[Captain Slow]

Couldn't find a Bangalore Carnation Thread so posting my experience here.
This is going to be a long post so get some coffee or tea before you start reading the whole thing.

After all the horrible reviews and my previous bad experience with carnation we thought we could give them another try.
Gave our old car to them for a routine service. We carried our own oil with us.

Problems reported by me - None,
Parts to be replaced, air filter & oil filter and any damaged parts if needed and general topups.
Rotate the tyres.

SA attending my car knew absolutely nothing after hearing the engine recommended a belt change as it was a little noisy, Luckily the floor supervisor who was with my car at the time corrected him saying it was engine noise and all it needed was a tune up/adjustment.
Later on one of them told me the SA assigned to me was new and knew nothing, I was surprised as to why someone who knows nothing about cars is working as an SA!

They needed the engine to "cool down" apparently before they can do the tune up and said they will do this in the evening and oil will be changed at that time.

I leave this place for a couple of hours go to a near by mall and come back in 2.
I see my car sitting there with the engine fully assembled and everything ready. Few minutes later the mech attending my car comes, I ask him whats going on, According to him everything is done and the car can be taken for wash.
I ask him carburetter has been cleaned?
Answer - Yes
Egine tune up done?
Yes
Oil filter and oil ?
He says Sir everything done!

Then I causally ask him, tyre rotation ?
he mumbles something that its not in the job card,

When I ask him about the brake cleaning? he says its done!
I show him the dust marks on the wheel cover and ask him if its really done. Again I got his standard reply "yes sir all done"
Next ask the floor supervisor to check this, he asks the mech about the brakes, mech again says yes-yes done.
I show them the dust on the wheel cover caps,if the brakes are cleaned then shouldn't the whell and wheel covers be removed? Doing this would leave the cover with hand marks ?
FS (floor supervisor) had to press him harder and told him that wheel rotation is also pending and needs to be done.
Then this lazy mech admits that brakes were not cleaned and starts doing them

At this point I totally lost my trust with these and stood by my car while he was working on it, Several people asked me to wait in the customer lounge but I refused to leave my car alone.

While removing the rear wheels I saw the rubber suspension bushes were worn out and needed replacement, I kept my mouth shut and waited to see if the mech/SA or FS says or notes anything.
After he finishes ""cleaning" the pads I ask him if anything else is wrong. he shakes his round head telling me everything is over sir.
I point to the suspension bushes,
Again he removes one side of wheel and checks it says it needs to be replaced.

Now comes the next irritating part, They have no ready parts in stock.
Time required to get the parts 1 hour at max according to them.
I tell 3 people my SA, FS, the parts shop guy to order the required parts and get the job done.
3 hours later I see nothing happening my car just sitting there. Waited for 1 more and I gave up, told them to chuck the suspension job and just get my car ready so I can leave.

To make my blood boil even more they added Rs 3xx in my bill for something that was never done! When I complained about it to the SA he said come next time we will adjust it Yeah right he expects me to go back to them after this??

This time the wash was good but by the time I reached home my boot was again dripping with water, They did not dry the boot mats before putting them back. (car has 2 boot mats) 1 carpet and 1 rubber.

Coming back to the suspension bushes I got these from a shop few clicks away from carnation, price - Rs60-80 each.
Carnation couldn't get these parts even after giving them 24 hours time!

In short the mechs here are lazy good for nothing, I have said it before and will say it again their equipment level is top quality but the mechs/people attending our cars are not up to the task.

[chetanhanda]

Originally Posted by Captain Slow

Couldn't find a Bangalore Carnation Thread so posting my experience here.
This is going to be a long post so get some coffee or tea before you start reading the whole thing.

======================
In short the mechs here are lazy good for nothing, I have said it before and will say it again their equipment level is top quality but the mechs/people attending our cars are not up to the task.

Typical of carnation, Im seeing a pattern here:
1] SA is a joker by default
2] Mech is not qualified
3] Parts are never in stock because they are multi brand and are therefore never well prepared for any brand.
4] They are liars+theives
5] They are apparently "well equipped" ..not sure for what ?
6] Front desk/non technical/non mech staff is polite ..basically what really matters at a garage is not upto the mark but everything else is ok.

