[growlshant]

Context

Had a minor accident which caused dents in the front left fender and scratches on the bumper, left front door and left rear door.



I claimed insurance for this damage via Acko. Acko did a good job and approved front bumper replacement, fender replacement, a repaint of the left front door and a repaint of the left rear door. Those were the only part impacted by the accident.

The Nightmare

The car was at the service station (Elite Motors Bangalore) for about 30 days. I go to pick up the vehicle and see this massive scratch on my right rear door. I'm very confused thinking if I caused it. I quickly tell the manager about this and the manager says that I can see it now because it's washed(I saw it when it was still unwashed), kids might have done it.. etc. He said he'll have someone take a look at it. Apart from that, there was a tiny spot where the paint was chipped off at the corner of the panel right beside the bonnet and the front left fender. There were two small deep scratches on the bonnet too.




I wait for 1 hour and the manager calls me and is convinced that I did in fact bring in the car like that. He says I'm the first one to bring up this issue and they service 300 vehicles monthly and have no issues like this, he also says the workers here have been working here for over 20 years. Still adamant, I was sure that wasn't there earlier, so I pull up my Acko surveyor images from the app and sure enough, the scratch wasn't there. Not just in one picture but in multiple angles/pictures. The person is still denying that they would have caused the damage completely ignoring the proof that I just presented to them. Seeing me not budge, they bring random solutions to try to clean up the scratch, they got a paint guy to do touchups, but none of them restored the previous condition, in fact, now it looks ugly. I asked them to fix their mistake and left the service station.

Present Day

It's been 4 days since then. I've raised a customer complaint, it was escalated to the customer service head. One of the customer agents from the service centre had the audacity to ask me to pay for repaint and 'very nicely' offered a 10% discount on the paint job to fix the rear door.

He admitted to it being a human error at the service station but they don't have a clause to fix my car.


Requesting the forum here, What are my options here?

Thank you for your time!!

[ajmat]

Elite VW are upto their old tricks again!
My travails here (VW Downtown Bangalore take 60 days for a 2 day repair job)

[karanddd]

Sorry to hear of your ordeal. I do not have any suggestions other than escalating to someone higher up in the hierarchy. I do have one question however. The damage in the first picture seems fairly minor. Did the dealership ask for 30 days to do that job? That seems like a way higher downtime than I would think reasonable. Is that normal with VW?

I can share a similar experience with Royal Enfield. While picking my bike up after servicing, I noticed that one of the rear footrests was missing. I asked the service advisor. He seemed confused and suggested that it was probably broken before I even came. Now in my case there's definitely a possibility that it had indeed broken off before, and I only noticed then (which I also told them). But the manager there was very principled about it. He said that it was their job to have noticed that the footrest was missing, and alert me of the same and put that on the job card. As they had not done that, its falls upon them, so they replaced it for free.

Car companies ought to do the same. Is that not why they carefully inspect the car when it comes for service/repair, take pictures and alert you of whatever seems broken or faulty? If there's damage they did not notice or that wasn't there, it's on them.

[growlshant]

Originally Posted by karanddd

Did the dealership ask for 30 days to do that job? That seems like a way higher downtime than I would think reasonable. Is that normal with VW?

Initially, they asked for ~2 weeks. It went up to 30 days, they were claiming that parts were not immediately available.

Originally Posted by karanddd

But the manager there was very principled about it. He said that it was their job to have noticed that the footrest was missing, and alert me of the same and put that on the job card.

Your experience with Royal Enfield is stellar, that should be the standard that at the very least, premium car dealers meet. The repair cost wasn't cheap by any means, ran up the bill to ~45K.

[raktim]

Actually when you handover the car to the service guys, they made you sign a paper with details like jobs to be done, present level of fuel, battery serial number etc. In the same paper any existing scratch/dent is supposed to be noted by the service station guys.

As last option may just try to file a consumer complaint and you may find the VW guys settle it before letting it slip any further.

[kiredd1005]

It seems like some OEMs-Dealerships are not well equipped to handle mass market. My friend had the exact same ordeal with her 2017 VW Polo GT TSI. In 2021 March, she had a minor ding on the front left fender, front bumper and front left fog lamp, thanks to an idiotic biker who actually said " I was coming really fast and madam came off suddenly". I'm like, you're not supposed to be coming really fast in the first place. Long story short, we made him pay for damages and decided to send the car to VW Elite.

A known friend's friend works in the parts department at VW Elite and he assured the work would take maximum 3 days since it was just a cosmetic job. But boy we were so wrong in assuming they'd actually deliver in 3 days. Guess how many days did they take? 3 weeks!

The SA kept lying so blatantly and he had absolutely no regret. 10 days after we gave the car he actually said " Yes ma'am please come car is ready". My friend goes from Koramangala all the way to the Hosur road outlet with her dad only to find the car not ready AT ALL! The parts were not even fit and they were not even painted! Imagine her plight! She was like why did you say my car was ready. Our man SA says oh sorry ma'am I got confused with another customer.

She asked me to deal with this idiot ( If I remember correctly, his name is Ranjith). He seemed inexperienced/not trained properly and I have absolutely no idea how dealerships are thriving with this kind of manpower. I understand there's little one can do but the SAs care two hoots seems like. This went on for 2 weeks and finally I threatened them to drag them to a consumer court and finally the workshop manager intervened and begged me to give him a few more days to fix the car. He confessed that he's facing severe manpower issues hence the delays.

I asked why did they agree to take the car in the first place if they have manpower issues. I even told them that my friend works with the government and she absolutely needs to be mobile and her department had asked her not to take public transport (thanks to Covid) as precaution. She had to ask a friend to carpool for 3 weeks.

The worst was yet to come. I finally paid the bill and discovered to my horror the ac was rattling like a tin of old coins. When I switched off the ac the noise would stop. Finally I had enough of it and blasted the living daylights out of the workshop manager and the SA. They bring in an "experienced-senior" mechanic who said it was normal. I asked them to show it on another polo of the same vintage and they were caught lying yet again.

I had lost it completely by then, I had to shout at them and finally another guy comes and says they have not fitted the high pressure ac pipe boltand that's why there was rattling when the ac is powered on. So much for everything. I'm not even bothered to crib about the horn not working properly, but yeah. That happened too. What I failed to understand is that why did they fiddle with the right side of the car, that too with the ac parts when there was no damage on the right side. The damage was only on the left front side.

Having finally taken the car, I told her to look for a good independent workshop in Koramangala so she doesn't have to go through this nightmare again. I am actively scouting for a new workshop. Have finalised a few, Carsmith is the nearest and with the most satisfied customers. AutoMechs comes close but his infra is a no no for me. He maybe a decent chap but I am not comfortable working on cars in the open.