[Karthik.thm]

Originally Posted by Rigid Rotor

Come on, let’s be fair - how exactly did the SA mislead your friend? The SA missed out on a (non-essential) customer specified activity and also did not confirm with him before skipping it. That’s just being sloppy at work. Unless you left out something in your narrative which otherwise did happen.

Of course it’s each to his own opinion. As I said earlier, my experience with Kia Epitome is diametrically different. However, I do make it a point to clearly lay down my expectations to the SA and put down in writing the additional activities required. I also check during vehicle acceptance..

As you rightly pointed out SA missed out non essential work which we insisted. Fine, no problem. But the excuse they gave for missing it is lame (changing engine oil frequently may damage in long run). So my less informed (about cars) friend will obviously had to agree to him and leave the service centre.

While purchasing the car, we were not allowed to chose external insurance nor they match the price, cannot wave off the handling charges. Dealer was not even ready to talk even when we showed the email from kia that we can chose our own insurance. Dealer was giving all kinds of excuses like, since the sonet is brand new model we have tailored insurance for it. If you chose other insurance we may not honor it. Words like these is enough for less informed crowd to blindly accept the dealer deal.

I'm glad that you experience was and is good with the service centre but ours not.

[cityslicker86]

I've read most (but not all) of the posts here. Complains point to shoddy service quality, lies/half-truths, indifference, unnecessary jobs being done (e.g. wheel alignment) etc on part of KIA service staff. Not to forget the sheer stress on customers minds when the realisation sets in that their cars have advanced and complex electronics being handled by second-class technicians.

This is typical of Indian companies, and is largely reflective of Indian customer behaviour in a way. Its because a car (for that matter any product) sells based on feature or functionality attractiveness at competitive price and not customer experience. It doesn't matter if a bunch of customers get taken for a ride and get dumped afterwards, the next bunch wont care or is not informed of it and still wants that product because its a killer product at killer price. This is particularly true for products with long lifecycles (automobiles, phones (2-3 years), furniture, home appliances) etc. With A.S.S of these products the understanding is - If the product is complex (cars) they will come to the service centre regardless of experience, else they lose their warranty. If the product is not (e.g. scooters) they will not come to us anyway and go to an FNG instead, warranty not withstanding. Bottom line - No impact on new customer acquisition!

Until we collectively star valuing customer experience of frills and features, we will continue to go through this. Trust me, Maruti is no different. Its just slightly better. My car is never properly cleaned (I've been to multiple A.S.S centres) and I am never sure if the oil has been changed or not. Last time, I was charged for fixing the rat-chewed wiring of an indicator lamp, and the problem came back even before I reached home after picking up the car. I shouldn't have to escalate, but I have to. At least in Maruti I can escalate and get the matter addressed, elsewhere maybe not.

I have learnt the following lessons:

Indian A.S.S staff population is not ready for advanced electronics, esp complex stuff like DCTs, Telematics, Sunroofs, multiple suspension settings, drive modes. etc. If something malfunctions, visit a shrine and pray on the way to visiting the A.S.S.

Keep service expectation low. Be friends with the service advisor of a company that knows how to tighten the screws of A.S.S guys (a.k.a Maruti, Hero Moto etc.)

Indian consumer protections laws are a joke in reality (if not on paper). If the seller cheated you either directly (Skoda chaps) or discretely (like VW diesel gate) you can count look at the bright side and cherish the small joys while they lasted

Some principles I follow:

• Don't buy from new market players (e.g. Kia, MG)
• Don't buy from non-Top 3-4 players
• Don't buy from Tata, Mahindra even if they are in Top 3-4. (Sorry, no offence meant to Tata Mahindra owners. I just don't trust these brands yet)
• Don't buy from Skoda (and by extension VW). Again no offence meant to anyone. I don't trust these brands and wont own their cars even if one was given to me for free.
• Don't buy new 'killer' vehicles that are a runaway hit (e.g Magnite, Kiger, Seltos, Sonet, Hector) or an astonishing piece of work (e.g Harrier, Thar) that are unproven in the market and/or are from un-established / un-successful OEMs. Either the product or the service or both suck
• Don't buy variants with excessive electronics (the ZXi/Omega/Titanium/Vibranium/Adamantium O++ types) esp. in higher priced cars

