[kippu]

I was taken aback by this article which was linked to me at twitter just ten minutes ago :

Cama Motors, a highly reputed and one of the oldest dealers of foreign cars, has made allegations of murderous malpractices of Mercedes Benz. It charges Mercedes of being neck-deep in a variety of immoral and unethical practices.

Would you believe it if you received a letter from Mercedes Benz informing you that you had won a lucky draw and your gift was a “FREE INSPECTION!!” But they actually want to replace your turbocharger without informing you? Or would you believe that Mercedes Benz engineers discovered that the clutch assemblies of their cars across the board were remaining stuck to the floor when warmed up. But instead of immediately pulling every single car off the road, they took eight years to first secretly fit a heat shield (hiding the purpose from dealers) and then developed an insulated bodied clutch which was selectively fitted to the “problem cars” thereby putting countless lives at risk for years?

These and many more shocking incidents have been exposed by none other than an extremely reputed ex-dealer of Mercedes Benz. The dealer in question, Cama Motors, is in this business for over 120 years. Back in 1931, Late Khan Bahadur Rustom Cama brought..... <click the link below to read more>

Full article: The truth about Mercedes Benz India-1: Sneakily replacing dangerously defective parts! - Moneylife


This Website hosted by Cama details the entire saga, as well as lists what they say are "Major Cover Ups" pertaining to :

• AC problems
• Air suspension sudden collapse
• Airbag replacement
• Clutch pedals of various models were known to stick while driving
• Constant "updation" of all software with new code secretly
• Corrosion of cars produced between 2000 and 2005
• Crank Shaft, Wheel speed, Steering angle and other sensor failures
• Engine idler pulley
• Fuel Leakage
• SBC brake failure
• Transmission Failure
• Water seepage
• Turbocharger

Could this be true? or just plain rumours?

[SankalpDesai]

Came across this report today. Wouldn't have taken it seriously if it was just another dealer or just another car manufacturer in question. But here, we are talking about two highly reputed brands in the automobile industry - Mercedes Benz India (MBI), the manufacturer and Cama Motors - one of the most reputed automobile dealers in Ahmedabad, setup in 1931.

I also checked out the site mentioned in the article. Seems genuine. More so because here a dealer is taking such extreme steps towards the manufacturer instead of playing hand-in-gloves, something that we've become used to. Though the website is void of any names but there are direct allegations towards MBI.

Wanted to bring this to the notice of fellow bhpians as there are several MB owners on the forum.

[diffsoft]

This forum is quite abreast of ownership experience with German cars and car-makers, but I came across an article - which led to a web-site, that takes the cake.

I was reading a post in Moneylife.in (run in part by Sucheta Dalal a fiercely independent Padma Shri journalist) The truth about Mercedes Benz India-1: Sneakily replacing dangerously defective parts! - Moneylife that talked about "sneakily replacing defective parts" during a "free inspection".

The article further says, "Having discovered to his horror the above sneaky, surreptitious malpractices, Rustom Cama, executive director, Cama Motors, has filed a number of complaints against Mercedes Benz India with every concerned authority, including top management of Daimler AG, German Embassy in India, Competition Commission of India (CCI), and the ministry of surface transport. However, he got no response from anywhere." - I say Harishv you are not alone!

On further reading it appears that Cama Motors, a reputed 120 year old car dealer, and an ex-dealer of Mercedes, has dedicated a website which is a compendium of complaints et al about Merc - HOME. The welcome says "The welcome line says, “Cama Motors deeply regrets its association with Mercedes Benz...”.

Now given that I and many others in this forum are likely to consider Mercedes Benz in the future, it pays to be aware of this.

I haven't had the time to go through the website, but I certainly welcome any initiative that places power in the hands of customers who act in good faith.

Cheers,

[speedmiester]

If the claims made by Cama Motors are validated and found to be true, Mercedes is in a heap of trouble. It has already lost it's position first to BMW and now to Audi.

This needs to investigated at the highest levels as any failure in critical component can lead to serious damage to life and property. Hope the higher ups in Mercedes India and abroad are taking notice.

[kippu]

Those pdfs in the second site is very damaging for the mercedes brand. Wonder if this happens with other car manufacturers also?

[shadows123]

If the claims are true, then this is just outrageous..Why do German manufacturers(read Merc now and Skoda and VW to some extent) take India for granted is beyond me..They aren't leading in market share to be arrogant or do they get the feeling that India is a poor country where you can throw scrap at customers and people will still buy their products!!