Captainslow , you could probably start a new thread like "Carnation - Bangalore experience (Please avoid at all costs)"

Nice review.

[GTO]

Note from Mod : Posts moved to a new thread. Thanks for sharing

[Captain Slow]

This car did only 400-450 KMs after the so called service. Its got a brand new Amaron battery and now the car refuses to start!
I can hear the starter motter cracking up but the engine refuses to start.

Being a Sunday difficult to find a mechanic.

[triedeverything]

I had a bitter experience with Carnation as well. I had bought one of the online deals for wheel balancing and alignment and booked an appointment on a Sunday. They said I should deliver the car to them by 12. I was there a little after 11. They refused to take the car and said their quota was full for the day. I traveled from the other end of Bangalore 23 kms to get here! I was furious. I asked for the manager (don't remember his name) and talked to someone who agreed to take it but said it can be delivered only after 6 pm. I told him that I couldn't waste 6 hours standing there for a job that usually doesn't take more than 30 to 45 minutes. I stomped out and wrote to the CEO of the website and asked for a refund. I was refunded and someone called me the next day to apologize. I haven't stepped into carnation after that.

[mempheS.D]

Thank god I stopped over this thread. I was just about to scoot from office for a couple of hours to give my car a wash at carnation considering it's exactly oppostie my building.. Darn! Why do these people open shops in the first place when they haven't got the first objective right, ie, customer-experience!

[Ragul]

I went window shopping over once to get a feel of the place and I could clearly tell the employees were grouchy and frustrated in general with attitude problems. This ticked off my alarm bells and I have been careful to avoid visiting there for anything.

--ragul

[adg_andy]

Hi Guys,

Just saw this post on our official bulletin board and posting it as it is:

Hi All,

I would like to highlight the inconvenience caused to me by giving my car for a service done at Carnation, Bannergatta. Following is the incident:

The Carnation telemarketing called me on 12/12/2011 (Monday) and informed me about a offer of Rs 699/- which includes washing/polishing/25 check points for my car.
I agreed for this and asked him to pick my IKON from my residence on 16/12/2011 (Friday).

The Bannergatta Carnation driver (Mr. Lokesh) picked up my car after make sure that it was in perfect running condition.

Later in the afternoon I got a call from the garage (Mr. Nirajan) and informed that the coolant has to be changed along with the air filter and back break light. I agreed, thinking that the car be in a mint condition. He also called up in the evening and confirmed that the car can be delivered to my residence. The bill summed up to Rs 2035/-

The car was delivered at my place and my wife paid the amount. Since I reach home late in the night I did not take up any test drive and the next day morning I had to go to Hosur for some personal work, ..I did not check.

That same evening (17/12/2011) I had to take my wife to St. Philomena’s Hospital for her check up. I barely drew 1.5 Km and the car started jerking and I somehow managed to get inside the hospital. I immediately called up Mr. Nirajan and informed about it and he sent 2 mechanic to fix this issue. By the time reached and tried to find the issue it was almost 9:30 PM and still it was not resolved and they confirmed that they will come tomorrow morning and get it fixed.

[Had problem getting a auto to home (Viveknagar)…My 4.9 yrs old son, my pregnant wife and I almost checked with all the auto drivers to get us home, which is just 2 km from St. Philomena’s hospital and all of them refused to come..it was also very cold at that hour….Somehow managed to get a bus and we reached).

Next day (18/12/2011) there is no response from Carnation and I had to call in the afternoon (2:00pm) and remind about the problem and they confirmed that they have limited staff to come and attend the issue outside the garage, but confirmed that they will attend this issue tomorrow early in the morning.

