[anjan_c2007]

A report in the Carblog website says that a disgruntled Tata Safari owner, Mr Nikil Mishra, wants to use his three month old SUV as a garbage truck as he has had a very bad ownership experience in Alwar, Rajasthan. He claims to have got the disc rotors of his SUV and the brake pads changed as many as 4 times in last 3 months and appears frustrated.

Another owner as reported on this same website Mr G. S. Kochar based in Ludhiana, Punjab, has also reported issues and was allegedly promised a replacement by M/s Dada Motors the Tata Motors dealer, subject to his withdrawal of his critical posts from the social media, showing negative aspects of his ownership. This one appears to be of a goof up by the local dealer M/s Dada Motors, who have failed the customer.

We have a thread here highlighting this case:-

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/india...-2-months.html (Dada Motors takes back defective Tata Safari; no replacement given even after 2 months)

The moot point here is how far are the issues getting reported in the Alwar Tata Safari are worth taking cognisance of ? Disc rotors and brake pads getting changed four times in the past three months rather than being due to the two allegedly defective components only, could lead to some other causative factor that perhaps the local ASSC might have not been able to detect. Moreover, quite a few of these ASSC's aggravate matters due to their poor handling of quite a few cases, coupled with technical ignorance, some stubbornness and maybe arrogance.

We have seen concerted attempts being made to malign the reputation of M/s Tata Motors during past years. The Tata Nano fires were raging in quite many new cars during its production span. But as soon as the production ended, all these fires were mysteriously doused. That raises lots of suspicion in the minds of watchers as to why later on, no fires were reported?

And now when our homegrown auto major has acquired the status of the #3 carmaker sales wise, perhaps it makes sense for someone to raise issues and campaign about the negative traits of its products.

Maybe I am wrong and maybe the issues reported have merit in them. The case of Dada Motors, Ludhiana, is though one where the owner was really harassed. However, I know quite a few satisfied owners of Tata Safaris, Harriers, Tiagos, Nexons, Zests and so on.

I would welcome views of my fellow teambhpians on the topic.

The link:-

https://www.carblogindia.com/tata-sa...ct-brakes/amp/

Excerpts from the report:-

Recently, we reported in detail how one Gagandeep Singh Kochar has faced too much harassment at the hands of Dada Motors, a Ludhiana-based dealership. Gagandeep faced several issues with his Safari and was finally promised a replacement in case he withdraws all his posts on social media that highlighted the negative aspects of his ownership experience. As the aggrieved owner declined to do so and sign a document that said he didn’t have any problem with Tata Motors or the dealership, he continues to wait to get suitable compensation from the carmaker. Even as this episode of fraud and sale of lemon is yet to be resolved by the carmaker, details of yet another Tata Safari that has been facing quality issues have come to light.

In fact, the owner of this Tata Safari has even talked about using his car as a garbage truck to spread awareness on how the carmaker has been delivering poor quality products. This case is about one Nikil Mishra’s 3 month old Tata Safari. Based out of Alwar, Rajasthan, the owner says he’s frustrated with the Tata Motors being unable to solve issues with his vehicle. He claims to have got the disc rotors of his SUV and the brake pads changed as many as 4 times in last 3 months. However, in spite of the multiple replacement, he continues to suffer from a faulty brake system.

At the time of filing of this report, it wasn’t clear if the aggrieved Tata Safari owner has actually used his vehicle as a garbage truck and shot a live video. However, irrespective of this, it’s clear that his ownership experience has been pretty bad owing to a major defect in the vehicle and the inability of the service centre to resolve the issue.

