[SkodaFan0]

Firstly, the question is whether the gentleman authorised the workshop to go ahead with the replacement. If yes, then he will have to foot the regular service (Filters & Fluids) bill plus battery cost. I recently changed my Superb's battery to an Amaron 65Ah @ ₹6000/-. I don't see why the showroom must charge any higher.
Secondly, MCT and DSGs of a 2015 car must not fail this soon. I think the SA is lying, because any historical errors/ faults with the Mechatronic or multi-clutch or gearbox will pop up in the OBD/ VCDS without a doubt.
TAKE YOUR CAR BACK HOME; AUTOBAHN BE DAMNED. YOU WILL FIND REASONABLE FNG TO FIX ANYTHING THAT'S REALLY WRONG WITH THE CAR

[manas27587]

I, personally am one of the victims of this fraud. Being a Skoda car owner since 2012 I faced all these troubles until I was fed up in 2015 and started getting the car serviced and repaired at FnG's.
My first service, 7500kms I was quoted 18000 for it. After haggling and getting rid of certain stupid checks and cleans I ended up paying 10000 6 months within purchase of the car.

For suspension repairs after 1.5yrs i paid 20000.
The last straw was when I was quoted more than 1lakh for diagnosing my boot not opening problem.
They wanted to change the whole wiring system of the car and also told me that if they find the BCM faulty they might even have to change that. The problem was later solved for 2000rs by a local garage.

Skoda makes awesome cars, but it still has to address the elephant in the room, namely, the Service centre.
I have tried Senator(the closed down),JMD and Autobahn.

[Endless....]

Finished 3rd yr service at Tafe last week. Battery was acting up hence changed that, albeit at a premium, for the sake of retaining warranty. Since I have the service pack for 4 yrs on my rapid, I intend to stick to Skoda ASS only until then. Mine being a manual MPI, annual service will be child’s play at a FNG love the car but the ASS horror stories I choose to not be part of! Tafe has been great so far, wouldn’t want to see them differently later

[evil_grin]

This is atrocious. Those guys are clearly trying to fleece you. Take your car out. Use a flatbed if it isn't starting. And take it straight to a reputed independent garage.

Don't take your car to them ever again. Just use the independent garage for servicing and repairs since you're out of warranty.

Hearing of all these horror stories, for the first service of my Octavia at Mahavir, Hyderabad, I stayed the whole day and kept a keen eye on what they were doing. I never had to do this with my Honda City. The good thing was that they were courteous, professional and did their work well and honestly. I still will continue to be there in person for subsequent services.

[Carpainter]

Well another Skoda horror story just when we thought we are past these in part 2 of VW journey in India.

I think the first mistake that OP's friend did was to send the car to service centre when he somewhat knew that the battery was the main culprit. I changed my City's battery last week for 3.6k with 2 years warranty. Any battery shop would send a technician to check voltage and gravity for a nominal fee and if required they change battery at your doorstep.

Regarding this entire story, I think the owner could have been more proactive and could have visited the workshop when he could not contact the adviser for a couple of days. I know it's not always possible to find time out to visit workshops specially in the middle of a pandemic but since it's your asset lying around unattended, you need to take care of it on your own. Thing is, if the customer or his representative visits and takes a look, dealers don't take chances to mess with the car. But if one voices his discontent only over phone even after 2 weeks from sending his car, it becomes a lot easier to put additional charges for the dealer. One should not have faced this problem after sending his car to an authorised service centre but since the customer could figure out what was happening within 4-5 days, he should have moved quickly to get the car out of there as soon as possible. I hope Skoda take necessary action and redress this issue in favour of the customer.

[Sarinkrc]

The reason why people are giving their vehicles to authorized service is to get peace of mind and have the feeling that their vehicles are in trusted hands. But this attitude of the skoda service advisor is a blatant rip off . IMHO the car has no issues & its an issue created by SKODA dealer . If that vehicle in that service center finally they will give an repair estimate which is more than the actual value. In my experience with Dealers they only know how to fleece poor innocent people. I had an issue with the AC for my Honda City which was around 2 years old. Service advisor told compressor & condenser needs to be changed and gave an estimate for Rs 80000/-. I heard that and fixed the issue at a local workshop for 3000 Rs. So the bottom Line is if you want to keep your warranty service your car with the local dealer. For any repairs better to check out and take second advice with with any reliable workshop other than the dealer.

[Shanksta]

I read the whole post and my understanding of the event is, your friend parked the car in March and the car did not start after a week ?