So that's pretty much every car eh? Haha, not really. My principle is,

• Buy relatively simple variants of established (high sales, not recently launched) models from established brands (Maruti, Hyundai, Honda, Toyota and to some extent Ford (Ecosport).
• Buy based on functional and not emotional needs and avoid gizmos. (I personally don't care for touch screens. My smartphone, android auto app and mobile phone holder does the job). Power steering, power windows, bluetooth ICE and steering mounted controls are enough. If its going to be an automatic transmission, I prefer Torque converter or CVT at best. AMT if its reliable and tested like in Celerio (not great though, but does the job).
• Take note of Territory Service Manager. If something smells fishy, call and check. I personally call the TSM before I visit so that he calls the A.S.S ahead of my visit and informs them of my arrival. This works only with Maruti I guess. not sure about other brands.
• Stick to the A.S.S for every service. I avoid FNGs because if the A.S.S cant handle modern cars, most probably FNG cant either. Plus, I cant escalate there.
• Avoid using car for everything or wherever possible. I still take 2W/Auto/Metro/Local wherever I can. It keeps my car usage low and dependence on it less.
• Be mentally prepared to be only 75% satisfied with service.

Sorry for the long post. But the above has ensure that I have a relative peace of mind and limited ownership costs. Of course, I have trampled over my 'emotional indulgence' in the process and that may not suit everyone.

Until times change and the Indian customers at large star valuing customer experience over product features, consumer laws strengthen in letter and spirit and A.S.S technicians get upskilled, I am going to go with the above approach.

[Rigid Rotor]

Originally Posted by Karthik.thm

...the excuse they gave for missing it is lame (changing engine oil frequently may damage in long run). So my less informed (about cars) friend will obviously had to agree to him and leave the service centre.

While purchasing the car, we were not allowed to chose external insurance nor they match the price, cannot wave off the handling charges. Dealer was not even ready to talk even when we showed the email from kia that we can chose our own insurance. Dealer was giving all kinds of excuses like, since the sonet is brand new model we have tailored insurance for it. If you chose other insurance we may not honor it. Words like these is enough for less informed crowd to blindly accept the dealer deal....

I agree that the SA is both sloppy and perhaps an easy bluffer. I, as the customer can (as an extreme example), bring in the vehicle every month of the year to change the engine oil as an additional paid activity and the workshop will need to agree. No harm in that. I do not believe the SA can skip a customer-specified activity. His given excuse appears to be an attempt to wriggle out of the commitment. This definitely needs to be taken up firmly, as an escalatory action in writing. The chap also perhaps appears to be garnering your sympathy by showing how over-worked he appears to be.

The sale points you raised are indeed serious. I did not pay any handling charges. I was also allowed to take insurance from any agency I chose. May I suggest the following:

a) Escalate to Kia that the agency forced you to pay handling charges (with proof of payment), which is illegal.

b) Since you have been denied the option of choosing your preferred insurance agency, it is worthwhile escalating the matter to the Ombudsman of IRDA, if you have any e-mails or records to back your claim. In my case, I had ensured emails followed after every discussion and agreement. In any case, Kia Epitome seem to be a far better bunch – they had already verbally agreed and were relaxed on insurance, accessories or whatever (or nothing) and were very good in their follow-up.

[bhansali_hardik]

I have been one of the first few buyers of the KIA sonet and the buying experience was absolutely pathetic at the best, I had walked away from the car and many people here on this forum suggested me not to walk away from a good car because of a bad dealer. This was very true, I’ve had absolute amazing time with car and have been a blast. All the saga is in the sonet’s thread including the bonnet being destroyed by coconut in Goa was taken care at the KIA ASS.

