Well, I guess it's a step in the right direction. One of my mother's neighbors might hope that they will call him to ask about his new GM van that has a valve tap or lifter tap that is so loud you can hardly talk, yet they insist is in the range of "normal". He's considering driving it through their front window.

 

What you got is a "J.D. Power I.Q.S." (Initial Quality Survey), if it came in the mail after you took delivery of the car - they're sent out by J.D. Power to people to measure satisfaction with the "number of things gone wrong" within 90 days after buying a new car at the beginning of a new model year. The scores are released (and awards given out) early in May, when you see the ads from the winning manufacturers touting their quality performance.

If it came on GM paper, it's an internal GM survey intended to measure your satisfaction with both the car and the sales/delivery/service experience, which becomes the basis for the dealership's internal GM C.S.I. (Customer Satisfaction Index) rating score, which can qualify the dealership for extra bonuses, car allocations, salesman incentives, cruise trips, etc.

My engineers at Chrysler were doing "call the customer" ten years ago, and we talked to Viper owners all the time (and still do), in addition to the annual Viper Owners Invitational we put on for 800 Viper owners every year for a week with 5-star hotel accommodations, renting major racetrack complexes for drag racing, autocross, and road-racing, catered meals at the track, banquets and live entertainment every night, etc. It pays to talk to the customer (and, more importantly, LISTEN), and Viper owners had a LOT of influence on the design of the new 2003 car, and are directly responsible for the recently-announced production of the race-only (not street-legal) Viper Competition Coupe (the first year's production sold out in four minutes at $100K each after many owners sent in their race credentials and Cashier's check deposits for $20,000, which was refunded to those who didn't make the cut).

Talking to the high-performance customer is nothing new - just took GM a while to figure out that it's a good thing to do.

 

Patric every time I buy a new gm vechicle(I purchase alot for my company) I hand deliver the survey blank and signed to the dealerships sales manager/finance guy.I know that they are rated by gm on how they come back.Alot of good responces make them a stronger gm dealer.Them being a stronger dealer means I get better prices.If you like the dealer fill it out.We just returned a leased lincoln navigator and we have gotton so many questioneers that I no longer even open them I just throw them out.It was a great truck but I hated it because it was a ford product.I was hoping to get the cadillac esqulade but the lease price's are out of control on them.( I am told buy several dealers that General Motors wants out of the leasing buisness and only are pushing for the sales of car's). I was hoping the rate's would come down but it looks like I will be getting another lincoln