[varunsangal]

Originally Posted by GTO

... Whatever the dispute, raising your hand on anyone (especially a customer) is NOT done.

Incidents of customer/people being manhandled/beaten is on the rise all around. Fiat, Maruti, Indigo, rule breakers beating up cops, road rage, cussing... List is endless and growing. Ref another latest thread (Motovlogger beaten up at India Bike Week for criticizing a modded Z800) on the forum.

The world's gone and worked itself into one big rage. No one has the patience to be nice anymore.

In this incident as well, IMO there would have been enough hot words exchanged, before the fists flew. However, goes to show people just don't want to sit down and resolve matters.

I will always remember an incident from 1970s related by my grand-dad. He had taken granny to a 9 PM movie and then started back home in his Fiat. On reaching home he realized it was not his car!! He immediately went back to the theater to find 3 people near his car (owners of the car he took). They immediately laughed off the incident as "When we saw our car missing and one car left here, we realized someone made a mistake and waited for his return."

Think how would we react today.

[nitinralli]

If am not wrong this is the same dealer who refused to give a test drive to one of our Bhpian cause he was wearing "slippers".

[bikerzindia]

I totally condemn the incident both were not right the customer in using profanity & more so the employees who flexed their muscles.

BUT

Let me give the customer's point of view if he is a customer who has purchased a product & the product has issues:

1. The so called sales/service executives firstly fail to understand the basic point of view of a person who has paid loads of money and expects the service to be on par with the price he pays for the product+service seen as a complete package by him.
2. They start to tell all sorts of cock & bull stories instead of first listening to the customer & trying to calm him down by understanding his problem & genuinely trying to sort out issues.
3. They try their best (or so they think) so that they complaint does not escalate to the next level ie Owner of the dealership or maybe the brand to which the product belongs to.
4. The company rarely gets involved and mails sent to them are rarely responded till the situation gets out of hand & either they are bad mouthed very badly in Social Media, media or complaints against them are filed.
5. The point of contact for any customer ends at the dealer level. Dealers tell us about they being just the middlemen & tell us to contact the company & when we ask them to share the contact details, they just back off sharing the mail ids and ask us to mail which mostly go without response. Like in my case below

https://youtu.be/zrteTOGm0hg?t=2m26s

6. The problems taken personal by the customer is completely justified as it is his money which is rotting & mostly going down the drain but not solving the issues and the customer's frustration being taken personally by dealerships/ employees and the dealership is neither necessary nor justified.

Most of the customers nowadays take up things to Social Media which slowly but steadily hurt such companies & dealers but we are living in an Instant Noodle times where some frustrated customers do prefer creating a ruckus in the dealership which I too think is somewhat justified because that is something which shows immediate effect as not everyone has patience to go judiciary which takes ages & going to police is nothing but entering a blackhole which sucks up any amount of money with little or no effect. Some dealers and companies shamelessly feel that any publicity about them good/bad works in their favour generating free advertisement.

[pratyush6]

Amazing times we live in:

1. Get beaten by airlines staff upon disembarking
2. Car sent for service being returned without being touched
3. Now a customer being beaten by dealerships - this clearly takes the cake!

Now, when I aboard a flight and have issues, I just get on with it. Car fault not repaired - no problems, will pay again and get it done. Bank refuses my own cash - no problems, will live on air and water. School raise fees - no problem - slog some more and earn some more. Fell down due to a pothole, thank your lucky stars you aren't dead. Even when someone's relative dies in a road accident due to roads being blocked for building an arch for a party's celebration - jail the person who asked the question.

Coming back to this instance - I am completely sure there is another side to the story as well. However, hitting a customer, that too with such impunity takes some level of craziness. I hope the people responsible are taken to task. And I implore people for their own safety, do not get into an argument with goons. There is only one outcome in that process and it's not good for you. Drive safe!

[roby_dk]

I think this is totally unacceptable and unfortunate event for both customer and Jeep.

This issue should be escalated to highest levels. Since all drama happened inside showroom premises hence the dealership is accountable and Jeep(Fiat) as a company is responsible.

Next action plan should be firing those employees and apologizing to customer for such unethical approach to deal with customer who in theory is God.

Now when Jeep is doing some good numbers with Compass hope this issue should not spoil their image in market. This video is currently doing rounds on WhatsApp, I already got this from my contacts today morning.

One more thing to notice from the footage it seems the BJP worker was on a casual visit not with his group else we would have witnessed "Clash of Clans".

[GTO]

FCA India shares the following statement:

We are in the know of the incident and we have taken this up very seriously. The sequence of events is currently being investigated. Appropriate action will be taken once all facts are studied and considered.