The dealers are shoddy, not just KIA but all the dealers I have dealt with are. (Ex even smaller purchases such as TVS for narrow, Bajaj for Dominar ) the Indian consumers are way too awe struck while buying a new purchase compounded with lack of knowledge make the dealers literal GOD and I have seen my friends who do not want to even fight it out and rather throw away few thousands for ‘peace of mind’.

Coming back to the service centre and the way they operate. I’ve found them to be good and have not had a major issue. The car was bought from a dealer which was far away from my place, but the SC I go to is Nara which is next to my place and told them will be sticking to them from the First service even though I did not buy from them and they obviously were ok with it.

The services were all normal the service advisor did help me out through out the process. The coconut on the bonnet incident was a big bill, I had not taken the insurance from the dealer (wouldn’t matter as the dealer I bought from was JSP) yet the service advisor did take up the process and got the job done. I paid the bare minimum as per the policy. The restoration of bonnet and repainting was also done in a good timely fashion. The finesse was as expected, was we paid big moolahs for it.

There are vibrations in my car due to bass of the music system and that is still a mystery which they could not solve. They did open the door, add some padding using the double side tape and subside the vibrations.
The wireless apple car play keeps dying on me and the SA was invested in checking it out but could not find a fix. The latest patch was done for my car, but maybe the apple car play has a glitch? Not sure!
If I consider the service centre’s ability to solve issues I would give them 0 for these 2 incidents that I faced. But at least they tried and did invest time in it.

All in all since I have not faced any major issues my experience has been pretty good. I would not rate them BAD! But they do have lack of knowledge, overwhelmed with the volumes and made to cover it up by offering coffee and water bottles! They will only get worse if they do not scale up equivalent to the volumes that they move.

PS : The Maruti ASS which our family has been visiting since more than a decade speaks for itself. The steering column of our Brezza had issues and was replaced after 4 years, when it went for a service and the service advisor found the issue for us. There are so many things that other companies should certainly learn from MSIL.

[rahulvv]

I got my Seltos delivery in June 2021 from Kia Panvel which is about 75Kms from my place in Goregaon since the dealer got me the car in just 2 weeks

Within a month of my getting the new car, Kia announced a service camp with some 35 point check. I though to use this opportunity to checkout the Powai service centre which is much closer to my place and get to know the SA/SM etc..

This is where the horrendous experience began
- No one was aware of what service camp was supposed to be nor did they have a list of different checks to be done as part of Summer Camp
- The car was parked outside the service station for about 90 mins and when it was being taken to the service bay, I went to spares store to check out accessories
- Since the store was inside the service area, I could see work done on my car - Saw my car being driven in, kept there unattended for 10 mins, then taken out for cleaning without a single soul even looking at the car
- After the wash, I was told that they have completed the service camp, "Comprehensive Check" and everything is perfect

I let the senior SA and SM know about my observation and they got extremely defensive. The SM in fact got furious at the SA for allowing me to go the store in service bay. He told me - sir that's why we don't allow customers in service bay area !!!

I asked him to check the CCTV footage of the service bay area to confirm if anything was checked in the car at all - his response was " Sir we have CCTVs, but they aren't plugged in !!!"


Absolutely useless and unprofessional


Did some digging up and found that this is the same service centre used by Kavish Ford earlier (same Autobahn promoter); and was infamous for this very same reason. They don't do anything in the name of service, only clean the car and return it !

[Senpran]

Such experience is common with both Hyundai and Kia, may be with most of the other dealers too. However,I think Korean twins and their dealerships must be making good money looking at their sales figure. They must do better.
It is also true that most of the service advisors do not listen to the car owners when you drop the car for service. They think that the customers are non-technical and don't know about their cars and technical stuff.
I specifically tell them not to clean the interior of the car with an assurance from me to give full feedback rating for cleanliness. Still they don't listen and communicate down the line. End of the day you will have an oil dripping steering.

Upon my recent horrendous experience with a company owned Hyundai outlet and dealership in Chennai, I have developed a special love on struggling manufactures and dealers.

