[androdev]

Fellow Skoda Owners,

Plenty of unhappy experiences with TAFE Bangalore have been reported. Please share your experiences with Vinayaka Motors Bangalore here.

Thanks
Androdev

[anandrs]

Can't say much from the service point of view. But I am in the process of negotiating a Octavia purchase from them. Have to say that the people are poorly trained and lack even the basic knowledge about the car. For example, none of them could explain the headlamp switch fully.

[bikram]

Even I have to find out more about Vinayaka....since TAFE, Bangalore folks are absolutely horrible. They don't know anything about cars as well, and the service center location off of Hosur Rd is awful. The guy named Sandy who did my Oil change last time....became a floor supervisor now and most of the earlier folks left including the workshop manager. The new manager seems to have come from TVS Coimbatore and he seemed to be clueless. I had a terrible experience when I went for a paid service two days back. First of all the service advisor did not even ask me what kind of oil I would like to put e.g. mineral or synthetic. There was no coordination between them....and the worse was, I had to keep pastering them for running the diagonstic, which sure should have been a part of the service checklist itself. After the wash, when I took the car back, I could see smudge some places inside the car.....there is mud stains on the driver's side seat cover etc. etc. By the time I took the car, it was their lunch time...and since I was in a hurry I left the place. My point is, they are not doing any favor anyway, and the only thing they do during the service is just the oil change. Most of the technicians are so rough with the car and they don't give a damm! I seriously feel that Skoda is going to loose more customers if this trend continues....with such kind of dealership. The other day I read somewhere that one Bangalorean went and bought an Accord hearing all the horor stories of TAFE, Bangalore....even though he seriously was considering a Skoda.

[anandrs]

Just spoke to a person who had serviced his car in Vinayaka (earlier on with TAFE). He says that Vinayaka service is "beautiful". Tafe was bull...t.
He is very happy with their service. No issues, no cribs. no attitude. They picked up the car from his house and dropped it back on time. Good news for Bangalore

[androdev]

i also hate the location of TAFE service center - unbelievable location. i think TAFE is one of those old-fashioned companies that want to get maximum profit with minimum investment.

it will be great if we can hear some more 'positive' experiences from Vinayaka motors.

[Prithvi]

I was travelling to Ooty and hence wanted to just get my coolant and oils checked. Fixed an appointment with Vinayaka for saturday morning at 9am. Was there at that time and was immediately attended to by Mr. Santhosh, service advisor.

Told what was to be done. Filled the job card and they immediately took the car in and did the needful to my satisfaction. Also requested him to show me the entire workshop and he openly showed me the service bays, painting bays and also the spare parts division, huge painting booth and other areas.

Vinayaka had a beautiful reception and customer area and also so much more friendly than TAFE. Better location. He also mentioned they only take 15 cards per day. They have a pickup and drop too. Sure am giving my car for service there from now, on. No attitude at all. Very friendly. Thank god Vinayaka (Ganapathi) has come to the Skoda owners.

[anandrs]

Bought my Octavia from Vinayaka last week. My observations:

Attitude: Overall very positive. Right mix of assertion and politeness. Quite warm and very friendly to customers (as opposed to Tafe).

Car Awareness: I would not say zero but its pretty close. The sales guys were new (though thats no excuse) and did not know much about the car. Even some very basic features like "unlocking the door from inside the car".

There weren't many accessories on display. They were also not interested in marketing them.

Discounts: To me atleast, they did seem to be a little money minded. I did get a discount from them but die to that they did not give me number plates for the car . When asked they said that since I had got a big discount, they had not included the number plates. I finally got one done outside.

Process: Very sloppy. It all reflects that the staff are new and know sh.. about the process of buying a car. They visited me on 4 seperate occasions to collect documents. Kept forgetting something or other. Very sloppy work and again this could be staff dependent. Then again I did not see many marketing/sales guys in this showroom. As it is the showroom and service areas are small. Sometimes, in order to cover up their shortfalls they used to bluff. But even that was not done well and they would get caught in the act.


Service - Yet to find out. My car, after a trip to ooty, has developed small rattles. Need to get it checked. By the way the computer in the car indicates 1500 km to first service while the service booklet mentioned 7500. I don't know which one to believe. Any idea ?

[vkiran_2000]

Hi all,

I got a Laura ambiente from TAFE 3 weeks ago. MY experiences have been good (touchwood) till now. Maybe vinayak is giving them a wake up call !

The sales guys were very courteous and knew the cars well. They sent over a car for Test drive to my home and I took it all the way to NICE expressway to compare it with a Accord on the same road. They didnt send an Ambiente though! but a L&K. The paperwork was not complicated at all and I got the car in good shape. The reg plates came in a week later as they said the RTO was backed up with new cars. Most of the sales guys were not pushy to sell the car but patiently explained stuff. I noticed that they were the same with another visitor who said he was "only looking".

I did get a good discount after haggling unlike vinayaka who just refused any. The lady in Vinayak hardly knew the car, espcially the Ambiente.

[anandrs]

My experience with Vinayaka on the flip side.

Day 1 - Ran through the car papers/docs and after an hour long check, took delivery of my skoda. On delivery, vinayaka did not give me a number plate for the car. The reason cited was that their discount was high. So no number plate. I mean, common, a plate costs RS 200 ?? How stingy can they be ?