The other Carblog link regarding the Tata Safari from Ludhiana owned by Mr G. S. Kochar.

https://www.carblogindia.com/tata-sa...g-gloster/amp/

[am1m]

Irrespective of manufacturer or brand, unless it's a basic manufacturing defect in a batch (which can probably also be fixed with a recall), the vast majority of these issues are because of the dealership. And unfortunately even though it is the dealership's fault, the brand name of the manufacturer is dragged down. It's high time all manufacturers started making their dealers more accountable to the clients. Most dealers of hot selling brands and models get arrogant and don't give proper attention to customer service. This is across brands and products. Manufacturers don't crack down on crooked dealers because a dealership that generates tens or hundreds of lakhs in sales for the manufacturer is obviously more important than one single customer or a couple of customers. But ideally they should. Their brand name is at stake in these times of magnified messaging through social media.

And this is where independent forums like this one are invaluable to capture bad customer experiences. Forewarned is forearmed and I personally welcome bad reviews and negative points on vehicles or dealers that will help me make an informed choice. (For the good points, those guys always have advertising budgets!)

About the customer doing whatever they want with a car they bought, IMHO as long as it's legal-it's their money, their choice to use it to haul garbage or anything, it's up to them.

[Knighted06]

In my opinion, I believe this is issue happens because people in service centers have little or no expertise. This is a serious issue not just in automobile industry, but in all other respective fields as well. When my family first came to India back in 1998 my dad booked the first batch of Indica (Not even the V2). We got the car after 1 year. The ownership was a nightmare for him. It had so many issues that it had to be taken to the service center every month for one issue or the other. Back then, I was a kid studying 5th class. I used to accompany our driver if there was a holiday, because I had this passion for cars. The mechanics back then instead of diagnosing the problem, just used to repair the busted part and send us back home. Back then, owning Tata was such a horror that sometimes, some mechanics even used to install parts from other cars and charge us reduced prices which we had to directly pay to them(poor guys who just used to give cars and go home thinking their car was in safe hands). Most of the time, instead of identifying the problem, they would just change the related parts hoping the issue would go away. Things haven't changed much now either. I see many car mechanics from different car manufacturers still following the same method. These days companies are run by accountants. So it makes more sense for accountants to keep hiring new talent and pay less, rather than paying more salaries for the same work, which in turn affects the quality. This is just one of many reasons, and this is happening across all fields all over the world. The above example happend a long time back 2000-2003 (yes the car started falling apart just after 3 years). They have come a long way since and, we Have Nexon and Altroz in our family and have no issues as of now with cars and the service being provided by Tata.

[abhishek46]

There is a lot of uncollected garbage in Bangalore.
I would request the gentleman concerned to come to Bangalore and perform garbage collection, if he is really serious.

Coming back to the topic, rather than such measures, the vehicle owner should escalate this TML Regional Service heads/CRMs, and get his vehicle repaired by some other dealer, if the existing service centre is unable to fix the issues.

[GTO]

Sigh, this "garbage truck" thing is so overdone. It was a novelty a century ago with the rebuffed king and his Rolls-Royce garbage collectors, and was still newsworthy a decade ago. But anyone wanting to create bad publicity around a car by using it as a garbage truck is kidding himself. It no longer makes news & no OEM will even bat an eyelid.

More productive alternatives:

- Work with the OEM / dealer and fix your problems

- Sue in consumer court (10 years of fighting though)

- Highlight the issue on Team-BHP. Most times, it leads to a solution, especially if posted directly by the owner and the problem is serious.

- If too fed up, sell the car, cut your losses and move on.

- Pay heed to Team-BHP's advice and buy cars after 1 - 2 (or 3) years of launch. By then, all the initial new model niggles & problems will be sorted.

[Somz]

Tata motors had come a long way to shed their Taxi image. There car lines comprising right from Tiago to Gravitas are fantastic. Due to few Tata dealers, their brand reputation comes at stake. Earlier Tata motors dealers used to recruit higher secondary boys in their garage but now Tata motors has strictly implemented minimum qualification for recruitment in Tata motors authorised garages are ITI. Few dealers will remain untrustworthy but Car manufacturers giving lemons & not course correcting is an serious issue. As very well suggestions given by GTO, fellow aggrieved car owners can follow the same.