[Nilesh5417]

When was the website up and other than the website, where has this news been reported? I do not think this news will have any serious impact on MB unless its taken up on some TV channel and goes beyond the internet. If MB have survived so far, they can survive going forward unless media kicks up a scandal.
But the important point is - is this true? Or is this some stunt engineered by BMW/Audi? It shows only 3 complaints so far and not sure if any customers will stand up if it comes to trial. And why this sudden change of heart on the part of Cama motors?
Unfortunately, the times are such that its hard to believe Cama motors is doing it with a simple motive of coming clean. And this sort of allegation is too serious to be trusted based on only 1 side of the story.
Are there any threads on t-bhp where MB owners are complaining that we can reference to?

[adityasiera]

Quite shocking to see the situation. There is a report on t-bhp about a person involved in a crash driving a S-Class and was killed due to airbag failure.



It definitely needs to be dealt with the way we dealt with Skoda

[kippu]

I was linked to it by the author of the piece on moneylife from twitter . Her reporting says that other media houses are not taking up the piece because then the advertisements from Mercedes will impact them. Even that being a little far fetched conspiracy.

The pdfs that are linked from that seo website is the smoking gun , which suggests that Mercedes knew the shortcomings of certain vehicles but chose not to tell the owner of it , and wanted the service company to rectify it clandestinely, on the pretext of doing something else.

The author also said that they had mailed the report to mercedes on 26th july and they did not reply to it. Now even if this is done by a frustrated dealer doing out of malice , what does remain is the practices of mercedes, which does not show it to be in good books.

her handle on twitter is @suchetadalal

[sudev]

If the web site is indeed by Indian dealer then why all the contacts in the domain WHOIS are privacy protected and from Australia??

PrivacyProtect.org
Domain Admin (contact@privacyprotect.org)
ID#10760, PO Box 16
Note - All Postal Mails Rejected, visit Privacyprotect.org
Nobby Beach
null,QLD 4218
AU
Tel. +45.36946676

I would request the OP to contact CAMA on the contact info page and confirm that they are indeed behind this site.

If authenticity is established - SHOCKING!

[Wind]

Originally Posted by Nilesh5417

Are there any threads on t-bhp where MB owners are complaining that we can reference to?

Here is one .
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/long-t...tion-rule.html

-- Wind

[Rehaan]

Originally Posted by sudev

If the web site is indeed by Indian dealer then why all the contacts in the domain WHOIS are privacy protected and from Australia??

Thats a private / proxy WHOIS (for when site owners don't want their contact details available to everyone).

The site / hosting company is probably based in Australia.

cya
R

[rrsteer]

I am unable to open the actual site for some weird reason. Does the website only point fingers at MBIL (MB India) or The MCG (Mercedes Car Group - BU of Daimler Chrysler) as a whole?

If true, no wonder Mercedes of today stand for the exact opposite of Mercedes of yore.

[BeamerBoy]

It is really sad state of affairs for Mercedes Benz.

Looks like an Ex dealer gone rogue. If I remember, CAMA Motors got separated from MB some years ago. What followed was a bitter claim and counter claim battle leading to arbitration. Truths and allegation rolling from both sides.

Wondering why the site comes up so late! Has CAMA exhausted all possibilities of any damage recovery ($$) from MB? I will take this with a pinch of salt. The situation is akin to a marriage gone bad. CAMA subsequently tried its hands on used cars, multi brand outlet but the business could not fly.

What is wrong with a company extending service measures? Every company does it. It is good that a company once it identifies a defect even after the delivery of the car goes out to call back the cars and fix it. Dead line for the job! Lest the dealer won't budge because there is no profit to be made in that repair.

Yes, there were a couple of 'service measures' that were specifically intended to keep the customer in the dark. Bad Manners Mercedes (Ref: Turbocharger measure). However, I am sure that communication would be a brain child of an in-experienced person.

Does issuing service measures imply poor quality? Not till such time service measures are appearing once in a while. Service measures exist and will continue to exist, how a company does it is a deciding factor.

[Nitrous Power]

Just one question to Cama Motors: why were they silent when they were the sole dealer of MB for Gujarat for so many years? They decided to file complaints only after their dealership was snatched away and was given to Landmark Group.

However, government agency should look into all these allegations ASAP.