When I was buying my Creta which was selling 12K+ units a month, they did not have the variant of my choice (the engine + gear box ) to test drive. Not the exact variant based on features list.
My brand new car was with service station 26 days out of 45 days of ownership. I was not even given a loaner car during this period. Such bad experience can be tolerated if I had bought a low selling CKD car from a struggling manufacturer.
This experience has changed my view on these so called strong ASS bias towards Korean twins. I have decided to change my approach on future purchases.
We have owned two dusters in our close circle and both of them had the following failed collectively within the extended warranty period.
ECM-1no
NAV display-1 no
Fuel injectors-4no
Instruments cluster-1no
I have come to know that every single duster sold was making loss as per the media report recently. But no questions asked by the dealer or company just replaced by the dealer Khivraj Pearl, Chennai.
It is really sad that Kia dealer trying to find a reason for rejecting the warranty claim. If they are genuinely bothered about customer they should replace the unit immediately on warranty,do a thorough investigation on how water would have entered the console and fix it.

[amolpednekar]

This is very concerning as a soon to be Kia customer! I've had an i20 for about 6 years now without any bad ASS experiences; so getting a Kia felt like a no-brainer as I expect something similar.

The other concern I now have is there is a single Kia dealer in the entire state (Goa) at the moment, so I have nowhere else to go if they turn out to be bad. Looks like I need to try getting it touch with their other customers/people serivicing their cars the next time I visit the showroom and get some first-hand opinions.

Now that this has its own separate thread on T-BHP, I hope this gains a more attention and things are done to bring the service back to a satisfactory level. Similiar issues were raised around Kia's DCT problems on this forum initially, but seem to have almost died down due to amount of attention received (via software updates), so hopefully it will be the same in this case.

[noopster]

As a relatively new Kia owner, I came to this thread dreading what I would find. After wading through pages accusing Kia dealers of being "horrible", "greedy", "dodgy", "arrogant", "fraud" and even "thugs", I confess am none the wiser.

A couple of people are complaining that they needed to wait 2 hours to get a TD at the showroom. Walk-in traffic for *any* brand is pretty high these days and the way out of it seems to be to book a TD in advance. I did it multiple times for 3-4 brands including Kia at the peak of the pandemic and we managed just fine.

Regarding service, someone was talking about ASS not changing oil during the second free service. The second free service is actually the 6 month/5000 km one which actually includes a check-up of all fluids with top-up/replacement only as needed. Perhaps that's why the service station didn't do it?

This however was the most confusing post of the lot:

Originally Posted by SedanGuy

I follow this guy called Tyler Hoover on Youtube and he used to be a used car dealer and now has an impressive fleet of exotic cars thanks to Youtube. He describes Month of July as the month of Carmageddon just because of the volume of failures he faces during this time of the year with his personal fleet and from his dealership days.

Looking at the failures on T-BHP, I would says it has been no less than Carmageddon here as well. Just a few posts that I have been following:
1. My own car - Rapid ECU failure - (link (Help needed | Rat damage to my car & ECM damaged | Insurance company blames dealership))
2. Ford Ikon (ant problem (Ants attack my Ford Ikon))
3. Scross (clutch issue (Clutch pedal sinking))
4. Renault Kiger (battery Issue (Brand new Renault Kiger | Battery dead in 2 days | Battery drain problem))
5. Polo (ASS problems (VW Polo's air filter box assembled wrongly after service))

These are just a few i could find, I am sure there are more. But this post is definitely not a surprise. With a sea of Sonets and Seltos everywhere I see, this was eventually going to happen. I hope Op's issue is resolved soon. If not, the traction from this post will definitely help you strong arm the dealership. That was the way I was able to reach a settlement as well. All the best.

None of the cars you have referenced are Kias. What exactly is the point you are making?

Finally, this...

Originally Posted by speedfreak77

When I got my Seltos on 31 December 2020, It ran trouble-free for only 10 days when on 9 January the screen went blank like what happened to your car. They blamed it on the illuminated doorstep lights which I got put on from outside. However, they used this pin and reset the infotainment and it worked again. Eventually, it kept happening for a month until I got so pissed off and decided to get all the extra mods off the car and now it works fine.

