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-   -   My brand-new Tata Safari has been fully disassembled | EDIT: Dealer offers full refund! (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-scene/276951-my-brand-new-tata-safari-has-been-fully-disassembled-edit-dealer-offers-full-refund-11.html)

You are simply assuming that the lights were non functional from the time the owner picked up the car. It could simply be a software or wiring harness issue. Maybe they went over a bump and lights stopped working :Shockked:. I wouldn't be surprised.

I think it's about time that we stop beating around the bush and asking customers to be aware (despite our age old government sponsored TV ads). Don't we deserve products with basic QC checks from the manufacturer after paying 20 to 30L rupees.

If not and TATA is unwilling to improve its QC and Vendor management processes then let them pay customers with discounts for being their QC department.

The dealer is just stalling till the so called repair is complete. Your only aim should be to get a complete refund considering it's a brand new 33L car.
I know you would have tried this but keep the pressure on using the 2 prong Pincer strategy -
1. Escalate internally across Tata leadership
2. Raise a stink on each and every social media platform. Consider using any social media "automobile" influencer to present your case
It will be a long battle. Best of luck.

I suggest letting them resolve the issue first and asking for the maximum extended warranty as compensation. Judging from the photos you shared, it appears that only plastic trims have been opened, with no major components dismantled. You can find brand new cars in much worse condition during aftermarket installations in the shops. If you opt for legal action, proving that your car is defective solely because of the removal of a few plastic trims might be challenging. The court may probably ask the brand to fix the car under warranty and also provide some monetary compensation for legal fees,etc. but don’t expect much.

Question is why do customers have to do due diligence when buying any car, let alone a 25lakh rupees one, when the company must have a quality control procedures in place and the dealers are also supposed to do a PDI before sending a car for registration or before delivery. Also, personally speaking, if I have to gather intel on possible malfunctions or defects/niggles that I'm going to have in a brand new car, before buying, I'd rather not buy that car in the first place.

This is like putting the onus on proving his/her innocence on the accused.

Let's not take the responsibility from the manufacturer on to ourselves of doing the QC!! As customers, we are entitled to reliable, fuss free cars when we pay for it. Even 1 issue is totally unacceptable and when it comes to the OP's car, it's plain criminal on the part of Tata to not acknowledge and provide him either a new car or complete refund. No amount of external PDI can catch this extent of malfunction.

Sadly our country has no laws to protect the customer and the legal system is simply a deterrant for most of us to take up the fight against corporates.

Apologies as my post and these comments are taking the focus away from the OPs problem.

All these comments are nice to read :)

If this was true in real life, we wouldn't need a PDI at all. Please check the number of pages that thread on PDI checklist has run into. Because stuff happens - obviously some manufacturers like Tata seem to have many more incidents - no two ways about it.

I agree. The number of complaints these two manufacturers face, the management perhaps has become immune (read - do not care) and do not intervene and let the teams below handle it as "due course" which in turn is further damaging for both reputation and customer satisfaction. Despite being very actively present on Social Media, and often gifting cars to certain achievers, which is commendable for sure, I have rarely seen the Chairman of one of these companies respond directly to any complaint on that Forum. And I have never seen any one on our TBhp Forum acknowledge getting a response from top management of these companies. Needless to say, this shows that the "insensitivity" to the customer starts at the top.

Giving a contrasting view from my own experience: My Ford Endeavour was delivered early 2016 with Central Locking inoperable. I took it to the dealer's service center the next day and they ripped the door pads open (breaking the LED lights under the panel and damaging the insulation) and still could not identify the problem. After spending 14 hours at the Service Center, I returned close to midnight and looked for Nigel Harris' (then MD of Ford India) email ID and sent a mail to him. Next morning I got a call from Regional Service Head who offered to rush a Master Technician from Chennai. At the same time, I had an email in my mailbox which had Nigel forwarding the mail with his strong views to all his Leaders in Ford India which was further forwarded to concerned service heads who in turn opened a complaint and acknowledged. The error was fixed the same day and broken LED and damaged insulation where express couriered from Chennai and fixed the next day.

This behavior shows extreme customer sensitivity. No wonder most of us still swear by Ford. Perhaps Tata and Mahindra can learn from this.

