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-   -   Booked a car - Can I cancel the booking? (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-scene/39655-booked-car-can-i-cancel-booking-3.html)

I don't agree with your analogy.
The dealer is representing Maruti, it's an exclusive Maruti dealer and how else does a person interact with the company? As far as the customer is concerned, his experience with Maruti will be reflected in his experience with the dealer, A.S.S. and the car itself.

I agree with Dozer. This is highly irresponsible attitude of a ASC and that too of Maruti. In no ways the SA or ASC can sit on the money of the client. This issue needs to be addressed by marking a mail to MSIL Manesar, Gurgaon.

Also, I do partially agree with Khoj, the deduction parameters that the ASCs actually show by naming them as cancellation charges et al are all rubbish. I have in-depth insight and understand these flimsy excuses very well. When I was informed that on delaying the purchase of my Ertiga, my paid token money shall be adjusted towards all these unreal charges and I shall have to make a fresh payment again, I took the matter literally in my own hands and suitably settled it within 2 hours in front of my paa and uncle who is the GM in the Maruti ASC here.

With all due respect to the sales profession, I actually hate the way these SA at car dealerships work. Such sugar coated language they use when we go there to book the car and its totally reversed when we go to inform for cancellation. In one of the ASC's of Honda over here in Noida, I literally humiliated the SA for making me pay a much higher price for accessories bought from his showroom.

Dear Doctor, just in case you need any help with regards to Maruti in future, PM me. More than happy to assist.

Thanks.

No one has to agree, it is an open forum but it is sad to see fellow members take a lopsided view of things.

The said dealer is surely not the one & only dealer for MUL. Any OE simply does not have the resources to look at each and every booking or cancellation in real time. However they do understand that there will be cases where the customer is not treated fairly or has a grievance and that's why they have redressal systems in place. I will therefore say again that let him get in touch directly with MUL, if the issue still does not get resolved then yes even I would ditch the OE.

BTW, all car dealers are essentially exclusive dealers for their given principals, I don't think that fact is lost on anyone anywhere.

Got to agree with Khoj here. Unlike the case of Skoda, where skoda was directly responsible for helping the customer, in this case you are stuck with crooks running dealership.

I am not sure they can charge cancellation charges. Charges for what? In fact i would want someone to go and ask for 10 days of interest for holding my money:)(i think i went a little far there)

Hello Ritwik,

As mentioned already a few posts above there should not be any cancellations charges , however I agree to your points that there is a definite latency shown by the dealerships in returning the booking amount. I had a similar experience however not this bad though , when I cancelled my booking the dealership took close to a month to return the cheque and it definetely took numeruos calls an follow up's with the SA to get the money back.

Also when I was paying the booking amount (51K in my case) , I strongly insisted that they should mention the fully refundable statement on booking form which after a little resistance was accepted. If you carefully see the picture below they just mentioned that the amount is refundable and did not mention the term "fully or 100%" which again lead to a small argument , although they have been verbally assuring that the amount is fully refundable in case of cancellation. I wanted to be sure and hence I insisted for the same in writing however I let go after a strong assurance from the sales manager.On cancellation they did refund 51k.



Cheers,
pdma.

From personal experience - I can say that Maruti as a company does not support this policy of cancellation charges, as I myself have cancelled a Swift ZDi booking and got the booking amount of 10k refunded without any pressure.

And with Maruti - all that is required is to shoot one letter to customer care for teaching any of their dealers a proper lesson!

Note - We also received a call from MSIL directly after we placed the cancellation request. They enquired the reason for cancellation. Surprised OP didn't receive any enquiry from MSIL. Since the cancellation was made in two days itself, would the booking have been placed by the dealer to MSIL in the first place?

Agreed but this wasn't what I was addressing earlier. You seemed to imply that Maruti cannot be blamed for their dealer's (to put it naively) incompetencies. They can be blamed, although they must be given the opportunity to address this. It's still working in complaint mode though.
The fact that you implied that MUL will probably address this means they are taking this responsibility.

If I owned a car company and I see that I'm getting complains about service from my exclusive dealerships then I'd pay attention. Now no service is 100% so complaints can be expected but I'd look at the frequency of complaints. If I'm getting too many, my company is in trouble.