[Kosfactor]

I am not sure what that fellow is trying to fix, are the brakes not working? Apart from the noise thanks to the overenthusiastic auto hold I did not find anything wrong with the brake system as such. This vehicle is heavy so if you drive with a lead foot or left foot brake on automatic, you can expect the brake pads to wear out within 10-15K Kms - as with any vehicle of its size.

This vehicle is a mash up of parts from everywhere that does not work very well together in Indian conditions. The owners will have to live with it as the dealer cannot fix those issues. This is not the case of waiting for a year for Tata to sort out quality issues during production, it is not that easy.

[Electromotive]

Originally Posted by anjan_c2007

1. We have seen concerted attempts being made to malign the reputation of M/s Tata Motors during past years. The Tata Nano fires were raging in quite many new cars during its production span. But as soon as the production ended, all these fires were mysteriously doused. That raises lots of suspicion in the minds of watchers as to why later on, no fires were reported?

2. And now when our homegrown auto major has acquired the status of the #3 carmaker sales wise, perhaps it makes sense for someone to raise issues and campaign about the negative traits of its products.

3. Maybe I am wrong and maybe the issues reported have merit in them. However, I know quite a few satisfied owners of Tata Safaris, Harriers, Tiagos, Nexons, Zests and so on.

I will state outright that I have no skin in this game. I do not own any TaMo or MSIL vehicle. In fact I made some money from TaMo shares.

1. Given the number of anti Maruti threads in the past few months one might be led to believe there is a slander campaign being run against MSIL on T-BHP. But I don't think that is the case since GTO won't allow that and the complaints have merit. So, why should complaints regarding TaMo be considered a conspiracy? TaMo is very... mediocre in all aspects and their vehicles leave a lot to be desired when it comes to fit and finish.

Even the MG Hector had fire issues, the Kushaq has fuel pump issues. Are all those slander campaigns? The fact is, MG stepped up its game and made sure the issues were rectified and customers kept happy. And here we have TaMo, 2-3 years since the launch of the Harrier and the product still has issues. Dealers are representatives of the manufacturer and poor dealer service should reflect on the brand.

Nano died because of poor marketing done by the TaMo, the fires only added a little fuel. Nano was marketed as THE cheapest car and got the image of the car-for-poor-people. That's what killed it.

2. The current rise in TaMo's market share might be an anomaly since the competition is being constrained by logistics issues with parts and chip shortages. Let's revisit this when the competition is running at pre-covid capacity. As customers we should be least bothered about the nationality of the maker of the product. If any manufacturer has to play the nationality card to increase sales, it raises red flags in my book.

3. And I know of two TaMo vehicle owners who are very unhappy with their vehicles. One is a harrier owner, who just got rid of his ride because he was fed up with the electrical and transmission issues in his vehicle. The other is an Altroz owner and he is also not happy with the niggles that keep cropping up in his vehicle. The latest being an issue with his AC blower.

[Geta]

Originally Posted by Electromotive

3. And I know of two TaMo vehicle owners who are very unhappy with their vehicles. One is a harrier owner, who just got rid of his ride because he was fed up with the electrical and transmission issues in his vehicle. The other is an Altroz owner and he is also not happy with the niggles that keep cropping up in his vehicle. The latest being an issue with his AC blower.

+1

I would request the new generation of TaMo supporters who idolise Pratap Bose and drool over the Harrier twins to hold their horses for 3-4 years.

As an ex Tata (Manza) owner, my ownership experience was disastrous. The first 3 years were relatively peaceful but for its drinking habits and poor driving characteristics both in the city as well as in the highways. Beyond the 3rd year, I had to replace several parts in quick succession, to the extent that I had to spend 50% of the purchase price of the car on its maintenance over the next 6-7 years. I also owned a Maruti in the same period for about 9 years and I was very happy both with the driving characteristics and the overall ownership experience. I was unhappy only about the safety aspect and avoided MSIL for my subsequent car purchases.

This is the reason I never pronounce the verdict on any of the cars I own in the first 3-4 years.