[skchettry]

Very very condemnable and unacceptable behaviour. A customer should never be treated this way. I can understand there are a few people who are very very provocative by means of body gestures and foul language. This should be studied and made part of staff grooming process. They should be taught to seek an intervention from their seniors and the seniors should also make immediate interventions to cool off such situations. I know in many cases they just keep overlooking till it gets out of control.
Grievances redressal system needs a complete overhaul in our country. And we as customers, also need to understand that getting down to dirty tricks like abusing or manhandling don't help anyone.
Regards
Sravan

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by hemanth.anand

Now all these "said to have", "Apparently", "Supposedly", things will spread like a forest fire. With the video incomplete, it'll never be known what exactly happened there.

For me it looked like a bunch of full suit guys attacking a guy in safari suit.

[hemanth.anand]

Originally Posted by Samurai

For me it looked like a bunch of full suit guys attacking a guy in safari suit.

Looked the same to me. It definitely doesn't suit the guys in full suit to be attacking one person in safari suit like the way they did. If the safari suit guy is indeed right, He should file a lawsuit against the guys in full suit

Whatever it may 'look like', I won't conclude anything else just yet apart from the fact that man handling is incorrect.

[VKumar]

Originally Posted by Arjun Reddy

This is bound to happen. The customer is apparently a BJP leader according to the article in the link.

I doubt, had he been a 'leader', the dealership shutters would have been down until a public apology and many more compensations were done. Probably some wannabe who loves to drive with a flag on bonnet. Believe me, I am partially into that game.

But, the point is, even if he was a rickshaw puller, there is no sense in doing what these guys have done. That man was actually calm when he was seated inside the cabin, while the super violent guys (men in black) barged in, hurling some of the choicest abuses and thrashed him. It is something like even if everything is settled, then we will churn the hornet nest once again. This is the same NCR where bouncers are shot in pubs and toll attendants are shot in their cabins for only scratching the ego of other person, these guys have properly hit and and not the video of that hit is also public - imagine what will it do to someone like 'Jayakant Sikre' of movie Singham and his ego.

In my opinion, sales and service is supposed to be a very noble profession where people exchange respect and form relations, here they exchanged abuses, punches and formed videos. I have myself purchased or got purchased not one or two but 7 cars from a single sales guy while he worked for three dealers one after another, that is how a sweet relation works, and it works very well.

Originally Posted by hemanth.anand

Maybe the guy told them that the compass grille looks like the one from the new Scorpio

Originally Posted by Samurai

For me it looked like a bunch of full suit guys attacking a guy in safari suit.

Originally Posted by hemanth.anand

Looked the same to me. It definitely doesn't suit the guys in full suit to be attacking one person in safari suit like the way they did. If the safari suit guy is indeed right, He should file a lawsuit against the guys in full suit

Err!! You guys have got impeccable sense of humor.
No matter what, I loved reading those three posts and after that

Originally Posted by CrAzY dRiVeR

it was probably the result of driving a guy beyond his tolerance limit.

Sometime in life most of us get into a situation where we just make our hands do the talk, but it's all over once the parties are parted. Here these guys literally followed him to the cabin for thrashing him up, this in an entirely new low. What if the manager or those guys haven't protected the customer? It was more like mob following and attacking a single guy.

Men in black hunting down an alien?

[CrAzY dRiVeR]

Originally Posted by hemanth.anand

I won't conclude anything else just yet apart from the fact that man handling is incorrect.

Thats the final conclusion in all the cases that surfaced recently - like the IBW incident, the Indigo incident etc.

The fault primarily falls on the side that starts manhandling the other, irrespective of the provocation. If the customer here had been going around hitting the showroom people - they were within their rights to 'defend' (and not attack).

But looks like the customer has been rude to them and using abusive words as per some of the comments in the video. The scene turned against the showroom sales people when they started raising their hands against this guy. Now that's not defensive anymore, although it was probably the result of driving a guy beyond his tolerance limit.

Violence is not just limited to hitting and words can be violent too. But it just takes a whole new dimension once physical violence is involved.

[G V Krishna]

One should not resort to violence how much ever provoked or otherwise. I know it is easy to preach this than to follow, but being in Service Industry and attacking your customer in your own premises is like shooting your foot.I was happy that FCA is getting some limelight and then this!!!!!

On a lighter note, we all know what 'Skodead' means. Now we came to know what it is to be 'Jeepinated'

[AtheK]

First Indigo, now Jeep, instead of learning from each others mistake, they are hell bent on repeating and destroying the reputation of a brand. People have to understand that this is not an individual reputation at stake, but that of a company.

Add to this the vlogger incident, though not brand tarnishing, it again is depicting the sense of delivering justice, how seemed fit by an individual/group of individuals. Shameful.

[Kommandogerät]

This Jeep had an opportunity to become the next Fortuner equivalent with the non-urban non-elite crowd. Word of mouth and whatsapp forwards of this video is going to be very damaging for Fiat no matter whose fault it was or whatever spin Fiat manages to put on this. Word in the market will be .. Jeep waale bhangar bechte hai aur girahak ko pittey hai. Will need a very smart and empathetic response from Fiat if this damage has to be undone.

[GTO]

Landmark Group has put up a statement on their website: