[ahuja365]

Hey venkat you just hit the bulls eye and i must appreciate your efforts in bringing the consumer points to the notice of the company.Your point is absolutely correct and in line with exactly what i think.Way to go Venkat and keep up the good work.

[reignofchaos]

Originally Posted by R2D2

Dude, I for one find this gentleman's attitude towards Indians quite offensive. The Hyundai person should understand that in Europe and the US, people look rather disdainfully at a Korean car. In my time in Sweden, I saw very few Jap cars and no Korean cars at all. All the others were European, primarily Swedish (naturally) and German. Tell yr Korean pal to wake up and smell the coffee. India is one of the largest markets for his products. He needs to listen to the customer no matter what his car maintenance habits may be.

There are also some characteristics about Koreans that we Indians would find quite disgusting (eating dog meat for one), so let him not get his snooty nose in the air about integrity, punctuality et al.

Sorry about the rant people.

Cheers!

To add to what you said, whats the basic USP of Korean products over everything else?

They survive purely on price points that is it. So they should not be crying hoarse about bargains anyway. If they didn't offer one, they'd not exist.

If a competing Japanese and a Korean product were priced the same anywhere in the world, the Korean stuff wouldn't sell at all.
The attitude of this particular person reminds me of a pot calling a kettle black .

On a personal note, the only piece of Korean equipment I've bought in the last few years is a Microwave Oven and that is the only thing at my place that has ever given me trouble.

[SS-Traveller]

Originally Posted by R2D2

Dude, I for one find this gentleman's attitude towards Indians quite offensive.

If his attitude was offensive, what do you say about the British and the Americans' attitude towards us in our own country?

[YC.BALENO.CHD]

I guess Hyundai would not had taken us for granted had Santros n Accents not clicked in our country.And whats wrong arguing about discounts?If other manufacturers (Maruti Suzuki) is offering better/similar products at more competent prices why should we be deprived of the right to ask other manufacturers to price the products more competently?Its true that offering ABS/Airbags in a hatch does increase its price by a fair margin and can kill the market for the car,but doing it just like MarutiSuzuki who offer such safety features as optional on ESTILO/WAGONR/ASTAR/SWIFT wont hurt hyundai alot.Even Maruti was dismayed of the lack of takers for the fully loaded swift but finally they kept the model and they still are offering atleast ABS on diesel swift.And the kind of attitude Hyundai is portraying towards us sooner or later they will cease to enjoy the brand image they are famous for in our country.

[loving_alaap]

What a good mail, to Hundai.

I wish, somebody from the top management read this mail.

I agree that because of success & goodwill of Santro / Accent, they are taking Indian people as granted.

practically speaking they have a little competition (in terms of build quality & problem free driving)

So, i think they may even increase the price of i20, i10 if the response is good. (just like Maruti has increased prices of Dzire 3-4 times after launch).

[alpha1]

Errr, I think I fail to see reason in this Korean gentleman's comments.

How is the Indians "begging" for discount linked to the point there?
If you introduce a car with more features and better specs or something different from usual stuff, you definitely can command higher price for it.

How would that Korean explain the presence of Safari DiCOR and TCIC together. The presence of nonCRDE and CRDE Bolero, Alto 1.1 and Alto 800, Swift and Swift dezire.

Don't ppl pay (or paid in past) premium for some of these products?

[raul]

The letter writing effort is laudable and we need to extend this loop to other manufacturers and here Honda is particularly guilty of delivering a half package with the new city at full costs. The undersized tyres, leave other stuff is an especially glaring omission for a 118bhp car.

I think with the new set of cars, i20, Linea, City expectations on this forum have increased dramatically, and hopefully the manufacturers will get the message.

For the i20 Hyundai should really have launched with the 1.4, or least had it as an option, now at 6.36 plus for the 1.2 unless you are in low tax zone state, there is little space for pricing the 1.4 and 1.4 crdi reasonably in these states. So its difficult to understand Hyundai thinking behind this, surely they have thought about the 1.4 petrol and crdi launch and pricing. However I do feel they are delivering some amount of value for 5.59 lakhs ex factory with Asta for instance, that's quite loaded compared to the competition.

For Fiat Linea one can understand somewhat because of their previous reputation for making fuel thirsty cars and thus the over eagerness to come up with economical engines that build a new reputation for Fiat cars and negate that perception/reputation of bad average.