(emphasis added by me)
Ummm...so they were right. One of the aftermarket mods you had added to the car was causing the issue. How is Kia ASS to blame for that?


My humble advice to potential car buyers- do your own homework. Dealers differ: some are good, others are terrible, most are in between. My own experience has been OK: Kia delivers a professional yet impersonal service experience that seems to be the norm these days. Also both dealer and company call you afterwards for detailed feedback and anything less than 9/10 is treated extremely seriously (this is also the norm these days).

After all, Kia has sold 3 lakh cars in India already and if the ownership experience were really that terrible surely there would be more noise on this in the age of social media. Am not defending them or even advocating for them, but the basis of all the noise on this thread seems a little shaky to me.

[SedanGuy]

Originally Posted by noopster

None of the cars you have referenced are Kias. What exactly is the point you are making?

I am sorry if that post offended you. I agree my post was off topic. I was just pointing out that the month of July has not been kind to TBHP cars. Just an observation .

[BleueNinja]

I recently was in the market to buy a car for myself which would have been an upgrade to my Polo. I desperately wanted to buy a Kia seltos Gtx black, yes I know it's dismissive safety rating and all the dct horror stories and despite my wife voting the seltos out I manned up to go against the home ministry and have a look at the seltos.
The SAs attitude was so dismissive as if he was pestered by my presence. I ignored it and decided to have a look , I was nonchalantly informed that waiting period is 12 weeks. I was okay with that , what I wasn't okay with was what came next :

I asked the SA what kind of gearbox does seltos have , the SA gave me a look , followed by a smirk then said "what saar seltos has no gearbox it's automatic, accelerator and brakes are enough"
I promptly walked out.

Visited Skoda and Honda next , I must say these two know how to attend a customer , they offered me test drive as per my requirement and satisfaction and answered all the queries. Ended up fulfilling a childhood aspiration of buying a Honda city. Couldn't be happier with my decision plus home ministry is elated with new ride as well!

[em17]

Sorry, have been really busy to get back to this thread and reply to fellow members who’ve unfortunately also gone through similar experiences at Kia.
So after the SA called up to inform about water damage , I wrote an email to KIA asking about how that could be possible and are your dashboards so loosely fitted , or how could The AVNT have stopped a day before and post almost 48 hours there still is water inside the dash on top of AVNT and in the PCB?? Specially considering it’s Delhi Summers and it gets quite hot anything qould dry up, considering water did spill on the dash(God knows who did that and from where it happened, not in my sight/knowing)
The best KIA could do is arrange a call with the Service station manager who said the only thing they could offer is get it repaired at the OEM of the unit located at Chennai, and would take 10/12 days.
A fellow Bhp-ian sent out Mr. Brar’s email ID to whom I explained the ordeal, he replied back, apologised and wrote a one liner saying someone from KIA would get back to me; appreciated! But guess who called - The Same Manager saying- Sir we’ve done this as a gesture to you, and that’s the only solution we can provide, and I need to close your complaint as a resolution from our end has been provided!! They sent out a mail saying the issue is closed - AVNT sent for repairs to Chennai, Turn around Time as discussed- 10-12 days. You may take the car without the AVNT unit and we could mask the dashboard with some tape!!

I agree that Kia has been doing excellent sales numbers but I’d totally advise anyone going for the brand to please read about their After Sales Horror stories online! I’ve owned Skoda , Honda and Ford cars in the past and trust me , After sales was much better than what KIA’s been upto! Hoping to get my car back soon!

[Aconite]

It has been quite some time since the last post in this thread. How have people's recent buying and service experiences been?

I also noticed, it is now being displayed in kia dealerships that the customer is free to avail insurance from anywhere, and that customer be specified exact waiting times (no early promises and chrome linings by the dealership). So it seems they have taken cognizance of some issues and rectified them. Could just have been initial niggles and unexpected support loads.

However the silence from kia for the customers is concerning.

@em17, what was your experience afterwards? Did you still have to bang your head against the dealership walls after personal escalation to kia management? (I presume Mr Brar in your post is in kia management)

Lastly, can anyone review ASB Kia?