Today I was thinking about all of the people who are waiting to receive their new Smart. Some of these people have waited a year or longer, and for many of these people the worst part about buying a Smart is the long wait. The way that Smart is handling this is unacceptable to me and so I was thinking about how to best make that wait period
shorter. I have come up with a possible solution, but I wanted to pass it through you guys (
and gals) first to see what you think
First of all Smart needs to set up a national network where all orphans can be put in a database. Dealerships would be required to document all non-sold Smarts in their dealership lots. A website would be set up where the dealers could do this, and the same website would be used for phase two, which is when a customer buys a Smart and is put on the waiting list the dealership (
we'll call him dealership A) would first go to this national database and fill out a form where they would check off what options the customer wants. The database would then check to see if another dealer (
dealership B) has a car with those same features already in stock. If he does, then that car would
immediately be sent to dealer A. Once at the dealership the cars color could easily be changed to meet the customers requirements. This whole entire process would take from 2-4 weeks, which is a hell of a lot less than waiting a year or more for a car. Not only that but because Smart doesn't have to duplicate making the same car on their assembly line, they can now focus on making another car, thus speeding up the entire process for everyone else. It's a win-win solution.
For example; say you want a red Smart that has x/y/z options and you live in New York. Your dealer would check the national database and see that a blue Smart with those same exact options is sitting in a lot in California. So now that blue Smart can be immediately sent to his dealership, and once there, the blue panels would be swamped out for red ones. Voila, the car your customer wants is now available for them to take delivery on. Everyone would win
Example Two; Same as above only the car has two out of three options (
x/y instead of x/y/z) that the customer wants. This would also show up in the dealers websites database, and now the dealer can ask/offer the customer this car instead of waiting. The idea here is that instead of having all of these cars sitting in dealers lots nationwide, they can now be placed into good homes, which is what adopting an orphan is all about
So what do you guys think? It would help to get Smarts delivered quicker right?
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