Can you imagine a car being allergic to the Vanilla ice-cream?
The General Motors Pontiac was into making extraordinary rides. So extraordinary that it happened to not to let its owner carry a parcel of vanilla ice-cream back home. You must be wondering why would a car do so?
One fine day, the Pontiac car division of General Motors received a complaint from one of its customers, saying that “My Pontiac car doesn’t like vanilla ice-cream.” But the complaint seemed too funny to be to be taken seriously. The customer knew this, which is why he decided to rewrite the complaint. In the complaint, the customer shared his story with General Motors. There was a tradition in the customer’s family where each night after family dinner, they would vote and decide which ice-cream to eat. Once they decided the men would go and buy the ice-cream. It was all going fine till the customer purchased the Pontiac.
After the customer bought Pontiac he observed a weird scenario. Every time that he got Vanilla ice cream, the car just would not start once the man would get the parcel. This was not the case for any other ice cream. For all the other flavors the customer could get the ice-cream home.
After this was brought to the notice of General Motors, the company felt the need to check for the cause. The company decided to send an engineer to get it solved. The engineer would accompany the customer to buy ice cream every night. And to the engineer’s surprise, the complaint turned out to be true. When the engineer got vanilla ice-cream, the car did not start. There was nothing left unchecked – the gas used, the car model, the time it took to drive back and forth. Finally, one fine day, the engineer realized that it took the man a lot longer to buy other flavors of ice-cream. Vanilla being the fast running item it was stored in front of the store, so it took lesser time to get vanilla flavor compared to other flavors. And this was just the clue the engineer needed.
The answer was vapor lock!
Because of the car stopping and starting in a short while, fuel would turn to vapor and couldn’t move through the system thus causing the engine to die. Because vanilla ice-cream took little time to buy, the engine didn’t have time to cool down. And so, the mystery was solved.
You see every feedback counts. Do not take your customers feedback lightly. You never know what kind of mysterious problem it might solve and help you to improve your products or services.
Written & Compiled by Faber Priyal & Faber Mayuri.
