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-   -   A friend's plight with Fiat Exclusive - Tejaswi Motors, Hyderabad (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-dealerships/138308-friends-plight-fiat-exclusive-tejaswi-motors-hyderabad.html)

T-bhpians this is sad for me to see the italian mark fading away and incidents such as this just bring more shame to the mark that is loved by most of us.


Here is the actual story from Armaan Basheer Shaikh

@the mercy of Tejaswi motors, Hyderabad

I would like to narrate my experience at the FIAT India workshop in Hyderabad. After I posted on the fiat india page on facebook about the unavailability of parts and the workshop along with the non-co-operative attitude of the workshop staff, especially the service manager Mr.Chandradhar, I got a reply asking me to send an email to service.india@fiat.com (with which I was very content because of the prompt reply and apology for the inadequacy in service). I sent the email immediately and gave my details yesterday following which I got a call from the customer care department at Fiat where the executive confirmed that the complaint was in order and requested my to go to the workshop to take from them the order/VOR number of that particular part so that they could expedite the process of sending the spare ( for which the service manager gave a time of approximately 20-25 days, the whole reason I posted on the facebook page).

I reached the workshop and went to meet Mr.Chandradhar ( who I earlier mentioned, believes he is god and was totally non-co-operative and indifferent to wards customers) who was on a call and I very politely waited for him to finish.after he finished, I mentioned to him that I tried to escalate this issue with Fiat india and they replied and have requested me to forward the order number of the part from the workshop. When I said that he initially refused and said that the order has been placed and will take 20 days atleast till my turn comes . I insisted that he share with me the number so that I could initiate the process to which complied after much coaxing. After he agreed to share the number with me, he became upset at me having gone further to escalate the issue and said that I can do whatever I want and escalate to who ever I want (waving his palm in the air, cleaning some imaginary dust) and that the issue will still take 20-25 days to be solved. Let me remind you, he is service manager and I walked into a cabin that said Customer care Center !!!!!

Everything was alright till here

While he delegated someone to give the number, I ,in a very low tone, without raising my voice and speaking assertively to him, “This is a bad attitude you have”, (referring to the de-motivating approach and non-co-operative attitude) .
THIS IS WHEN HE LOST TOTAL CONTROL OVER HIS EMOTIONS!! HE SHOUTED AT THE TOP OF HIS VOICE. He was shouting total gibberish, complete non-sense, unrelated to the topic , just screaming at the top of his voice how he was doing me a favour by giving me the order number and how I shouldn't complain. He went ballistic for almost half an hour. FOR FULL 30 MINUTES HE WAS SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF HIS VOICE, RAGING IN ANGER!!!! (I don't know at what, I just told him that he has the wrong attitude, especially towards customers and how instead of being helpful he was just ignoring my problem and screaming at me )
Now initially I was shocked, so shocked because never in my professional and personal career has anyone ever treated me so rudely, no one has humiliated me like this. He KEPT SHOUTING THROUGHOUT AND THE WHOLE WORKSHOP AD OTHER CUSTOMERS GATHERED TRYING TO CALM HIM DOWN. All the customers and staff were trying to cool him down and many were even angry with him, so customers trying to defend me and shouted back. I, all the while remained calm, composed and was waiting for him to cool down (which he didn't).



HE WAS BEHAVING LIKE A GOON AND A FEW WORKSHOP STAFF AS HIS HENCHMEN. HE WAS JUST SHORT OF HITTING ME (a state judo champion having played national level judo) DESPITE WHICH I REMAINED CALM.

I knew that I would need roof of this, so I very coolly took out my camera and recorded at least 20 mins of the carnage/rage and uncontrollable insult I faced. He was so out of his mind that he didn't even realize I was recording his show. He continued to scream at the top of his voice and when I told him that he must accept “feedback” from a customer, he asked to get lost and that he dosent need feedback from customers. The 10 odd customers waiting to pick up their car were shocked and amazed too, at this kind of an attitude towards customer service



Link to the FB thread:
https://www.facebook.com/fiat.india/...t=feed_comment

I hope for Fiat's sake that this is a one of case. They should deal with this in the most swift manner and ensure the customer comes out satisfied.

Fiat does not deserve more than half of the admiration it gets on this forum but for the sake of those few people who soldier on and support it, Fiat should make sure such crap does not happen again.

Really patient fellow and hats off to him for that, I would have seriously lost it if that was me.

He is one of riding buddies and is a huge (6'6") fellow. I wonder how he managed to remain calm. We have asked him to lodge a complaint in the consumer court and deal with the matter legally.

OT: isnt it illegal to shout ? i mean in most mnc's you would be fired for that.

Well, in this case its not all down to FIAT India.

This is a case of a bad employee of the dealer, and not of FIAT. I seriously doubt FIAT would have any significant say in the hiring of dealer employees other than setting some minimum educational standards etc.

Other than that, FIAT seem to have reacted to the situation very well till now. FIAT replied within a few hours to his FB post and agreed to do what they can on. The recent post regarding the attitude of the employee was only posted at 7pm on a saturday evening. So FIAT havent actually got a chance to do anything about it.

