[ported_head]

Originally Posted by DHABHAR.BEHRAM

The presentationwallahs will never understand all this and the big guys never leave conference rooms. I can only pity them, poor fellows, they cannot do anything else except make fancy presentations.

Kabhi kaam kiya hoga to samjhega naa!

But, Mr. Dhabhar, such prevails. Do you think it is justified to make mechanics work for often 1/3rd of what the service advisors get paid? SAs are now nothing more than salesmen, trying to sell maximum jobs for the car, and no real service advising. Though, some exceptions exist. How will people get quality workmanship, if there is no incentive for people to learn to be mechanics properly?

Though, current practices are trying to ensure making the necessity for quality workmanship redundant, often limited to only being able to swap parts.

[kavesh55]

Originally Posted by DHABHAR.BEHRAM

The presentationwallahs will never understand all this and the big guys never leave conference rooms. I can only pity them, poor fellows, they cannot do anything else except make fancy presentations.

Kabhi kaam kiya hoga to samjhega naa!

Best regards,

Behram Dhabhar

Dear Behram- I understand what you are saying, but its a feeling that moving from field to making ppts is a logical progression. Why do you think otherwise engineering people go to take fancy mba's ? To make ppt I guess , atleast thats what it seems. Not to mention advertising folks.

Years ago, there was a program on BBC on which CEOs were put in the role of the lowest rung executive, all were put through it, Adi Godrej, Mukesh Ambani, Uday Kotak, etc.They discovered and admitted that some processes that affect the customer should be changed.

My rural mktg professor was telling us today that even 10th std kids now make ppts.

[IndrojitSircar]

Originally Posted by rideon

Setuniket,

Try the Sector-63 center of Motorcraft. The Service Advisors and the mechanics are pretty well versed with the cars they service. I have a Zen and have been going to them for quite sometime with no complaints. They are pretty upfront on things they can do for you within the stipulated time. I can't say the same for Vipul though.

Originally Posted by TarCruiser

@Setu, Thanks for updating us on Carnation Sec 63 episode. Well I reside and work in nearby area Indrapuram/Sec63 and was thinking of visiting them, but now will be very cautious. Well as requested long back, I can recommend Motorcarft Sec 63. My Alto (2004 to 2008, 60K, Sold) and present Sx4 (2007, 29K) were/are serviced here and I am on the happier side.

I would completely disagree with you about motorcraft sector 63 noida.I bought my new swift LDI in june and in august it was due for its first service.The car was bought fropm vipul noida and a lot of accesories like the footmats,mudflaps,steering wheel cover,wheel cover etc were gievn free with the car.I toook the car to motocraft for the first service and i would say all the supervisor was well behaved but the mechanics are a bunch of guys who think that they are the cats wiskers.The car was parked at the back were they normal line them up and i made the payment and i asked theym to get it out.A guys who cleans the car started getting it out and i was sitting with him in the car and the way he was drivng was just not acceptable.The clutch was left suddenly and he started burning rubber of the tyre i asked him to be careful so he didn;t say anything.Then there was another guys who was there and this guy in the car asked him to move a baleno in front and he asked the guy in my car to get out and do it himself the moment the guy got of the other one got into the car put on the A/c and started fiddling with the music system.He behaved as if he owned the car.Then i asked him why he put on the A/c and the music system so he told me mujhe jo karna hai mei karungfa app ko kya.So i immediately got of and told him to get out of my car and then i went to the customer care manager and a women came out and then needless to say the bugger had disappeard.They had left oil marks all over the car with theuir finger prints.I showed it to her and she said that"i'll give you to free service coupons"I was disgusted and just told her that she could shuve them up for all i care and i went of.They are really poor i must say.

[xingamazon]

Thanks for feedback. Though I did not see any carnation in Chennai, I was trying to follow up as to how this new venture of Mr Khattar (of whom I am personally a fan) was heading to.
Looks like not much headway into the service sector. But as mentioned by Porter_head they have few limitations cant expect them to deliver as thier primary service providers. My guess is they should concentrate on non-core(Non-Maruti, non-Hyundai and non-Tatas) manufacturers especially in Tier II towns. This is mainly because the core manufacturers have satisfied customer, and its difficult to better them.
Guess tier II, "non-high volume manufacturer" market is one they can tap better.
Anyway will wait for more reviews to firm up an opinon.

[DHABHAR.BEHRAM]

Dear Ported Head - you are correct, the guys who actually work get paid a pittance. The whole business model is flawed. Read carefully - everybody actually believes that actually doing anything to the car to make it better in any way is considered a menial task for which there are the so called guys who will do "something". We are business developers and we will only do presentations. Well, it does not work that way. Paying customers couldn't care less what presentation who makes to whom. His car must work properly, that's all.

This has catalyzed my thinking. I have a model in my head for a very long time. It will minimize (not eliminate) these shortcomings and also make business sense. I hope the "powers that be" are reading this and that their brains will also get similarly catalyzed..

Best regards,

Behram Dhabhar

[kavesh55]

Originally Posted by DHABHAR.BEHRAM

[b][u]

This has catalyzed my thinking. I have a model in my head for a very long time. It will minimize (not eliminate) these shortcomings and also make business sense. I hope the "powers that be" are reading this and that their brains will also get similarly catalyzed..

