I recently bought a new car. Driving a new car off the lot is great. Sitting in the showroom and listening to the BS of the salesperson and his manager is another story.

Now, before I go on, I must say that this wasn’t my worst car-buying experience. 

With that said, thanks to my research and persistence I saved myself $150 a month on my lease. Yes, you read that correctly, $150 a month! That is to say that if someone walked into that dealership with the same end-result as I (getting a new car), but without an iPhone calculator, a trip to edmunds.com and a little bit of negotiating savvy, they would have paid $5400 more over a three-year lease?

It kind of gives you a sick feeling, huh? Me too.

Now fast-forward to point where I’ve settled on price, the keys are in my hand and all the paperwork has been signed. The salesperson pulls out a survey that is photocopied what looks like 20 times over. There’s a big outline circling all of the “Excellent” and “Completely Satisfied” boxes. The salesperson says, “The company grades us based on our customer survey results, so when you receive this survey, please give us all “excellents” and “completely satisfieds.” 

I looked across the desk, said “sure,” and hurried my way out to the lot to drive off in my new car. 

About a month later, my survey comes in the mail. I briefly skim over the questions and come up to the part on how they calculated vehicle pricing. While, in all honesty, there were items that I could legitimately check off as excellent, how could I possibly give  anything but the worst grade for this section?

There’s an incredibly huge flaw in this system. First of all a survey isn’t a survey, like a test isn’t a test if someone is telling you the answers. Second, why does the dealership even know about a survey that is supposed to objectively monitor the behavior and service of that operation?

If you want to know what your customers think of your products and services, ask them? And ask them genuinely.