Tag Archives: review

“We don’t have to do that.” Beware GM Financial & Capitol Chevrolet

You can have an 800+ credit rating, pay the monthly lease, but if there’s a misunderstanding about the lease extension, Capitol Chevrolet and GM Financial might come to your house without warning, hook up the car and tow it away. Without so much as a phone call or email. While continuing to cash your lease checks. GM Financial’s website says this about their workplace- We Act with Integrity- We do the right thing, the right way. We operate with integrity toward each other, our customers and the markets in which we operate. Adhering to moral, ethical and professional standards is “the heart of it all.”

(Update at bottom; still not resolved)
“We don’t have to do that.” Perhaps the final word in customer service with GM Financial & Capitol Chevrolet?

We’ve been Chevy Volt people for over 6 years. Leased a 2013 model for 3 years, then a 2016 for another 3, the latter car from Capitol Chevrolet. My wife loved that car. We were hoping to get another until Chevrolet announced there would be no more new models. Our lease was up at the end of December, 2018. I called and received a 2 month extension, at the same terms, so we could have some time to look for a new car. I was told 2 months at a time was the way lease extensions worked (I preferred 4 but that wasn’t an option). We were very happy with the Volt so not in a huge rush; after the two months my wife kept sending them the monthly checks, which GM Financial dutifully cashed, with notes asking that the lease continue to be extended. This continued from March through the most-recent check, dated May 30 and cashed by GM Financial on June 7th.

10pm Sunday night, June 23rd, my wife tells me somebody is in danger of backing into our car and damaging it. I look out the window and see a tow truck hooking up the Volt, preparing to take it away. The guy had a legit repo order from GM Financial & Capitol Chevrolet.

What the heck? Can’t get ahold of anybody at GM Financial on a Sunday night. Call the next morning, get someone who tells me we were in violation of the lease agreement because we hadn’t returned the car when the December extension expired.

The woman at GM Financial told me they’d sent a letter (not registered) on June 7th telling us the lease was expired and they could seize the car. I asked if she could re-send a copy of the letter to me. “We don’t have to do that.” This, I assume, is on their recorded call. It was pretty surprising to hear that.

Even-more surprising is that neither GM Financial nor Capitol Chevrolet sent a single email, appparently leaving just a single message on a business answering machine sometime in March, which we never heard.  A misunderstanding that wouldn’t have continued had they done so. They were happy to keep cashing the checks, for an expired lease. Since the lease was null & void, does that money go into a tip jar? Obviously not, but one has to wonder, is this any way to run a customer-facing business?

Earlier Sunday, prior to the repossession, my wife had mentioned how much she liked that car and maybe we should just pay the residual and buy it. Capitol Chevrolet and GM Financial certainly ended such thoughts. I cannot wait to see what they’ll be billing us for the repossession, despite getting back a 3 year old car with less than half the expected mileage (13,000 miles in 3 years) in great condition.

If you’re thinking about leasing a car using GM Financing, you might want to ask them whether they’d bother to call or email you if something seems amiss, to try and eliminate any misunderstandings. They legally don’t have to. I get that. But how much effort does it take to pick up a phone or send an email, and create happy customers that give happy referrals, vs have to be concerned about unhappy customers steering people elsewhere? “We don’t have to do that” is something I’ll never forget. A great reminder of how not to treat my own paying customers. Note to Capitol Chevrolet- You’ll find I sent questions about this to you via your website a couple days ago. You didn’t reply, presumably because “We don’t have to do that.”

Updated 8/7/19- Lots of back & forth between me and Capitol Chevrolet’s social media manager since then, all of it trying to get something going between Capitol Chevrolet and GM Financial to see if what happened to us was “normal” procedure. Hard to believe it’s “normal” not to make a single phone call about the car but keep cashing checks, and then tow it away 10pm on a Sunday night. Rachel (the social media manager) says they tried, but GM Financial cannot release any information due to “privacy laws.” That may be, but does not preclude someone form Capitol Chevrolet from asking GM Financial to look into it and see if it was done according to their standard procedure, and, if so, questioning if that standard procedure seems an appropriate way to deal with Capitol Chevrolet’s customers.

New Star Wars movie… did JJ Abrams and John Williams pull it off?

Keep your eyes on Rey, the real light of the new Star Wars movie. They won't do badly to write everything around her (oh, and maybe give her a decent piece of theme music too)
Keep your eyes on Rey, the real light of the new Star Wars movie. They won’t do badly to write everything around her (oh, and maybe give her a decent piece of theme music too)

Obviously, it may be dangerous to keep reading if you don’t want to see spoilers of sorts. I’m not going to give away plot details, just sweeping generalities about the nature of the epic “adventure” movie this is supposed to be.

So you’ve seen the new Star Wars movie. Can you run through your mind a single piece of new music from the movie? Just one? Anything? Contrast that to the 5 minute clip below, taken from the first 10 minutes of JJ Abrams first “new” Star Trek movie.

The end of this sequence, in JJ Abrams first Star Trek movie (his “reboot” of the originals, as he’s now doing for Star Wars), comes 10 minutes into the movie. In that opening 10 minutes we know more about a non-continuing character (James T Kirk’s heroic father) than we learn about any character through the entire Star Wars Episode VII that just came out. And, we have a piece of music, a couple actually, that stick in our minds. All in 10 minutes.

Energy, focus and music are all a bit lacking in the new Star Wars, in my opinion. There’s a bit too much of a “reunion” sort of feel, too much of not wanting to spoil things by taking your mind off familiar friends & themes. The music especially is my biggest disappointment. Christmas Eve, my family re-watched The Empire Strikes Back. Blasting “The Imperial March” loudly, you’re not just watching but feeling an all-encompassing embrace of evil from Darth Vader. It’s an experience that sticks.

The high point of the new movie, without question, is Rey. You can’t take your eyes off her. She’s an amazing actress playing a well-thought-out character. A better Luke Skywalker than Mark Hamill ever was. She is going to steal the show in the future movies. Let’s just hope they get her a decent theme and make her central to the story line.

My feeling is that JJ Abrams got far too concerned about keeping “true” to the original fan base, and George Lucas’ style of story telling; he went conservative and left on the table the very things that he (JJ Abrams) does best. And while I’d hate to think John Williams’ best days are behind him, I think a reinvention of the score by Michael Giacchino would have been a huge improvement; he’s shown an ability to combine earlier themes with new & bolder visualizations.

Coming up with a rating for this movie is difficult. It’s a “must-see” event, but that doesn’t make it a great movie. I’m going to see it again, and I think I’ll likely enjoy it more the second time, as I get a chance to look for those things I’ve said are missing and find maybe the are there, just not in a sledge-hammer sort of way. For now, I’ll say 6 out of 10. For comparison, there are probably just three movies I’ll give 10 out of 10 to; Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Casablanca and Robocop (the original, not the remake, which would charitably get a 4). Empire Strikes Back, The first JJ Abrams Star Trek movie and Lawrence of Arabia would get 9, while the original Star Wars (episode IV) would get 8.

Feel free to discuss “plot spoiler” issues in the comments, as those aren’t likely to be accidentally seen.

–Mike Jacoubowsky, speaking as Mike Jacoubowsky and not Chain Reaction Bicycles… the last thing I need is to alienate customers because I was critical of their new favorite movie!