Best regards,

Behram Dhabhar

Dont know about others but pls share. Would like to know & like to see passion meeting profession.

[setuniket]

Another update after quite some time, My car was in serious need of proper service with so many issues and problems meant that I have to take it to proper place to sort all issues. The problems include Starting, improper timing, hard and noisy gear shift, noisy differential, strong fuel smell(I just got 16.xx kmpl tankful to tankful), alignment, leaky brake cylinder and many more issues.

I decided to give Carnation another chance(I actually couldn't find any other place ), called and booked a service appointment, reached early sunday morning, the service advisor drove the out and identified every problem that the car had and very clearly told that the work will require time, I said i can give all the time to get the car back into shape, all thanks to Delhi Metro.

The time promised was Monday evening but the advisor called up around 1 to inform that they could deliver the car by today evening only, he also informed me that he is going for training and wont be available for today. I visited the center today to check the status of the work and the mechanic said that the work will be completed by today evening. The work done till now is proper and this advisor is very honest about the time required to get the work done. I did spend time today in the workshop, it was seriously crowded but the mechanics were not rushing to close job cards which was a positive sign.

Taking delivery of the car tomorrow afternoon, with a thorough check on the work done, then only will give my final conclusion and request for a change in the thread heading.

PS: Last time my car didn't have the Team-BHP sticker, it seems one thread here and one sticker on my car has worked or the company is taking feedback seriously, will come to know tomorrow only.

[ankur_gupta10]

What happened in the end? A good experience?

[nitin.rai]

Originally Posted by ported_head

For a multi brand workshop such as these, how do they manage the inventory of parts? How many parts could you possibly stock, for how many different cars? I guess they can only stock most popular parts of the most popular cars. And a few oddities. Must be a nightmare.

With small independent garages it's a lot easier, they can always extend a day citing unavailability of parts. But when customers avail the services of such a setup, I guess the expectation is to deliver on the same day, just like an authorised service center.

@ported_head & GTO:
I work as a consultant and do interact with CN; they have a strong service parts planning network. CN runs on SAP (ERP). Its not easy and everyone struggles but its a complex equation of Forecasting, Demand Planning etc.
A simple example; the inventory is common across fairly distanced stores and intra-location stock transfers are common.

As far as the service center experience goes; i agree they need to pull up their socks. Have been to two of their centers but couldn't muster enough courage to hand over my car after the initial interaction.

[chetanhanda]

Originally Posted by setuniket

Well after reading about Jagdish Khattar's muti-brand service centre in the Indian car scene section, I recently noticed banners in my area about Carnation's centre across the road in Sector-63, decided to check out the place and then get my car serviced.

This time I also fell for this scam which call itself a service centre.
Seems this is common to all the Carnation centres all over India.
I had a bad experience with Carnation at their Hadapsar branch.
Its a good idea to scan the receipt and attach along with the review, I too will do the same.
Good detailed review, I hope people see these reviews and avoid Carnation at all costs...I wish I had done some reading at TBHP before going to CN.

[Vivek5870]

This is my very first post on TBHP and although I did not want to start my post with this one, I am left with no other choice but to write this.

Over the past couple of days I have been interacting with Carnation for anti rust treatment and the festive season car detailing package for my 2002 OHC. I have been interacting with both their Noida 63 and Sahibabad center for this one, however, when I ask them the technicalities / details of both the job that I want to get done on my car, I am being transferred from one person to the other. Finally I got frustrated and decided to drop the idea of getting it done from Carnation. Today morning, I again thought of giving Carnation a chance and this time I decided not to call them, rather land up at the Sahibabad service center. I initially asked them for a Gardx Petrol Treatment and the answer that I get is Rs. 600. The advisor did not mention that taxes were extra. Here I would like to mention that I had already spoken to their centralized customer care based out of Hyderabad, who had quoted me a price between 500 - 550 (depending on the different tax rates in different states). When I inquired about this price difference, I was again redirected to the unit head to handle the matter. This shows the lack of training that the SA's have been imparted.

Anyways, went over to meet the service head and repeated the same story and started getting some strange answers that the price of petrol treatment varies for different cars. When I asked him (here I would not like to mention the names of the people involved as I would still want to discount them and give them one more chance), if the product is the same, how does the price change for a product when it is used in a maruti or a honda or a hyundai? Did not get any specific answers. Well, I would not like to go further into this story and move on to what I got done from there today.

I finally decided to get their 699 package for exterior washing and polishing and interior detailing and polishing. (anticipated this to be a VFM package, so opted for it). Finally I was informed that my car would take about 3 hours for the complete job (made me happy that they would give that much time and care for my ride ), I decided that I would stay at the service center to watch the job being done in front of me. The car went for washing and was down from the ramp in no more than 5 minutes, some of the washing done on the floor and not on the ramp. The worst part, another car was being washed next to it and the mud and dirt of that car was coming back on my car as droplets. I did point this out to the supervisor there, however they give a damn. The car was taken out of the washing area and was parked in an open area under the sun without anyone attending to wipe the water of the car body. I was watching all this and was unhappy thinking that the water marks would form on the body of the car. Sorry for a long post guys.