All your friend needed to do was ask the neighborhood battery shop to have a look at the battery. They would have taken the old battery kept it with them overnight for recharging and returned it the next day. Why go through the hassle of towing the car,etc., Did Skoda road side assistance not even try to jump start the car ?

A 200 rupee expense and if the old battery did not hold charge then 5-6k expense gone wrong. Speaking from experience, costed me 200 rupees to get my Innova battery recharged after a similar event post lockdown.

Anyway hope your friend gets the car back soon.

[anjan_c2007]

A very disheartening account of events and misadventures with the Skoda service outlet. They had done your car's diagnosis three times, with the previous diagnosis never detecting or even having a faint symptom of the forthcoming fault, in the subsequent diagnosis.

It's like a person with a minor ailment like mild stomach ache going to the hospital and finding himself diagnosed for kidney stones. The patient stays unwell. In the second undesired diagnosis, they say his kidneys are malfunctioning and that he requires dialysis. Despite dialysis, the patient does not recover. In the third unwanted diagnosis, they say he needs an immediate kidney transplant and that his condition is life-threatening.

[Quatro]

Dear Granville,

I am a owner of Skoda for past 9 years and while most of the points have been covered, I would like to suggest / comment as follows:

1. It is strange that they reported multi clutch and mechatronic failure after a few round of diagnosis. The feedback that your friend received on 2nd July was very clear that there are no mechanical and electrical issues in the car.

2. Having said that, I believe the mechatronic unit used may be same notorious DQ200, which Skoda has replacing in many cases under goodwill even after warranty has expired. If its genuinely a mechatronic issue then you should push them to replace it free of cost on goodwill basis.

3. I also agree that their service centers have a tendency to push unwanted repairs and coming up with new fault every few days. Please be firm in this respect.

4. The other thing which is not clear is whether the estimates given to your friend includes GST or not. I have been exposed to estimate amount going up by addition of GST. While initially quoting they don't tell you that GST will be in addition to it.

Best, Q

[kamilharis]

Sad to hear a Skoda horror story again. It was first of all a bad decision to tow a car straight up to ASS knowing that the culprit would be the battery. At the least he should've checked the battery once before sending the car to ASS. Even during a normal service i am uncomfortable when the service bay guys informs me that I am not allowed to see my car being serviced !!

[07CR]

Originally Posted by GTO

There are many other good, honest shops in The Team-BHP Directory.

Can you share something similar for Pune? I have a Ford ecosport, and not sure where should I get it serviced at. There are 5 dealerships in Pune.

[DrCar]

I don't understand why is everyone blaming the owner for not checking the battery himself. Not everyone is as knowledgeable and trust the outside garages with their car.
My wife too tried going through official service center of Maruti while changing batteries of her WagonR. She always had positive experience when car was left for free services before. So, she didn't think twice before calling up service center for changing batteries. But I intervened and went the other way just to save money on the labour cost which would definitely be unnecessarily expensive.

Another thing everyone is blaming the owner is for not being present personally during servicing. Even I also never get time to be present in service center for my Etios.
Do anyone of us enter the kitchen everytime and check how the chef is cooking while eating out in a restaurant?

I was actually looking for a used Polo petrol car for my brother post lockdown. I knew about the horror stories of Skoda. So thought that petrol car might not spring too many surprises. Now, after hearing about the trouble the owner is facing once the car is out of warranty is good enough reason for me to look at some other options.

[GranvilleDsouza]

Addressing the sentiment of a few on the thread. While many may have different routes of how they deal with issues they face, let me be honest and say, not many go to the extent of dealing with their cars, in any other way. It's extremely subjective, based on personal knowledge, experiences, and comfort. I know many car owners who follow the same ritual they did, from day 1 of purchase.
Girlfriend's father whos (E350) goes to Kalina, Santacruz the moment anything arises (although service centers closer exist, it goes from Malad to Kalina) and he would have it no other way. Call them old-school or naive, he prefers it like that. Not many know the reality, or as I may say advantages to our wallets of going to a trusted/recommended FNG. Not to mention the time saved, on a case-to-case basis.

Yes, there's a handful of us who take the time out to be there, personally, when anything is being done or worked on. Be it a routine service, or a suspension change, no matter what, we'd be there.
No fancy or premium car, I own a humble Swift Dzire 2008 ZXI. But that's just me after one instance where the car was run 70kms when left at the garage. On confrontation, he drove it to Kurla to get parts for someone else's car, and attended to some personal work. But told me that honestly, which was appreciated. Since then, I never leave the car. How others get things is subjective.