In an ideal world, why should there be a PDI by the buyer if there is a well performed QC by the "seller"? How can the onus of getting the right product in good condition be the onus of the consumer? I fail to understand. We do PDI for our satisfaction, but that is secondary. Should the manufacturer be not responsible for making sure we get what we pay for? Beats me.

Hi,

It’s not a typo error but a reality of 28 lac payment. Yes, its insane to own this kind of a brand!

Suspension, differential assembly, clutch, brakes, gear box, AC compressor, lightings, electrical parts etc are very expensive added with heavy labour, multiple time repairing the same complaint with additional parts and labour and damages of good parts. No accident bills added / happened with a dirty car returned.

Still my lost key has not been retrieved by ASC or replaced with a new one. Forced to take car with spare key at home.

Feel for you OP, hope this gets resolved soon.

I wonder what would be the reaction even in this group if this was a VW or Skoda which had faced this issue in the same week of purchase. Looks like a lot of us are ready to give a lot of additional "leeway" for our Indian manufacturers.

If you cannot get help even after these steps please reach out to me via email :)

Sorry to hear about the bad experience you had to go through Sln. Hope you get a favorable resolution soon.



OT:

Didn't it ever hit you : "This is nuts, I've had enough", any time till it reached 28Lakh (And still continuing I guess) ?.

I would've disposed it by now unless emotionally connected / It's a super rare collectable.

In manufacturing QC/QA is a game of probability.

It is impossible to ensure 100% defect free parts when you are manufacturing at an industrial scale in the thousands or lakhs. There will be defects however small it will be.

All that you can do is define a margin of error. i.e. Out of x number of parts how many defective pieces are acceptable. Usually the more critical the part is, the lower is the margin of error.

In automobile manufacturing, parts that are critical to the safety & functioning of the vehicle, and more expensive parts and those which are more difficult to repair or replace have the lowest margin for errors.

Most of the parts (other than engine and chassis) are usually made by asupplier and directly delivered to the production line (yes the actual assembly line - not the factory).

I'm not aware about the testing protocols for very critical parts like wiring harness. I expect wiring harnesses to be individually tested (by individually - it doesn't mean a person sitting and checking each inch of the wire, but the supplier should be having a jig that is approved by the supplier into which all the harness connectors can be plugged in and then it gives an OK/FAIL rating based on which the supplier decides to give it to the supplier or scrap it.)

For most other parts, testing is done on sample sizes either batch-wise or time-wise (monthly, quarterly etc).

When the error margin is too big, its more sensible to change the design or the process to reduce that margin (this is what we mean by IMPROVING THE QUALITY).

If the error margin is as small as it can be, then its better for the OEM to compensate the customer (new car, free repair etc.) because probability if this defect occurring is very low that it would be more expensive to improve the process further than to compensate the customer when the defect occurs

Here, TATA should just give the customer a brand new car and MOVE ON. Its impossible to bring it back to factory condition by repairing unless every single piece that was removed is replaced with a brand new part (since a lot of the mounting points would have been broken or weakened) and the fasteners torqued according to assembly specification which is a guaranteed impossibility when done by TATA service centre:Frustrati
They should ideally take this CAR back to R&D and figure out the root cause and take appropriate action if the margin of error is higher than what they agreed on with the supplier. (This is also a possibility since understaffed suppliers get lazy on the QA front once the Full scale manufacturing starts).

Ideal scenario YES! But with TAMOs current quality standards they would become case study for riches to rag story incase they actually follow that practice.

There are multiple layers of issues. Profitability margin greed, unresponsive management, questionable QC/QA process and poor after sales service standards. The only thing going good was the design and tech (borrowed from JLR) aspect. But sadly Pratap Bose moved to Mahindra. That is when TAMO decided to paste a glowing TATA logo screen in the middle of the steering wheel and connected DRLs (tube lights) wrapped around the car.

They need a miracle to actually recognize all these problems and have someone at helm to act on the same. But I guess they would need to hear this from some bigshot audit consultant or MBA guru to believe it.

Till that happens, I am pretty sure TAMO is in "5 Star khao, aur kho jao" state for now. rl:

@SLN, any update on the matter post your Monday meeting with the Tata folks? We are eagerly waiting for a favorable outcome.

Best,
Enigmatic

Your inbox is going to get crowed pretty soon. Thanks for helping out. :thumbs up