We share our repeat experience over the past 2 decades of being banned by various car brands and how funny it is that they never learn from this…
Once upon a time, about 23 years ago we were banned (first time) by an automotive manufacturer just for remarking slightly negatively about the looks of their rebadged compact MPV.
It was an eye opener for us and even some of the ‘friends’ we knew working with the car manufacturer had to distance themselves from us on orders from the higher management.
Over the next few years, the rebadged compact MPV sales nose dived and hefty discounts were offered to clear existing stocks. This was before the years of social media and when speaking to dealers and sales people, this is what they said to us ‘why did the internal design team take a simple rather acceptable vehicle design and make it ugly to try and sell to lower income Malaysians?’
Then a few years later, this same company released another dismal product, which happened to be a failed product from its native country (another rebadged vehicle). By this time, we were allowed to attend the launch and when we asked ‘why are you re-badging a car that has failed in its native country’ we were quietly asked to leave the room and silently banned once again.
In less than a year, this rebadged compact hatchback had also failed in our market and dealers were forced to offer hefty discounts again.
Then another automotive brand brought in a 3rd world car and tried to market it as a first world product. We had to speak our mind again (never learn) and were banned. This company sold many units (because of the brand image at the time) and in a few years, all came back for warranty claims over and over and over and soon the product failed which in turn pushed other models in the company to suffer as well.
After years in ‘cold storage’ the company executives decided it was time to bury the hatchet and invite us for their new launches. This time they had great new first world vehicles, but their declining after-sales and loss of consumer confidence destroyed the brand image and their sales did not pick up. Till today they remain a small sales number yearly.
Then another brand was not happy with our sharing of their fledging after sales. They decided to put us into DEEP cold storage. Today, we are rekindling our relationship, but their brand is not getting their sales numbers up as previous unhappy customers have used social media in the last decade to show that we were 100 percent honest in our early opinion.
We must also mention a government Automotive agency who was led by a corrupt individual who used other motoring media (buddies) in Malaysia to ‘whack’ us on social media.
After years of our persistence to highlight the wrong doings of this government agency, justice was on our side and this person was charged and sacked.
Today, this agency silently bans us from all their events ……. Why? Is there still a lot of hanky-panky going on? Are they worried that we might highlight their new form of corruption? Let’s see what happens in the coming months.
Even luxury brands feel the need to ban us when we highlight how they treat their customers with slightly ‘damaged’ vehicles and also when we openly suggest that Langkawi TAX FREE status for cars should be stopped for good as it only benefits very rich individuals and of course the car brand that sells these tax free super luxury cars.
Avoiding vehicle import duties does not benefit the Malaysian government and the rest of the full import duty included car buying population who buy cars with full tax included. Right?
Now more recently comes another car manufacturer putting us into DEEP DEEP cold storage. This time for us highlighting their sales performance.
Not only have they banned us. They have used derogatory remarks about us in their internal communication. Well, that’s life when you deal with individuals not in touch with reality.
For us, its just another day at the keyboard and as you can see, whenever we share the truth, the brands that try and harm us, end up ONLY harming themselves even worse.
This latest brand will not recover until their management style changes and we will wait patiently for the day they hit rock bottom and invite us back for test drive and to cover their new car launches.
To all the above, we say ‘no hard feelings’ because we love cars and we love what we do as we always looked out for the Malaysian car buyer who pays a lot of money to buy and own a new car as there are still a lot of middle man ‘Ali Baba’ in our automotive industry who take a lot of money in between from car manufacturers.
Happy 2024 and buy a car you can afford and not a car that the sales person says you can afford.