[Shashwat.75]

Originally Posted by Geta

+1

I would request the new generation of TaMo supporters who idolise Pratap Bose and drool over the Harrier twins to hold their horses for 3-4 years.

As naive it may sound, I believe there are always a few exceptional cases ( maybe a bit more than exceptional for Harrier/Safari) . Also I feel a large amount of car buying experience depends on your luck- ( controversial, I know ). I say this because -

My father owned a Manza too, drove it for 1.2 lakh kilometres over 11 years before selling it of - not once did it give us any major issues.

My father currently owns a Nexon - 3 years, 35000 kms . No issues so far.

My brother-in-law has had a Harrier for almost a year - no issues so far

[Durango Dude]

Now that TaMo has put it's products thru' NCAP it's high time put the dealers also thru' some crash course of "not" treating their clients like their Tata Truck owners. Whatever the Tata Fanboys may want to idolize their crash worthy brand it's the after sales service and dealership experience that falls short and isn't confidence inspiring.

[Big_Turbo]

Originally Posted by Shashwat.75

As naive it may sound, I believe there are always a few exceptional cases ( maybe a bit more than exceptional for Harrier/Safari) . Also I feel a large amount of car buying experience depends on your luck- ( controversial, I know ). I say this because -

I completely agree with you. TaMo has definitely upped their game from the days of an Indica or a Manza. The experiences I have had with 2 different dealers in the last 6 months has been exceptional. The mechanics are technically sound and can easily diagnose problems.

Ofcourse we must all be proud that we have an Indian brand developing and selling cars for us in India. Why not take pride in this? I would definitely support Tata's marketing campaign.

I do share my sympathy with fellow bhp-ians for niggles with their cars. In the end, its just sheer dumb luck. If not, its the complacency of the dealerships looking to maximise profit at the expense of the customers.

Ofcourse Tata/ Mahindra have a long way to go to match the Germans. Why not give them the benefit of the doubt by us Indians supporting our home teams.

Just my view.
Regards.

[Risky4327]

Originally Posted by Shashwat.75

As naive it may sound, I believe there are always a few exceptional cases ( maybe a bit more than exceptional for Harrier/Safari) . Also I feel a large amount of car buying experience depends on your luck- ( controversial, I know

It's not controversial at all, I tend to agree with this. I got my Nexon in 2018 when it was a relatively new product and niggles were being reported on this forum. Apart from vibrating window glass on driver side door (which was due to loose bolt or screw or something and was rectified in one visit to service center), no issue or rattling has cropped up till now.
Also, both the service centers in my city are good, never heard about their negligence or bad attitude from any of my colleagues who also own a Tata.
Sadly, I can't be sure of the service center experience if I ever has to visit in any other city.

[COMMUTER]

I can afford to lose something I have bought new only when it is 2-5% of my monthly income. I estimate that this percentage will reduce drastically with the increase in amount involved. Given that, this appears to be a desperate move of a flailing corporation than it would of an individual who bought a new 15/20L car.

This individual, if genuinely one, must have taken this to court and settled it with the dealer. It looks like a 30L PR sabotage move by a huge corporation now.

[Mad Max]

I keep thinking of the phrase "they don't make them like they used to" whenever I read about Tata cars and the much more serious niggles.

If I recollect correctly, our Indica ran close to 200,000 kms - the AC knob broke in the first few days and the passenger grab handle broke in a few more. Beyond that, there were no issues with the car.

The Nano that my brother drives has crossed 150,000 kms. It has got a bunch of issues but I'll chalk it up to an agriculture officer using a city commuter as an off-roader for the better part of a decade. Mostly it has been with the suspension and a few pump related issues.

All of these above, I'd consider normal in the course of ownership. But when I am reading about these new cars and the crazy issues, I wonder if these tech gizmos and other fancy items in newer vehicles have distracted Tata from the core of their product quality.

20+L for a car isn't for anyone to cut losses or go to court. Manufacturers should be held accountable for a car's quality regardless if it's a manufacturing defect or a dealer-induced malfunction.