Manufacturers raise the bar, responding to complaints

Carmakers in China are responding to complaints in a more active and faster way but they are still falling short of customer expectations, a recent report found.

Out of complaints filed from January to November, 87 percent were answered, according to the joint report from Car Research Consulting Beijing Co and 12365auto, a website that monitors car complaints.

Thanks to their efforts, complainants canceled 24.26 percent of their 45,178 complaints in the first 11 months of this year, while in the same period that figure was less than 20 percent.

That's according to the report, which predicts the industry will receive 51,000 complaints for the full year, a nearly 14 percent growth year-on-year.

However, there is a long way for carmakers to resolve the problems in a satisfactory way, said Zhang Yue, a senior vice-president of Car Research Consulting.

He said faultfinders hoped problems about their cars could be resolved in three months.

But the fact remained that only half of the problems were solved within the time range, and those resolved in a week accounted for only 18 percent of the total.

The report also found that at least 70 percent of customers harbored negative feelings about the brands they complained to, while half said they would never buy cars from those brands again.

In addition, it found that when complainants posted their stories on online forums, 70 percent of the readers tended to share their negative feelings.

The report suggested carmakers improve their methods of solving complaints favorably in ways that customers hoped for. It found that the top three responses that complainants wanted were getting their cars repaired at 4S stores, follow-ups and recalls.

Carmakers are stepping up their efforts to recall faulty cars in China, the world's largest car market.

So far, more than 10 million cars have been recalled this year, according to the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, which is the country's top quality watchdog.