That being said, here's an update on how things proceeded further, after the post on the forum.
A special thank you Samaspire for reaching out and GTO for the guidance.


Let’s start with positive developments on my car.
Skoda has, a matter of goodwill, agreed to foot the cost of the multi-clutch and mechatronics (if found faulty) - they will only charge me for labour as a matter of company policy (~INR 6,000-7,000). Over the weekend, a few senior representatives of Skoda (I will update the names once the car is back with me - objectively, I have detailed my ordeal so I must also acknowledge and detail the manner in which the higher-ups at Skoda have reacted to help me out).

In any case, a big shout out to all the people who gave their suggestions, comments, and constructive criticism (well-received, but will get to this shortly after). It was also heartening to see a few good samaritans reaching out to Granville directly sharing details of what they have tried to help me - for this I am very grateful.

Before I add to the timeline, I noticed that people have assigned equal blame to me for handling this situation/my car. While I will not shy away from taking this on the chin, here is my arm-chair perspective:

1. I am a single child (29 years) to my parents (65 years) - that makes me the only breadwinner in the house. Given the circumstances, a choice between a physical verification of the car (despite whatever was being reported) and staying home/safe (more for my folks) was a no brainer. That said, before the higher-ups at Skoda reached out over the weekend, the game plan was to get my car picked up today/tomorrow (Granville was coming with me - for reasons set out in point (4 & 5) below).
   
2. Those of you who live in Mumbai will recall that the week beginning 29 June was severely washed out due to rain, and will understand how tough it is getting Ubers/Olas/Rickshaws in Mumbai during rains (add to that the pandemic). Needless to add, my only vehicle was being nursed.
   
3. As mentioned previously, I am a lawyer by profession. I specialize in corporate law. If any commentator, his/her friend or relative is in this line of work, he/she will tell you that the average hour spent by a corporate lawyer on the laptop/calls is ~12-14 hours - I am no achiever but this profession takes no prisoners. As GTO rightly pointed out, every minute is planned and accounted for (including weekends). If I begin my day at 9 am, a good day for me is if I shut my laptop by 11 pm. With that life cycle, I am guilty if I have come across as negligent in handling this situation/my car.
   
4. The last factor, which possibly is as important (maybe a close second) as point (1) above, is that I did not have the benefit of experience/hindsight. This is my first car - in particular. I must also concede that I cannot drive a manual car (Granville calls me out to be a toy car driver). That is the level of my general comfort with cars (and all matters related to it). If this happened with any BHPian, a thread (like mine) would, in all likelihood, pop up in a matter of 2-3 days - cause a BHPian would most likely know how to go about handling this situation. I was afraid of getting confrontational because my car was in the service center. My ordeal started on 29 June 2020, and after all my attempts, and being out of sorts, I reached out to Granville - therefore, this thread was posted on 11 July 2020.
5. I got 3 instinctive reactions from Granville

   (i) I should not have given my car after the warranty expired, but handed it to a trusted garage - call me naive, this is the first time I heard this;
   (ii) to get my car picked up from the service center; and
   (iii) to ask for help/suggestions on Team-BHP from more experienced enthusiasts/people who have faced similar situations/problems with their vehicles (never even knew of this avenue (as you can see I am posting vicariously) - which has worked wonders for me). With this experience in my kitty, my reaction to any similar situation in the future will be different. This has been expensive/traumatizing education, but education nevertheless.

Hopefully, all commentators on this thread will understand why I did what I did - we will all agree that nobody wants to contribute to damaging their only (first) car. I should also concede that I live 5 km away from the service center. But, for the reasons stated above, I did not visit the service center for physical verification of my car.

On to the timeline:

11 July 2020:

Sometime in the evening, Nishant reached out to me (on-call) and mentioned that, as a matter of goodwill, Skoda will mostly likely cover the cost of the multi-clutch and mechatronics (if found faulty) - a formal approval from corporate (Skoda) in this regard was awaited. While this was a relief, I requested an email recording this understanding. To which, I was told that the service center was facing network connectivity issues and he would not be able to do so on 11 July 2020 (i.e. Saturday). This thread was posted by Granville around the same time as my conversation with Nishant - I believe Nishant did not have the benefit of reviewing this thread at that time. My assessment is that Skoda took cognizance of this thread sometime late Saturday (please see below).