Mods, if you feel the post is too long, please feel free to delete or trim as you may deem fit.

Well, here goes the story further. My car was parked on the detailing bay where the entire vacuuming of the car was done along with interior cleaning. I would rate the interior cleaning at a 3 or 3.5 on a scale of 5. My car rear windshield got busted on Diwali day and I had to get a new windshield installed. Lousy job done by the car glass guy as I had no other choice but to get it done from a roadside shop as all other good garages and shops were closed post Diwali. Anyways, at carnation again. There were lot of glass pieces left inside the car along with very minute glass particles on the speaker tray. The detailing guy could not take out the rear seat backrest or the base seat to vacuum and clean. A very shocking yet sad experience here once again. Finally he blew air underneath the seat from one side and blew the particles to the other side of the seat where he sucked it in the vacuum, not a professional way to do, but yet satisfactory although I still have my doubts that there would be glass particles still below the seat. Finally the interior detailing was done and my car was sent to the other side where the cars were being finalized for handing back to customer. Here, I would like to mention that I had asked the SA to get the seat fixed back before the detailing was done to which he said that he would get it done later. Anyways, my car was in the finishing bay and I asked the person there who would wax the exterior to which he said that he would just wipe the entire car with a cloth and nothing else. I called up the SA again and asked him about polish to which he said that they do not do polish in this package. When I specifically informed him that it is mentioned in the package, he said that there is labour shortage and also they do not have wax any more in stock. I again went to the unit head to report this, he called up the SA and instructed him to get the waxing done. Now the SA got hold of one person and got some shady 2K wax and applied it. By the time, I came back to my car, the wax was applied to almost 75% of the car. Since almost the entire car was done, I did not make a fuss of the quality of wax as I knew that I will not be able to invest time on my ride for the next 3 weeks. Finally the waxing was done (all by hand, no DA Polisher used). The car was waiting for me to be despatched. I went there and checked whether the spray nozzles for the front windshield have been cleaned or not. They were not cleaned, again called the SA to get this cleaned, this entire process took one more hour. Oh, by the way, I had gone their at 1:00 pm and it was already 6 pm now.

Once the spray nozzles were cleaned, I decided to get the invoicing done, however thought of just checking everything once before the checkout. I opened the boot and see the tyre not fixed at the designated place, I had asked the SA to check the air pressure of the spare tyre and then fix it back. Called him up again and got this done, another 40 minutes gone. While the SA came to attend to the tyre pressure issue, he applied force on the tyre to check the pressure without realizing that the tyre is resting on the masonite board which is used to cover the tyre in the cavity. Boom goes the board, I shouted at him that you broke the board and he said, no sir, its fine. When I showed him that its broken, the cat caught his tongue. Meanwhile the other guy went with the tyre to fill the air in the tyre, now I am so skeptical, I will have to say whether he filled it with correct air pressure or not. I told the SA to take care of this damage to which he said, sir, this will remain like this. I told him specifically that this is a damage done by you and you need to take care of it. After consistent persuasion, I managed to get a Gardx Petrol Treatment from him free of cost.

Left the service center at 7:15 pm considering that I got a good deal. I will have to admit that I probably got reimbursed for the damage done to the board, however if I talk in terms of Customer Experience, I was constantly on the lookout for a pleasant customer experience which I did not get during my entire stay of 6 + hours at the service center.

I would like to list down some pros and cons of these multi brand outlets.

Pros:

1. Can get the work in front of my eyes unlike the authorised after sales service centres.
2. This gives you an insight of your ride which otherwise you feel is in mint condition. When things are ripped apart, you see signs of ageing.
3. Could probably get some outside spares / oils added to your ride.
4. You really come to know who is really a technical person and who is not - helps you to catch hold of the right person next time.

Cons:

1. Very unprofessional
2. Do not live up to the commitment
3. Parts sourcing is a major problem and very time consuming
4. Employees need to be trained for better customer experience
5. Employees need to be trained for more technical expertise
6. Since a lot of poaching has been done from authorised after sales service centres, it is obvious they are hired at a premium with an expectation that the economically hired people would be trained by them which is not the case. People are smart enough these days to ensure that they do not become dispensable
7. Quality of workmanship is questionable at times
8. Quality of spares is questionable at times

My take on multi brand outlets is, if you want to get a lot of minor tasks done which are time consuming and need a lot of attention, you should opt for the multi brand outlet and get those nagging issues fixed there. The reason why I am saying this is because the *** care a damn for your small nagging issues, they always look for tasks in which they can generate more money, hence your smaller issues are never addressed at authorised after sales service centres (totally my experience, others may have a difference of opinion) or are not addressed to your satisfaction.

Lastly, I would like to state that this is an industry where a person with a passion for cars and its allied services will sustain, survive and excel.

Thank you all for your time to read a really loooong first post of mine. Going forward, I will definitely cut short my posts. I know this one is very long and might bore many of you. Apologies in case I did bore you guys and for the mistakes that I might have done while writing this post.