For Honda its totally inexplicable, this need to cut costs on the interiors, alloys, climate control and worse of all deliver puny tyres on a 9 plus car, unless they are overconfident of Indian consumers overlooking these and choosing the badge, which is ultimately taking consumers for granted here. Ideally companies would have their *** handed to them by competition who would plug the gaps quickly but that's difficult to see in the current context

[JVH]

Originally Posted by alpha1

Errr, I think I fail to see reason in this Korean gentleman's comments.

How is the Indians "begging" for discount linked to the point there?
If you introduce a car with more features and better specs or something different from usual stuff, you definitely can command higher price for it.

How would that Korean explain the presence of Safari DiCOR and TCIC together. The presence of nonCRDE and CRDE Bolero, Alto 1.1 and Alto 800, Swift and Swift dezire.

Don't ppl pay (or paid in past) premium for some of these products?

Exactly! This is how I felt after reading the post.
How are discounts related to lack of features?

[benbsb29]

Originally Posted by R2D2

There are also some characteristics about Koreans that we Indians would find quite disgusting (eating dog meat for one), so let him not get his snooty nose in the air about integrity, punctuality et al.

Are you implying that we Indians are a punctual lot?! I wouldnt agree.

Send out an invitation for a party at your place at lets say 8PM. You'd notice people trickle in only post 9PM. Thats how much we value time.

Ofcourse, knowing this attitude of ours, the Indian host also expects his guests to trudge in only post 9, but what about a foreigner who also received the same invitation?

I know i am going off-topic, but this is what i strongly feel about.

Appreciate that the Koreans have reached where they are thanks to their dedication and efforts. We should learn to understand constructive criticism.

[condor]

benbsb29 : Appreciate that the Koreans have reached where they are thanks to their dedication and efforts. We should learn to understand constructive criticism.

Constructive criticism, yes. But these comments from the said Korean gentleman, coming on the back of earlier discussions about Korean high-handed-ness & some possible arrogance give a very different picture.

[benbsb29]

Originally Posted by condor

Constructive criticism, yes. But these comments from the said Korean gentleman, coming on the back of earlier discussions about Korean high-handed-ness & some possible arrogance give a very different picture.

I didnt refute that. I was focussing more on the point raised about our punctuality.

[VSG12777]

Thanks for all your comments guys. Really appreciate it. Yes I somehow felt very strongly that I should get these views across to Hyundai and I did. Now the next step would be to get the same text across to the higher ups in Hyundai India.

Checking on the net, I am unable to get the contact details of any higher ups in Hyundai India. Can any one of you help ?

Also, now that I have started this message sending thing to car manufacturers, maybe someone else can take the initiative to do the same kind of thing to a different company like Honda / Toyota in India. The thing is these guys don't have any cars costing less than 8 lacs (except maybe for the base model Innova or Corolla). Hyundai on the other hand has cars from about 3 lacs onwards. I'd say their volumes are much better than Honda and Toyota.

But, Toyota and Honda being such reputed Japanese companies, should offer better deals to the Indian customers - in terms of price, features etc.

Quality seems to be a big issue with the new Honda City and I agree 100%. At the auto show in Chennai in Jan 2009, I sat in the new City and explored it and was quite disappointed - shocking really. No alloys, narrow tyres, no climate control etc on a car costing upwards of 9 lacs. They couldn't have done it worse.

Maybe we can get together and give these manufacturers some bad publicity by comparing the features on the same cars overseas ? Like the City in Malaysia / Thailand, the Innova in Thailand / Malaysia and of course the respective Hyundai models in Australia / UK. Ideas from you all on this are welcome.

Let us try from our side to bring about some change in the Indian auto industry. Who knows - other people nationwide may join in to support too. I am sure we'd get lots of support from thousands of BHPians on the forum.

Warm regards,
Venkat

[narayan]

lets not vent our frustration on the Korean gentleman ( at this rate i think we might start discussing whether he was indeed a gentleman or not )

thats not the point - now that people are giving feedback, lets see whether this korean gent and his company see the opportunity and launch such cars.

[kb100]

Koreans and Italians - both have the worst posbble attitudes that I have come across.. Terribly arrogant and full of themselves!! They have this hopeless snooty attitude! Horrible people!!

[extreme_torque]

Originally Posted by phamilyman

That they don't have the option (whether it'll be ridiculously priced due to no economies of scale is another issue) is definitely an omission.

But then, venting is good. Kudos on your sense of initiative, though.

No economies of scale.... the i20 is manufactured here for the world market and hence there is no question on that, it is very much there.

Infact I wonder if Hyundai is spending more by running a seperate assembly line for Indian i20's by omitting basic cheap features in terms of logistics and handling costs.