Monday (19/12/2011)….still there is no response from Carnation and I called them at 11:00 to remind that my car is at St. Philomena’s hospital and it needs to be fixed. I was irate and escalated the issue to the Service Manager (Mr. Mustan Wadia) and he confirmed that there team will be in 30 min.. 2 of them arrived at 12:30 and when they started to check the battery was down.. I suggested that they tow the car to the garage and then fix it as I need to go to office. But they said that they will get a battery and fix it here. They left and came back after 2hrs. They tried all possibilities and found that the coil Socket is damaged and needs to be replaced..The car could start but the jerk was still present and I asked them once again to tow it to the garage, but they said that I had to bear the towing charges (Rs 1500/-) at this point I was furious and complained to the Service manager. He also confirmed about the same..Somehow the car started and I asked the mechanic to drive it with jerking to the garage.

At the garage they made some minor adjustment by taping the coil socket and called me and asked to pick the car. I reached in the evening and met the Manager and he said that the socket is gone and it’s very difficult to get in the market and asked me to get this fixed at Ford show room..On close observation is did notice that the socket is not mine.. it was all taped.

The irony part is that they are not ready to accept the mistake. They are not ready to accept that the socket were changed by them. The worst part is that even the car’s indicators are not working, and it’s still in jerking condition, if the wires are shaken.. I never called them again.. I will never call them for any further service.. I don’t mind getting my car check up once again at the authorized show room.

My request is please think twice.. trice before giving your car to Carnation..The offer might be fancy but it’s NOT WORTH.

regards,
JB

It seems carnation is building up quite a reputation these days.

[scopriobharath]

Even when i went for a 99/- offer for washing, waxing and polishing (free booklet) i was totally un-satisfied with the results. The neighbourhood security would do a better job washing with a bucket and mug rather than power equipment at Carnation(chennai Guindy). They refused to inspect my tyres till i commit that i will buy them right away or leave the vehicle for paid service.

Jagadish wants to promote the outlet, but the junior management spoils the show. Totally unprofessional.

[raj_5004]

My innova has a nudge guard in the front. Few days back, a driver had hit another innova & damaged the guard. the guard has a fibre outer casing & it had a deep dent.

Took the car to the toyota ASC & they refused to do it. Hence, I took the car to Carnation, Chembur. After waiting for around 20 mins, the SA came to inspect the car. He said he would do the job for Rs. 8500. When I asked the reason for such a high price, he said that since the guard is made of fibre, this is a specialist's job & he will have to call a guy from DC (yes, you heard it right - our very own Dilip Chabbria) to repair it & hence the exorbitant pricing.

I even told him that a similar new guard will cost me 6000, so it does not make sense to get this one repaired for 8000!

Two days later, I got it repaired from a local garage for Rs. 2000 and they did a perfect job. Specialist's job indeed... thugs!

[soarer]

Hello everyone,

Its my turn now to explain the very horrible experience with carnation showroom located in ORR, mine is Tata Indica 2005 which has done 85K kilometers and since TATA A** is pathetic( had different experience) i want to try carnation this time ..This is again long post .

On 31-Dec-2011 morning I left my car with following problem around 9:30 after waiting for 30 mins for some SA to attend me ( no it was not so many cars at that time - 9:00 AM they have team meeting so there was no one to attend me)- finally I was attended by Sushil - who doesnt have any knowledge on cars

1) check engine light glowing
2) A/C not effective
3) Wheel Alignement and balancing
4) and do all normal service which is to be done for 85 K Kms.

SA was more eager in selling products like engine oil additive and Engine oil flushing to me for which I told ok and ask him to do road test and find out any complaints since I can hear some noise from front tyre and I told him it might be bearing noise, but he told me he will do it later and will inform me OTP if anything need to be changed. I felt ok and left the place.

Around 1 PM SA called me and told all the four bearing need to be changed and cost of spares would be around 3500 rs for all the four and few extra spares like wiper and some bulb need to be changed for which I gave consent and asked him about the Check engine glowing for which SA confirmed me that has been recitified and car will be ready by next day after fixing bearing and wheel alignment. Then again I received call around 8:30 PM same day from SA and informed me that car is ready and bill around Rs12000 .I told ok and will collect the car on Monday.