Week end trip 1: Took the car for a long drive. Went to mysore, masinagudi, ooty. Noticed atleast 4 places where a rattling noise popped up. Also, there was a wind whistling noise consistently coming from the front left corner of the cabin (kind of from behind the dash) once the car crossed 90 kmph. The noise increased in pitch (like a milk cooker on boil but not that noisy) till it flattened out at 130 - 140 kmph. At lower speed, there was screeching noise coming from the brakes.

Post week end trip: Promptly called up vinayaka, related my woes to them and they assured me that they will fix every thing. Satish was the service advisor and he was pretty useless in his service. The car came back 2 days later. Their explanation was as follows.
1. Wind whistle - Caused because of the amp power cable (for the audio system).
2. Brake squeal - Caused due to dirty brakes (Q -> what is a clean brake ?)

3. Rattles - Fixed.

So took delivery of the car and realized a day later that not a single problem was fixed. The rattles came, the whistle came and the brakes squealed.

So decided to pay a personal visit to them. Spent half a day and about 60 kms of trial high speed test runs in the devanahalli road to check out the whistle. Their technicians tried their best !! (or whatever effort it was) but could not solve the problem.

So the car went back to them for 2 days. At the end they could not solve the problem. The brake squeal, though it has reduced a little, is still there and does sound at times.

Week end trip 2: Went to nagarhole. Noticed that there is a bad bad brake shudder whenever I slow down the car from 130+ speeds.

This got me worried again and I spoke to the Gm of vinayaka service. He initially replied that such behaviour is consistent with vehicles fitted with 16/17 inch alloys and lower profiles. He has had many such customer complaints. I pointed out that mine was a 15 inch skoda stock alloy that came with the car. He then told that he will have a look.


So here it stands. Tomorrow my car goes for brake check. I have given up hope that they will find the whistle problem. As for rattles, on every trip , a new one crops up.

What I found:
Vinayaka blames mods for even the basic of problems. They dont look further. They are not focussed on solving the issue. They are more focussed on washing their hands off the issue.
The service GM might know the car technically but the service advisors need to buck up a little. The one I had Satish was pathetic.
Their sales people dont know anything about the skoda.

But they have great attitude. Attitude, I guess, counts to nothing if stuff is not there.


All said and done, I love my car and it really pains me to see the car in such a state. Just want her to be perfect and these idiots in Vinayaka don't understand that. And yeah, I also heard that TAFE is getting better.

If someone though TAFE is located oddly, try going to the KR puram service center of Vinayaka's !!

[anandrs]

Ok. So the car went for servicing today and she is back. During the course of today, I was in constant touch with the GM Praveen. He told me that he will look into and resolve all the issues. I had 4 issues to be resolved today.
1. Brake squealing
2. Rattling noise inside the cabin.
3. Wiper water spray not working
4. Brake shudder at high speeds.

Prior to sending the car, the GM called me up and told me that he had checked everything and all was ok. And after spending a whole day looking at the car, guess what ?? Only ONE problem - wiper water spray - is resolved. All the other problems are still there.

Looks like I need to get a civic.

[androdev]

Anand,

It is same with almost all the service centers. Except for routine/known problems they don't show interest in "investigating" and solving problems. IMHO, they are not open-minded/smart enough to investigate also and they believe the customer is seeing ghosts :-)

1. Are u sure the high-speed brake shudder is not ABS pulse, which is a normal behavior of ABS.

2. Rattling noise inside cabin:
Are you running with the recommended tire pressure? My car was delivered at 45 psi, and there were few rattling sounds inside the cabin. Lowering the pressure to 32ish has helped immensely.
Drive without any loose items (coins, keys, etc.) in the center arm rest or similar storage areas.
I still had a rattle coming from the passenger glove box area which I fixed it myself but I spent a lot of time investigating to find the source of the rattle. I drove the car for a couple of days without the glove box and there was no rattle. The noise was because of creaking contact between glove-box light switch lever (you have to take off the glove-box to access it).

Try not to give your vehicle to the garage too often. They handle with the least amount of care or respect for your car.


Good luck.

[anandrs]

Thx androdev. The high speed shudder is not ABS pulse. The shudder comes only when the brakes are applied gently. When you push the brake pedal all the way down, the shudder is absent. SKoda guys had recalibrated the brake distribution and had tightened the steering wheel as well. But it did not help.

I keep the tyre pressure at 32 for the yoko es 100s. I am not able to pin point the exact source of the noise. Or else I would have fixed it. Need to spend so more time on the car this week end. Other than these issues, the car is very very reliable and fantastic to drive. Just came back from a trip to Chennai and the drive was sheer pleasure.

I would prefer to get the car checked by some one more knowledgeable but since its under warranty right now, I am refraining from doing that.

[Vid6639]

The brake shudder could be due to a warped brake disc. You have 2 options in this case, one is to replace the disc altogether, and the other is to get it faced on a lathe.

They check for warping using a measurement tool by turning the disc on the lift. the needle of the tool is just touching the disc. As the disc is rotated the needle which is attached to gauge shows how level the disc is and whether it is warped.

[androdev]

i had a bad experience with TAFE body shop when they did a small paint job on my car. plan to take it to vinayaka for rework. any past experiences with their body shop? thanks.

anandrs, any luck with your problems you mentioned above?

[jack33]

hi ,
the brake shudder is becoz of the uneven brake rotor,,replace or get it faced in a lathe

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