Some mfgs. have appeal processes, for instance Toyota. But as a general rule the others do not. Once a bad score hits you are stuck with it. ddavidv, I know of one instance where a S/A changed the S/A number on an RO to purposely deflect what he knew was going to be a crappy survey. Yes he got caught and lost his job. I know that for a fact because I am the guy who fired him.
Full disclosure: I no longer work for the local Toyota dealer. There were two instances involving bad surveys which led to my leaving. (By the way, Toyota surveys EVERY customer, most mfgs have a random type thing where you don't know for sure who will get a survey. The warranty and customer pay surveys are handled separately. The manufacturer does the warranty survey bonuses, the customer pay are handled by the dealership itself.)
One was a guy who was back in for the second visit for a pull/vibration concern. In the business, this is called a comeback and always takes top priority. I did my part 100% correct, pulled the tech from what he was doing, notified the service advisor handling that repair that a comeback was involved and had the tech test drive the customer's car. When he got back, the next thing I know he is working on someone's truck. Why? The service manager pulled him off of my comeback to do whatever this was. Problem was, my customer saw the whole thing through the big picture window into the shop and I got clobbered on the survey even though I explained what happened. (Shoot the messenger, anyone?)
Then I got a survey on a vehicle which involved some tires which were not ordered properly meaning the customer brought her truck in, waited an hour and a half only to find the tires were not the right size so the originals were reinstalled so she could go home. Now this is the kind of thing which will stick out in your mind and I could only recall a visit for replacement of a weatherstrip. So I bring up the original RO in our system, the one that generated the survey was my RO for replacement of the weatherstrip, the RO for tires was 2 weeks later and involved another service advisor. So I did my job correctly, he screwed up, I got dinged.
In both instances these were zero surveys and I brought the circumstances to the service manager's attention, in both cases she said basically 'So what? Tough titty. Live with it.' That's not acceptable given the nature of the service advisor job so we came to a parting of the ways.
The interesting part is that my warranty surveys were a perfect 100 across the board, on the day we parted I got home to find a prepaid $500 gift card from Toyota in my mailbox.
