That's why I shared it with my dad and why I posted it here. It shows they are listening.
People in the industry watch my channel and others. They also look over the comments at times.
A recent example was the changes for the Cummins engine. Doug Killian, the engineer I interviewed, watched the video and then read through the comments. I got the chance to interview Doug on the interview with the 4WD gauge cluster explained. Before recordering, we both discussed the comments on the Cummins video about lifter failure. He was rather shocked at the amount of people talking about it.
So, he followed up with Cummins and I waited until the press drive of the new Ram HD trucks. Then, we filmed the follow-up short (maybe a long-form video) on it.
Long story short, Cummins and Ram had not heard any of the outcry over lifter failure at the level the internet made it seem like a known problem and thousands of failures.
It seems like that is my role more than ever these days. Highlight the issues consumers are facing and get it on the radar of manufacturers who aren't getting the same information from their dealer networks.
I do find the disconnect interesting. Why don't automakers see the same issues the internet sees? Is it due to the viral nature of complaints whereas when one person has a problem that problem gets amplified by the doom and gloom channels? Then, every video gets comments about that problem.
I'd love to see the true data from people who have a problem vs those who just regurgitate the same complaint over and over again because they have a beef with XX automaker. Or they simply hate automakers and love to live in the negative.