would happen.

My new rubicon is also red. I am hoping to let my college age sons run it up the road to Athens and see what happens for them!

Jeep needs to fix this and not create crappy stories and memories!

Go Jackets! And the proper term is gEEk, not “nerd”.

 

[CohuttaDen]

Go Jackets! And the proper term is gEEk, not “nerd”.

Different decades, different labels. Son #1 fourth year MSE. Son #2 actually has West Point at number #1 choice followed by Tech, we will see what happens. I would not trade mon-fri for Athens over North Ave. for a million dollars. But the young ladies in Athens... oh my goodness.

 

[Blu bi Kong]

Add another story. Reached out to @JeepCares and received no response. Seems pretty simple yo integrate a tracking system that publicly notes the last statioin it left or arrived in by vin#. Kind of like you can track a single piece of mail for 6 bucks! Seems for a $45,000 Rubicon you wouldn't have progress hidden! It would actually be much more pleasant to automatically have the last locstion emailed to the associated email address and elimimate the secrecy.

 

[PavementWarrior]

I sent this as a PM to @JeepCares, but if anyone agrees with my admittedly neurotic sentiments, please post here.

Here is what I sent-


@JeepCares

Please provide the following feedback to your superiors for analysis and customer modeling. They need to see it.

Jeep- You should be ashamed of yourself for going after the tracking service and forcing it to be shut down on this site. I would like to point a few things out:

1. It is 2018. There is absolutely ZERO valid reasons that individuals who paid good money to wait in line for a new jeep should not have a self service portal, with detailed updates and projected times for delivery. As a matter of fact, there is NO REASON we should not have more than that, for example, itwould be SO EASY to integrate a snapshot of the Jeep as it exists framing, paint, etc, and this would really connect your customers to the process and brand. Stories are important when you are striving for loyalty on a premium brand.
.

Overloaded is overloaded. The issue is the line is backing up due to massive orders and internal issues, and shipping snafus, the issue not the quality of standing in line. Their current system would be fine if the line was moving and units pumping out. The answer is not to pour money into seeing excatly where you are stuck, the answer is to prevent the waits and stalls.

And this is 100% sure.... wait for it... People want their order, everything else they will view as problems, excuses and lies! Riot!

Basically you are one of the people that stood in line over night for a new iphone and are mad the sidewalk was cold. Like every hot new product, I wait till the lines dies down, walk in and buy one a few months after all the die hards get theirs.

Hey its perfectly fine to go jump in that line, but really lets be honest.. you want that line moving, not get a really fancy sign saying now serving number 254 of 232323, and seeing your at end...

Hopefully it all gets going and we can get out to the mountains this summer, lol

 

[CohuttaDen]

Overloaded is overloaded. The issue is the line is backing up due to massive orders and internal issues, and shipping snafus, the issue not the quality of standing in line. Their current system would be fine if the line was moving and units pumping out. The answer is not to pour money into seeing excatly where you are stuck, the answer is to prevent the waits and stalls.

And this is 100% sure.... wait for it... People want their order, everything else they will view as problems, excuses and lies! Riot!

Basically you are one of the people that stood in line over night for a new iphone and are mad the sidewalk was cold. Like every hot new product, I wait till the lines dies down, walk in and buy one a few months after all the die hards get theirs.

Hey its perfectly fine to go jump in that line, but really lets be honest.. you want that line moving, not get a really fancy sign saying now serving number 254 of 232323, and seeing your at end...

Hopefully it all gets going and we can get out to the mountains this summer, lol

You make good points, but let me make a few counter points.

First, JEEP offered exactly what a suggest years ago... a self service portal where you could track your jeep order on the internet. Why was this possible years ago, and not now?

Second, when is the last time anyone had to line up for days outside “turtles records” to get into the U2 Concert?? Again, this has been entirely replaced with online sales, basically a lottery system (which I do not really like, but still, technology has evolved to replace silly sidewalk sleeping).

Third, multiple days outside Best Buy at thanks giving for Black Friday sales has also been replaced. People do not wait days or overnight at the apple store. These have been replaced with virtual lines, and WAIT FOR IT... in the case of APPLE.... BETTER MANAGEMENT OF THE SUPPLY CHAIN, LARGER SUPPLIES AT LAUNCH, and more reliance OF ONLINE ORDER SYSTEMS.