I'd thought as much but it was lost in your analogy.

At least you booked with MSIL, thats the silver lining. Give their helpline a call and just watch how soon things are kicked into place.

We had recently made a booking for a new car, online I might add, and cancelled the same due to multiple reasons. But we are yet to even receive a call from the said company till date (been over a month), let alone the refund.

The advantage with Maruti is that their customer support group actually listens and responds.

I would suggest that you drop them an email, with the name of the SA and the dealership and tell them how disappointed you are with this behavior along with the link to this post and then see the action unfold.

Technically you are not supposed to pay anything for booking cancellation as the Swift is a fast moving model, readily available in dealer stock and not a exotic, custom built car manufactured to your likes. It is not a redundant model, that if you do not take the piece that had been allocated to you it will not sell!
Don't waste time and energy by asking the dealer to waive the refund as most Kolkata dealers are notorious in this area of "not refunding". Contact Maruti Regional Office located at Camac Street (L&T Chambers, British Council Building). The phone numbers are : 22835252-54/62. Speak to the Customer service and give them an earful - the dealer should then toe your line!

Thanks to all.
The point about cancellation is that I have seen in the papers that I had received during booking that it is specifically mentioned that an amount of Rs500 will be deducted on cancellation of booking. But after seeing all the replies in the forum I will certainly take it up with the dealer.
As for the issue about wasting my time and energy and sitting on my money for so long. I do fully agree that it is not technically possible for MSIL to look into each and every booking and cancellation personally but again such things should not go unnoticed. The dealership in my opinion is the public interface of the customer with the company. So if the dealership defaults the ultimate onus falls on the company.
Also I have realized that I have received no intimation or call from MSIL after my cancellation.
This lackadaisical attitude of Maruti was what prompted us to move away from maruti 15years ago. At present we own two cars, both from Hyundai. While I understand that F.E. is a bit dicey for Hyundai cars but from my personal experience of the last 7 years I can vouch for the fact that Hyundai ASS is far better than MASS.
As for shooting an email I want to give the SA a last chance of bringing all in place and rectifying his mistakes. If not, then surely shooting mails to Maruti top management is the only way left.

It seems different dealers have different cancellation rates. My booking with Machino Techno does not show any cancellation charges mentioned however when I took the price list from Auto Hitech it shows Rs 250.

Doctor, Sorry to know about your plight! I guess many of us face such circumstances.
Since I don't intend to sound repetitive on the debate, I am thinking at another aspect of consumer buying pattern with automobiles. Taking a short detour from the caption :OT. Don't know how many would agree, but I think, automobile and real estate are two industries where repeat customers is a dim possibility unlike FMCG, FMCD, Retail, Hospitality, wellness etc. For example, we might repeat that same shopping mall, same restaurant, same theatre, that too at higher frequencies, but do we go back to buy another car of the same make or another house from the same builder? Most of us wont. Car dealers know this fact. Hence, their courtesy extended has an expiration date.

Its common for any car dealer to keep potential customers happy; in another words - keep them in their pockets because only then will a customer tear out that cheque leaf. I had heard this in a speaker session - sales guys will first enter your mind, then your heart, then your wallet. This behavior can be expected from any auto dealer as they know that purchase of a car is an emotional buy for an average indian household.

Coming back into the topic, in an event of cancellation of a booking, let us also show patience in our follow ups and courtesy to the dealers only to get back the same cheque for which they had shown courtesy.

Back after a short break

As per advise of many bhpians I did mail Maruti regarding the lackadaisical attitude of the SA. Today I received a call from my SA.....from his voice it was absolutely clear that he was extremely flustered. He also connected me with his AGM. He profusely apologized for his delay in returning the refund.

This clearly brought to light that Maruti does listen to their customers.

And about the point regarding cancellationcharges. Thanks to the mail I have been informed that no cancellation charges will be deducted.

Thanks to all fellow bhpians

Great. Good to know that the problem has been resolved to your satisfaction.

And yes, Maruti customer service does listen to customers. They do have a good amount of control over most dealers & service centers. That is a big plus point of Maruti