Monday around 4 PM i went to collect the car and this time a new SA ( George) came down and explain me the bill step by step

Bill was bifurcated as below

Spares - 7600 ( engine oil - 5.5 lts for 1500 rs and bearing for 3500 RS and remaining was for oil filter ,Diesel filter and some misc items)
Labour - 4700 ( just for 85K service change and bearing change)
This model Indica will consume only 4 lts of engine oil and i have mentioned it even before leaving the car for service but they accepted it their mistake after few arguments and accepted to provide me free body polishing since they can't reverse the amount after paying the bill with 10% discount on labour ( im corporate customer) . I told them I need to have test drive of the car before signing the Job card for delivery which they arranged immediately with all new SA ( venkatesh) this time.

During test drive I found out Check engine light was still glowing and car was pulling right , i was fed up and once back to their showroom I spoke to the manager ( Ranjith) and started shouting to all the possible guys and told them i will not take my car delivery and need to fix these issues and all these time the guy(Sushil) who took my car never came in front of us.

After discussing for few minutes within themselves they told me that they dont have correct tools to check the "Check engine" issue and need to bring from B.G road branch which will not happen the same day so they excused and told me to leave the car for that day so they can fix the issue and will return the car in a day which I have to agree without any choice ( 2 days i took taxi to office ) and left their showroom around 6:30 PM.

Next day I received call from the SA and told me that they dont have tools to diagonse the "Check engine issue" and have fixed the other problems and it seems they even tried to take my car to near by Tata showroom and checked the issue but even TATA was not able to fix the issue.Now I have no option to take my car with the issue after spending 12000 Rs, evening I went to their showroom to take my car where in I was told to pay another 2600 rs ( 600 rs for spares and 2000 as labour) for work they have done..I was like almost **** but again spoke ( fighted) to their manager who agreed for 50 % waiver in the charges and I paid 1600 rs ( totally 13500 rs ) and took my car with issues.

So all in all please please avoid this place at any cost and dont waste your time and money ..

PS: Im planning to send this link to carnation CEO along with my complaint email and hope to someone take action for my case.

[aroonanand]

After reading all the threads of poor experiences at Carnation, I decided to take a chance and took my 6 year old Santro which has done 100,000+ kilometres for a routine service at Carnation, Outer Ring Road, Bangalore
last Sat (7 Jan 12) with the below specific issues

• Rear left manual window not working
• Fuel gauge indicator not working
• Wheel alignment

Here's my tale of woes:

Had called Carnation on Friday to confirm if I can visit and was asked to take a prior appointment as the workshop would be "full" on weekends.

When I reached Carnation at 11 AM on Saturday, I was greeted by an empty workshop and a bunch of idle "customer service" agents. In a workshop which can attend to 40+ cars, I saw about 8-10 of them.

Was attended to in ~ 10 minutes and I explained the issues to the technician / Carnation employee who prepared the job card and directed me to the service incharge (Rajesh / Lokesh). Was informed that the service would be done in 24 hours and the car would be ready next day (Sunday morning 11 AM).

Got a call on Sat eve from Rajesh that a few items like brake pads, some suspension shaft etc needed replacement, all of which would cost ~ INR20,000. Having read multiple reviews on Team BHP of such experiences with Carnation and the fact that I was taking my car there for the first time, I did not want to entrust this job to them and so I refused to approve these and requested only normal service to be done with the 2 points to be corrected.

On Sun morning, I got a call from Rajesh that the car is ready for collection. On probing specifically about the 3 issues, I was told all 3 have been fixed and that I should meet Ranjith, Service manager to collect the car.

When I reached Carnation ~ 1 PM (again, an empty workshop with 3 cars in the service bays), I was attended to after a wait of 10+ minutes. I was skeptical about the repairs being attended to, as the window was in a semi open state, the same way I had left the car on Saturday. When I asked Ranjith, he confirmed all issues have been fixed.

Took the keys and sat inside the car, and realized neither the fuel gauge indicator nor the window was fixed. When I pointed this to Ranjith, got a very callous response that he was on leave for a week and hence unaware of the history. On asking for Rajesh, who serviced the car, was informed that he was on weekly leave and hence cannot be seen.