People do crazy things, like we do for new Jeeps, when supply is constrained and demand is virtually unlimited. I am commenting that this is an unnecessarily negative experience, and for nearly free, Jeep could improve the experience.

Thanks for adding perspective to the conversation.

 

[PavementWarrior]

You make good points, but let me make a few counter points.

First, JEEP offered exactly what a suggest years ago... a self service portal where you could track your jeep order on the internet. Why was this possible years ago, and not now?

Second, when is the last time anyone had to line up for days outside “turtles records” to get into the U2 Concert?? Again, this has been entirely replaced with online sales, basically a lottery system (which I do not really like, but still, technology has evolved to replace silly sidewalk sleeping).

Third, multiple days outside Best Buy at thanks giving for Black Friday sales has also been replaced. People do not wait days or overnight at the apple store. These have been replaced with virtual lines, and WAIT FOR IT... in the case of APPLE.... BETTER MANAGEMENT OF THE SUPPLY CHAIN, LARGER SUPPLIES AT LAUNCH, and more reliance OF ONLINE ORDER SYSTEMS.

People do crazy things, like we do for new Jeeps, when supply is constrained and demand is virtually unlimited. I am commenting that this is an unnecessarily negative experience, and for nearly free, Jeep could improve the experience.

Thanks for adding perspective to the conversation.

They tried a few things that we can see, like they kept the JK line going till just a bit ago, but ya they got caught with order demand outside of what they predicted.

I am annoyed at not having a wrangler yet either, but let me add a few points (I have been an R&D Engineer for 30+ years) to help everyone relate some details they have to deal with:

- Managing supply chain is easier the bigger fish you are (track record). Companies like Apple have been delivering higher volumes pretty much like clock work, and they get priority from 3rd parties over smaller companies like FCA. And this is additive, FCAs third party vendors also have 3rd party vendors and they are in line vs other companies too.
- During the last few economic down turns, getting caught with huge supplies was disastrous. At the company I was at we had negative orders (effective due returns as customers ran out of money) + plus a huge supply of stock due to projecting best case. Lots of our manufacturing guys lost jobs, makes me sick thinking of it, these are good people with families getting cut at the worst possible time. Conservative ordering works against us on the above topic, you are already not the prefered company as you dont have the huge volumes, and now you are trying to not over order.
- New models rolls outs are fun to work on, but after you get past pilot runs, you find things out that did not appear in smaller sample size production runs. I piss people off when ever I find something, and stop production till its fixed 100% (on serious stuff). Sorry not gonna ship out crap to keep up numbers!

As a result, a surprise surge of maybe 20% is OK, more than that it means a couple of months delay potentially. At this point the short term people get frustrated, and our field guys demand more reporting of status (that only further slows us down, I tell them do you want me to sit in meetings presenting status, or do you want me fixing the issues that stopped production?).

As the manufacturing teams get "the recipe down", and R&d is not running from fire to fire on problems, suddenly the units will start shooting out fast enough where the "reporting status" becomes a non issue. Then you are back to why does this damn thing cost so much? and Why can't it do X..


I am sick of waiting personally, I hope I can get a 2 door in next couple of months.. 2019s are not too far off lol :/ sigh

 

[CohuttaDen]

They tried a few things that we can see, like they kept the JK line going till just a bit ago, but ya they got caught with order demand outside of what they predicted.

I am annoyed at not having a wrangler yet either, but let me add a few points (I have been an R&D Engineer for 30+ years) to help everyone relate some details they have to deal with:

- Managing supply chain is easier the bigger fish you are (track record). Companies like Apple have been delivering higher volumes pretty much like clock work, and they get priority from 3rd parties over smaller companies like FCA. And this is additive, FCAs third party vendors also have 3rd party vendors and they are in line vs other companies too.
- During the last few economic down turns, getting caught with huge supplies was disastrous. At the company I was at we had negative orders (effective due returns as customers ran out of money) + plus a huge supply of stock due to projecting best case. Lots of our manufacturing guys lost jobs, makes me sick thinking of it, these are good people with families getting cut at the worst possible time. Conservative ordering works against us on the above topic, you are already not the prefered company as you dont have the huge volumes, and now you are trying to not over order.
- New models rolls outs are fun to work on, but after you get past pilot runs, you find things out that did not appear in smaller sample size production runs. I piss people off when ever I find something, and stop production till its fixed 100% (on serious stuff). Sorry not gonna ship out crap to keep up numbers!