I hope FIAT do read the post on Monday morning, and take the issue up with the owners and top management of the dealership. If there are previous instances of this Mr. Chandradhar being indifferent towards customers or having previous customer complaints against him the owners should be asked to dismiss him. If that is not the case, at the minimum, the fellow should give a written apology to the customer and the service center should waive all labour charges in this particular instance.

Most of the FIAT dealers and service centers along with most of the employees, though now only under FIAT umbrealla, are mostly from the erstwhile Tata dealers. So they have carried forward the similar attitude from their Tata days. It will take some time for FIAT India to affect a complete attitudinal change among the dealers and their employees.

At the end of the day, it is Fiat who is going to lose. Whether its fiat's fault or not, they better do something as the dealer is the face of Fiat. As it is their reputation in the market is nothing to talk about, and on top of this, something like this will only make matters worse. I have been to Maruti service stations, and they handle a lot more cars ( and I am sure they also do not have all the spares), but have never ever seen anyone yell at an irate or frustrated customer. The attitude of the service staff and the other ground staff needs to change very quickly if Fiat wants to sell even twice the cars that they sell now. Fiat please instill some common sense in the dealer staff for your own good!

Well, like you said, it is a problem for FIAT. But it is a problem that does not have an overnight solution. It requires slow and relentless evolutionary approach on the part of FIAT to change the customer experience at dealership and service stations.

And in this case, till now at least, FIAT have taken the correct steps towards solving the customers problems.

As for spares, that is an even more difficult problem to solve. Due to the small volumes, one cant expect service stations to stock up on all kinds of parts, especially ones that dont really need changing on a regular bases. This seems to be one such case, as a clutch assembly is not a part that will be regularly changed on many FIAT cars. Add to that the fact that FIATs are generally pretty reliable and dont require much more than standard maintenance. The best FIAT can do in this case is to ensure smooth and quick delivery of parts to dealers from their warehouse in Thane. FIAT were in process of doing just that when the above problem took place.

Absolutely disgusting behaviour by the works manager. May be the guy had a fight with his wife before leaving home :D

On a serious note, advice him make a CD of the video he recorded and send it to Fiat head office & regional office along with a report of the incident,. Make sure he sends it by registered post. Should he decide to go the legal route later, that will help him, in case Fiat does not take any action against the Manager and does not reply to him. I had done something similar with Hyundai when they stopped responding to my complaints against the infamous i20 steering rattle. Later delivery receipts of the report I sent did help to some extent in the consumer court case we fought against Hyundai and its Junagadh dealership.

Such Service Managers should be insulted, blasted left and right and fired from the job.

Really disgusting on the dealership part for having such employees.
I am sure they would have known the incident there and then. Someone from the top management of the dealership should have come forward and apologised.
What i would advice is to also take up the issue with dealership management along with Fiat. Someone here had a similar experience with his Chevy Beat and taking this up with the dealership and showing them the evidence would certainly help.
Apart from the video evidence you could even talk to the eye witnesses to help you out in case you go the legal way.

All the best !

Right said. He is in the process if doing that.

What makes me mad is, how can they(fiat) not coach\train their so called fiat exclusive staff with basic soft skills.

Let's hope this get resolved soon..

They must have had some basic training programs for sure. But who says that training is a guarantee of good behaviour. Look around everywhere you will see supposedly "highly educated" people who are much much worse than this fellow.

You should upload the video on YouTube and tag it properly with the important keywords (such as 'Fiat,' 'Tejaswi Motors') and then share the link on the FIAT pages on FB, email them and then send a hard copy letter to the Proprietor of Tejaswi Motors along with the necessary head at FIAT mentioning the issue and the URL of the video.

I can't wait for Google Glass to come out. Ultimate tool to handle such shenanigans.

That is a brilliant suggestion.

A couple of thousand views will come from Team BHP itself, and should send the message to Mr. Chandradhar and his employers.

I pray to God the video goes Viral.

Yup please upload the video on youtube and share the link on the forum and send a email to FIAT too. This is not unheard of. Recently a member faced similar issues at chevrolet dealership I suppose. You cannot blame Fiat right now but they need to sort this out to make there position clear. If they fail to do so then they are also equally guilty. Give them a chance to solve this first.

I know Armaan from the biking circles. He is a super cool dude with a very helpful attitude. I find it so sad that someone treated him so shabbily.

I want him to upload the video and I want Fiat to take stern action against such pathetic staff.

I have seen the tragic jams this service center creates on Road 45, Jubilee Hills.

Dealers and service centres are the face of the car manufacturers and if they don't find ways to mend the behaviour and attitude of dealer staff, then definitely it is Fiat who is at loss. No one can go to Fiat India to buy a car and experience the company's attitude to customers directly from them. The best way would be to share the video link to some senior level executives in fiat India or worldwide and ask them if this is how they treat the customers who paid their hard earned money to buy fiat's product. Folks like the said service manager should not be in customer service if he cannot handle the associated pressure and situations.