At this point, Ranjith called Rajesh (I could overhear the conversation which was in Tamil and heard Rajesh telling Ranjith he did not fix these issues due to some "internal technical" issues and that he has not informed me the issues were not fixed). Ranjith did not know I knew the language (I was speaking all along in English and Hindi) and started saying that I was informed of all of this and that Rajesh has done his job.

At this, I lost my cool and asked for the workshop manager (dont recollect his name, lets call him Mr. X) who saw me after 5 minutes. When I explained the issues, X started alleging that it cannot be a case of their service engineer not pointing the issues to me and that I have not approved the repair. Ranjith added that Rajesh confirmed the same. At thsi point, I stated that I did overhear their complete conversation in Tamil which happens to be my language too. I asked for Rajesh to be put on speaker phone in front of all 3 of us. He repeated the same statement that owing to "technical internal issues", none of the issues were fixed and that he misled me in the morning.

After this conversation, the tone of X changed and he said they would fix the issues which remained undiagnosed so far. He asked me to pick up the car on Monday, which I flatly denied and said I will not pay for any of the items unless the car is fixed the same day, delivered at my house. X asked Ranjith to quickly get the issues diagnosed with a quote, which was done. The quote was INR 800 for the window regulator replacement and INR 4000 for the fuel gauge replacement. I approved the window and rejected the fuel gauge; I was promised delivery by evening. I asked to be dropped home by them as it was their mistake, and X agreed.

On the way home, the driver mentioned that such issues are very common as most mechanics are untrained - all the multi brand training and servicing is on paper only and that most staff are ill trained to do even the basic jobs. So much for all the hype about multi brand servicing.

In the eve, when the car was dropped home, I saw that both issues have been fixed (window + fuel gauge) with a cost of INR 200. Realized that they had not diagnosed the issue properly at all (window needed only a change of the channel which had rusted and not a regulator replacement) !!!!

Such a poor experience and will make sure I dont return there ever.

And I should add, whilst I was there, the receptionist was turning away people that visited them with free car wash / vacuum / snapdeal vouchers as the workshop was full and cannot take any more servicing !!! Why promote through these vouchers (at Total Mall for instance) or online!

Only if they knew how to service the cars and stopped lying and taking customers for a ride! Not surprised their bays are empty on weekends when the workshop is located in an area which has probably a few 10000 cars within 3 kilometres!

PS: I am going to send this thread to Carnation Management as well as Ranjith to let them know we dont take this lightly.

[neutralgrey]

AVOID THIS PLACE LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!

Alas, I didn't see this thread before. If I had, I wouldn't have taken my car there. I had given my Punto to them for exterior and interior cleaning. On inspection after their work, I found some moron had scratched the letter 'A' in capital on the bonnet. This had happened when the car was parked in their compound!!! I mean, what kind of security do they have there! The service advisor immediately called another moron to work on the scratch with some rubbing compound. It looks 'okay' now.

I was totally flustered by this experience and didn't want to loose my cool. I immediately paid and left. Upon further inspection on reaching home, I found dirty palm marks all over the seats and the dash controls. To top it all, the icing on the cake, the brilliant morons had snapped one of the thread/rope thingy which connects the platform-after-the-rear-seats to the hatch door. I dont know if it was a good thing or a bad thing that I didn't discover this within their compound. If I had, I would have totally lost it and created a scene, which, after reading this thread, I realize would have have totally useless.

Another observation I had made was that the attitude of the workers and their supervisors is totally callous and arrogant.

So, lesson learnt - AVOID CARNATION BANGALORE (ORR) if you love your car.

[Indicruz]

I tried my luck to post this thread on Mr. Jagdish Khattar's facebook 'fan' page. As expected, admins deleted it with in seconds!

[tachobells]

I had visited Carnation ORR about a year back to fix a dent on my car boot.
They had done a pretty good job. And the bill was about 3200. Maruti ASC gave an estimate of 13000.

I also fitted a steering cover (G-Sport) from the same place. That was done rather poorly.