12 July 2020:
The first call I got from Skoda was at 10:29 am (Nishant). I was sleeping and by the time I could respond I had missed the call. I returned the call immediately after. By this time the Skoda ecosystem had discovered this thread and Nishant was frantic (multiple requests to delete this thread). I simply brushed it off saying I was still awaiting an email confirmation and my friend was posting on my behalf on BHP. At 10:37 am, I got another call from a senior representative from Bengaluru (name to be disclosed in due course) who took notes and probably escalated my file. At 12:24 pm, I got another call from Nishant (along with his manager), and with this call, I got a promise to receive an email confirmation (from Nishant’s manager) to replace the multi-clutch and mechatronics (if found faulty) at Skoda’s cost - this email hit my inbox on at 4:14 pm. Per the email, I am being charged INR 33,000 (+ taxes) for brake pads, servicing, AC service and battery replacement (noteworthy, in my email to Nishant on 10 July I have categorically mentioned that I do not want the brake pad to be replaced - can be reproduced if required). In addition, I have a ballpark quotation of ~INR 6,000-7,000 for labour charges towards a replacement of multi-clutch and mechatronics (if found faulty).

Slightly before I got this email, I got a call from another senior representative (name also to be disclosed in due course) at 2:43 pm. Whether it was damage control or genuine care for the customer (a bit of both, maybe), this gentleman was the first person to inspire any confidence/hope that Skoda had noted my fortnight-long ordeal and was on to resolving issues quickly. I was assured that my car was being taken care of and would be with me as soon as all faulty parts were replaced, and necessary tests conducted. More importantly, for the first time in a fortnight, someone representing Skoda was apologetic about the experience I had gone through. On this call, it was confirmed that, as a matter of goodwill, Skoda would foot the cost of the multi-clutch and mechatronics (if found faulty) - except labour costs.

13 July 2020:
I am currently in touch with this gentleman to get updates and also with Nishant’s manager. I have been told that the relevant parts have been procured for my car, which should positively be back with me by Thursday. While my experience since yesterday has been in stark contrast to the fortnight preceding this weekend, I will conclude this thread and update everyone once my car is back with me - in addition to acknowledging the senior Skoda representatives who have stepped up and acted towards resolving my predicament, I will reserve another (irk worthy) observation for the next update (reserving it now so that it is not called out to be an after-thought when I post the next time).

Until then, thank you all for everything! I truly appreciate it.

[W.A.G.7]

Well, just recently I started viewing the YouTube videos on the new Skoda Rapid, I was really fascinated by the car offered at the 7.5L ex showroom price. And then this thread comes up again. It just goes on to show, that we are better off with other manufacturers apart from Skoda (and to an extent Volkswagen). Somehow every few weeks or months there is a new horror story. What gives? Why can't the company introspect and find out why it's going wrong and what is going wrong with the dealers? There will be many more cases out there, not everything would have come out of the closet.

Originally Posted by 07CR

Can you share something similar for Pune? I have a Ford Ecosport, and not sure where should I get it serviced at. There are 5 dealerships in Pune.

Off topic - Go to Dhone Ford. They have a good workshop. I have completed three servicing's for my Ecosport with them and I have had a good experience every time. Fix an appointment with them and get your Ecosport serviced there.
P.S: I don't have any contractual obligation with them, it's just that they are one of the better Ford workshops out there.

[GranvilleDsouza]

Originally Posted by W.A.G.7

Well, just recently I started viewing the YouTube videos on the new Skoda Rapid, I was really fascinated by the car offered at the 7.5L ex-showroom price.

I too was losing my mind on the new Skoda. Voted for it in another thread. With 12-years on the current car, a change has been on my mind (for the last 5 years but let's not get to that, was heartbroken when the S-Cross 1.6 became a dream instead of a reality)

In close to 12-years I've only had a suspension change and battery/tyre change with my Swift. Alternator seems to have given up in the lockdown, but I did things differently. Battery died while driving, drove without the AC or a Power Steering for around 5kms, then got a jump-start for Rs. 300/- and drove it back home where it's been kept since then, others may have done things differently.

We all know the fun-factor and quality involved in the Germans and offerings likewise, but when it comes to pinching holes in my wallet, and ease/peace of ownership, I know if the next is a Maruti, I yet again am most likely going to have a pleasant experience. In the end, it's between 'Mind over heart' and 'Heart over mind'. When it comes to factoring in 'the thrill we seek' it's never the mind that wins. Except, these won't be considered 'cheap thrills' and will cost us dearly.