[Mustang_Boss]

If they Fix the issue irrespective of the cost (Including a recall if needed), their customers themselves would recommend VW cars to their friends and family and the word spreads and leads to better sales.

In the short term, it might cause a dent to their image, but in the long run, they would be more secured.

What's wrong with accepting their mistake? They built it and tested on indian roads. They must have known the issue, but they didn't fix it. Why not accept it humbly and fix it?

Looks like VW intends to sell few cars and wants their customers to not recommend any of their products to their friends and family. Guys, this is how a company goes bust.

[manpreetsj]

If you start looking for patterns in any key search words, it will make you feel social platforms are 80% filled with such bot posts which are just there to drive an agenda + increase comments, views, make it viral, etc.

Any new song that comes out these days, you will see majority comments which will look like made by bots!!

The habit of scrolling down to read more on "what others think" is rigged. Eventually, it will make many cynical and rest will continue to fall in trap!

That being said, VW is trying hard to solve for one of biggest issues with their 2 cars (group's 4 cars) - poor AC!! It could be driven by some dealers as well, but agenda is clear.

Since I am lately following Hector's launch, MG does similar thing on twitter and Insta. Good catch is common image being posted by most account within 1-2 days of any new teaser launch. Example below:




Conclusion is - most companies, music producers or other "for profit" business houses are exploiting the marketing means that are prevalent to increase business!! Whether right or wrong, ethical or unethical - is a matter to debate on.

[vivekkp]

As posted, i have tweeted them for an explanation. Let us see what/if they respond

[TechnoBloop]

Originally Posted by manpreetsj

If you start looking for patterns in any key search words, it will make you feel social platforms are 80% filled with such bot posts which are just there to drive an agenda + increase comments, views, make it viral, etc.

Absolutely true. This malpractice in itself deserves it's own thread!

[hondatoyotafan]

Originally Posted by 84.monsoon

It may be that the company outsources the digital marketing and only measures a few numerical results like positive sentiment % etc. .

One of my friend runs a growth hacking and digital marketing startup, this is one of the known tricks in their pockets. Usually cheaper accounts are provided with burner accounts based tweets which are opened only at a couple of days most.

There are premium services which use old accounts with history and realistic names and linkedin profiles to backup.

[Bibendum90949]

Originally Posted by 84.monsoon

I don't think VW would have directly engaged in activities like this, as it would be viewed very adversely from a code of ethics standpoint. However, I agree you cannot allow unethical things to be done by your suppliers, the company is ultimately accountable.

Well, VW and ethics. Guess we all have short memory. Let me stop it here

[theAutomaniac]

As a digital marketing guy, I'm actually surprised that people are surprised by this and saying it is too unethical to be done by a big corporation like VW!
Spoiler Alert- There's nothing like ethics for these MNCs whether it is MG, or Hyundai, or Maruti or even our own Tata and Mahindra!

These activities like fake positive comments/tweets/posts have been done by various automakers and the most recent ones I've seen are-

1. Hyundai (mainly during Alcazar launch)
2. MG (Ever since they came in 2018, their fake bots have been present on Instagram, Facebook,Twitter and even Youtube)
3. Mahindra (During the XUV7OO launch)
4. Many small EV makers
5. Tata (Oh boy I know how many of their fake accounts I used to spot until last year!)
6. VW (with this one of course!)

And while many think that this practice is introduced by MG or some other foreign brand, it was none other than our own Mahindra, and that too almost 8 years ago! Link
Clearly, Mahindra has always been ahead of the competition

[rideon74]

Mr. Hollis, is this a mild dig at VW?



To give credit where it's due, this man established himself as someone you could tweet/email/FB to and had a very good chance of getting a response from. Well, maybe not from him but at least his team who was proactive.

Step over to the VW side and all we saw/still see is auto-response messages set up to fire away 24 x 7.

Maybe a little off the topic of this thread, but I couldn't help note the timing of his post!

Full link to his LinkedIn post here:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/zac-h...ium=member_ios

[vivekkp]

Got a reply from VW. They claim that this issue with poor AC is only reported by users in higher temperatures. I can vouch for a fact that this statement is wrong as my friends group in Bangalore have also complained about the inadequate AC cooling.



I don't think this issue is coming from the software. I tend to think the issue is from the hardware itself as all VW's HVAC software is sourced from either Bosch or Continental which is pretty much stable. If VW think they can fix this issue through software tuning by running the compressor at a higher duty cycle for longer period of time then it is guaranteed that the compressor will fail prematurely.

[Nissan1180]

This seems to be an example of the “reputation management” services provided by PR companies. Creating fake accounts is not illegal, hence we cannot say that this practice violates any law of the land.

However, using a PR firm to whitewash a product fault without rectifying it is not okay as it is spreading a fake news. They could have used reputation management after solving the issue, to clean their web search history. Now, if even an online publication or YouTuber picks this thread and creates content about it, it will deal a very serious blow to the company image.

[Dry Ice]

Disappointing Yes, unexpected No. It's all about the money $$. VW has probably calculated and deduced that solving the problem is far more expensive than managing the perception of the problem on social media. Fight Club recall scene anyone?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiB8GVMNJkE

Originally Posted by Nissan1180

Creating fake accounts is not illegal, hence we cannot say that this practice violates any law of the land.

Creating fake accounts/identities is a violation of the platform's terms of service

[Indepth]

After seeing the VW 2.0 products, I had lost all hopes from VW India. With every manufacturer improving upon their vehicles, it was sad to see VW going other way round.

So the sales had to tumble and not VW are looking at even lower numbers than Polo/Vento/Ameo combined. This might be one of the reasons that VW might need some cheap marketing alternatives to push sales to survive. I am not sure though VW is behind all this but definitely suspicious.

If VW India doesn't improve their quality to old standards, they are doomed in India because that was their only USP. Now even price-cuts won't help them much because in Indian market initial impression matters.

Look at what Kia, Mahindra is doing. They are launching at mouth watering prices and gradually increasing after gaining momentum / public attention. VW India stretegy has been opposite. Launch at eye watering prices and then resort to offering discounts. Clearly this strategy is not working.

So VW !! Either offer true blue VW standard products like POLO/VENTO or undercut competition if you want to keep offering these relatively low grade VW 2.0 products.

[neochanger]

Received a reply from VW on my query regarding this alleged social media promotion:



Only VW owners can tell how true this statement is.

[asmr]

Originally Posted by neochanger

Received a reply from VW on my query regarding this alleged social media promotion:

Attachment 2358175

Only VW owners can tell how true this statement is.

I posted about this here (Volkswagen Taigun : Ineffective air-conditioning).

VWIndia (the same team that responds on Twitter) has been just asking me to give phone number, email ID and dealer contact information instead of confirming that this fix is rolled out. My ASC said 3-4 days back that he has not heard anything about such a fix.

And I am yet to see any Taigun owner confirm here on Team BHP that they have had this fix applied and that it has effectively improved AC performance without anything else getting impacted.

I got an email from the VW CS team asking me to call them or respond with my dealer information. Not sure why they don't know it already from my contact information, but I declined because they will simply throw the issue to the dealer.

[GTO]

KW1283 has this to say:

This is fake news about the company. I have gotten my software update and the problem of tripping has gone away. Because customers have complained so much about the AC, VW service centres are asking all customers to tweet about the issue being resolved, including myself. My VW manager was very adamant that I can test AC as much as I want and then, I have to tweet about the issue being resolved.

So, that's why so many people who don't use Twitter had to create an account just to tweet about the issue being resolved.