Cadillac AAdvantage Promotion Frustration
I know a lot has been written about the Cadillac AAdvantage promotion offering 7,500 mile for a test drive. To be honest, I hadn’t really planned to share my experience here. Many other bloggers have reported that everything went well for them, so I had confidence that my experience would be the same.
After many years of discovering that everything tends to go mildly wrong for me, I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. Thankfully the staff at my local Cadillac dealership was great and saved the day. Here is what happened.
#Winning – Chatting to Avoid Long Hold Times
Last week as I mentioned, I was able to get on a chat with Cadillac’s Concierge service and schedule a test drive at my local dealership for 10am this morning. I decided to schedule it for today since I figured they would already be briefed given that it has been going on for a week now.
During the chat, the Cadillac Concierge told me that my local dealership would call to confirm the appointment. Alas I never heard from them, so I decided to just head there today to test drive car.
#Losing – What Promotion? We Have Never Heard of This Cadillac AAdvantage Promotion!
When my wife and I walked in the door, we were greeted by a kind receptionist who looked at me with confusion when I mentioned the Cadillac AAdvantage promotion. She then asked one of the salesmen who also had never heard of it. After going over to a manager, he was able to find the details, but they didn’t know anything else.
Eventually the sales manager found a phone number to reach Cadillac corporate, but everyone was at lunch and they didn’t answer. (Their words.) This meant they weren’t able to look up our registration information, so we had to sit and wait….and wait….and wait!
Finally, as I was getting ready to leave, Larry the salesman told me that he would just take our info (AAdvantage #, Name, Address) manually and deal with corporate later. He walked away and came back a few minutes later to take us for a test drive. My wife asked if we both had to drive and he told us we didn’t since there was already so much confusion. She rode in the back seat as we strolled around the block in a beautiful CTS.
Communication is Key
During the test drive Larry and I reminisced about old Las Vegas and how things used to be. We also talked about Cadillac and how it is being managed separately from the rest of GM. Of course he was also very apologetic about the mixup and told me that they rarely find out about promotions before a customer shows up asking about it.
Apparently one day a few years ago, everyone at the dealership showed up for work to find a hundred people waiting outside to take advantage of an offer. That is just the way these things go. Larry was a great guy and genuinely went over and above to help even though he knew we weren’t going to buy a car today. He did make me want to come back and buy a car from him when we are ready!
Upon our return to the dealership, the manager approached and apologized to us. Thankfully he was finally able to reach corporate and verify that they had all of our information so that we can be credited. We are both now marked as completed in their system.
Call to Confirm
I guess the moral of this drawn out story is to make sure to call your local dealer before heading down there. My dealer had not ever even heard of this promotion. Had I called and confirmed the appointment, perhaps things would have gone smoother.
I also learned that my local Cadillac dealership has great employees. If you are in Las Vegas, buy a car from Larry at Cadillac of Las Vegas.
Conclusion
I was skeptical about test driving a car for miles. My math put the break even point at about an hour of time spent. It ended up being really close to that. Factoring in the time it took to get there, I would say I didn’t come out too far ahead. Thankfully my wife and I both will receive the miles & we only had to do one test drive, so that is a victory I guess.
In the end I don’t necessarily regret participating in this Cadillac AAdvantage promotion, but I feel that Cadillac corporate really dropped the ball. How does a whole call center go on lunch at the same time? I scheduled the appointment almost a week ago and the dealership was never contacted? Not good. Thankfully this promotion means that I did finally meet the first car salesman that I didn’t absolutely despise. In that way it was totally worth it.
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[…] myself went to the dealerships for their scheduled test drives only to learn that they had never heard of the promo. To be fair, many other people had great experiences with their test drives. While we may never […]
I walked in the dealership & was assigned a salesperson who asked if I was interested in a Cadillac, & when I told him I was just interested in AA miles he walked away & came back with the confirmation paperwork. I didn’t even have to do the test drive. Total time was five minutes.
Poor salesmanship I’d say. Over half the battle is getting someone in the door. He should have told you how great the Cadillac is and urge you to drive it. You never know maybe you would fall in love and buy it or maybe one later or maybe the next time you are in the market for a used car you come in and see them. Now you will just drive by and either go hey what an average group of sales folks that would even lie to Cadillac or what a cool guy that helped me avoid the hassle of the test drive.
I would follow up with the AA twitter team and let them know about the gap in their promo. My dealership was unaware of the promo when I walked in, but they quickly found my appointment/reservation somewhere and printed out a completed form (not sure if they were supposed to hand the form to me or not). It will be interesting to see if the AA miles post or if there will be more chaos on the redemption side.
I tweeted AA with a copy of the blog post. When I signed up I did it via chat, so I have all of that confirmed in writing. I also have a handwritten paper that the dealership gave me, so I know I will get my miles in the end. Like you said it remains to be seen if there will be more “chaos” in order to get them though.