As a result, a surprise surge of maybe 20% is OK, more than that it means a couple of months delay potentially. At this point the short term people get frustrated, and our field guys demand more reporting of status (that only further slows us down, I tell them do you want me to sit in meetings presenting status, or do you want me fixing the issues that stopped production?).

As the manufacturing teams get "the recipe down", and R&d is not running from fire to fire on problems, suddenly the units will start shooting out fast enough where the "reporting status" becomes a non issue. Then you are back to why does this damn thing cost so much? and Why can't it do X..


I am sick of waiting personally, I hope I can get a 2 door in next couple of months.. 2019s are not too far off lol :/ sigh

Jeeps brand manager has been bragging on the demands for a few months now. It’s a happy problem and I understand supply chain issues on unexpected demand. Better companies respond better than mediocre ones for sure. Jeep may not be destined to be the next Tesla or iPhone, in fact I am sure they are not.

There is no excuse, however, for going to the effort of shutting tracking down in order to “control the message”. They can do it, but we aren’t all just useful idiots that don’t understand that this is a case where less transparency helps them avoid having to deal with real issues some customers are having that go way beyond the average customerr having to wait 30days or whatever the average is.

 

[PavementWarrior]

Jeeps brand manager has been bragging on the demands for a few months now. It’s a happy problem and I understand supply chain issues on unexpected demand. Better companies respond better than mediocre ones for sure. Jeep may not be destined to be the next Tesla or iPhone, in fact I am sure they are not.

There is no excuse, however, for going to the effort of shutting tracking down in order to “control the message”. They can do it, but we aren’t all just useful idiots that don’t understand that this is a case where less transparency helps them avoid having to deal with real issues some customers are having that go way beyond the average customerr having to wait 30days or whatever the average is.

Actually there are about 3-4 sources providing conflicting information. Not surprising some are getting whacked.

They need 1 point of information, and we all agree it needs to be better (just playing a bit of devils advocate, as I have no Jeep to be in out in sun today :P)


You absolutely have to control information out, your example of Apple is interesting, a 3rd party supplier/vendor/whatever "providing information" gets cut off and zero future business, they are ruthless in dealing with partners (I know first hand). A 3rd party cite like this providing info on an Apple Launch.. lawyers with lazers from space would be launched.

Also small issues that cause delays can sound much worse then they actually are, and cause needless fear or concern.


All of this becomes moot once orders start flowing.

 

[CohuttaDen]

Actually there are about 3-4 sources providing conflicting information. Not surprising some are getting whacked.

They need 1 point of information, and we all agree it needs to be better (just playing a bit of devils advocate, as I have no Jeep to be in out in sun today :P)


You absolutely have to control information out, your example of Apple is interesting, a 3rd party supplier/vendor/whatever "providing information" gets cut off and zero future business, they are ruthless in dealing with partners (I know first hand). A 3rd party cite like this providing info on an Apple Launch.. lawyers with lazers from space would be launched.

Also small issues that cause delays can sound much worse then they actually are, and cause needless fear or concern.


All of this becomes moot once orders start flowing.

Regarding 3 or 4 sources, I am using 3 of them. I can tell you that the “all new wrangler” email and phone process is the least consistent and (i HOPE) least accurate of the bunch, as they have taken my date away while other sources have me in framing.

One source that is exactly JEEP, providing reliable, self-service internet access to the position of your VIN in queue, status, and (tentative and subject to change) estimated dates is entirely possible. Unfortunately, JEEP is going to some lengths to mask this information from us when we call because it reveals production challenges that are not convenient to explain or easily solvable. This would result in cancel orders, and people waiting for 2019 for example, which is not good on the brand narrative. They want the record sales.

This does not mean that transparency shouldn’t be the policy. Honesty is almost always the best policy.

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