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Old 24th August 2009, 14:36   #121
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Well Gagan .. I dont know what should you do right now .. rather than damage control.
I suggest get replaced whatever you can... get back your car with extended warranty.
Sell your car .. buy a Honda or whatever you feel like.

I dont see any logical and convinent solution.

I have very very rarely seen "Lenmons" being accepted in India nd replaced.
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Old 24th August 2009, 14:54   #122
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ajmat View Post
Why did you not go to the press unlike harish. You had good documentation
I had 2 options of going to the Press; before or after I got my money back - my sole motive after the incident happened.

I evaluated the former and decided against it. If I have strong documentation like I did, then I can get my money back without going to the Press. Going to the Press may cause misrepresentation of my case, complicate and hence delay my held up payment.

Once I got my money back, my course of action was to prevent such incidents in the future and I did the following:

1. Wrote to the Police Commissioner (Traffic) laying out the details of the case. The dealer was called to the RTO and asked to explain, upon which the dealer submitted there may have been an error. I told the RTO that they should be more careful about such forgery. The RTO was sympathetic and were willing to in fact cancel the registration of the vehicle - by which time the matter was settled.

2. Wrote to AutoMags (BSM, ACI, OD) saying that they should take note of this to make their readers aware. None of them cared to respond or publish. BSM recently (a couple of issues back) carried a letter highlighting my woes after I wrote again to Bijoy when he himself wrote that A*S*S of Skoda was screwed up

3. Folks from Bangalore Mirror called me up - unfortunately when I was tied up when they called and then did not call back later as agreed. I too dropped the matter as I was not confident enough of proper / accurate representation - something I was very very keen on.

4. Wrote to TAFE Chairman tell Mr Sivasailam that he may not know that the firm's reputation is getting tarnished, HDFC Insurance - that they should be careful insuring such lemons and HDFC Car Loan - the latter told me they had in fact known about the wrong doings of the dealer and were wary of them.

I felt I did enough after the incident and I make sure I use Team BHP - which helped me the most when I was under water - to make its members aware of the above.

Last but not the least I am in the boat with Harish who has most of my documentation for his initiative.

Cheers,

Last edited by diffsoft : 24th August 2009 at 15:00.
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Old 24th August 2009, 14:56   #123
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Originally Posted by gagananand View Post
the faulty part Mechatronics(part of the gearbox) has no predictable life. Its life can vary from 500 to 100000 Kms.
Yup, this is their standard line. Even when my Lighting Control Unit failed(in their garage), they said the same thing. Infact to prove this, the owner of the dealership told me that something in his Superb had failed within the first year of ownership too and "yeh sab hota rahta hai".
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Old 24th August 2009, 16:35   #124
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Its life can vary from 500 to 100000 Kms
Will that wash, even in Indian law?

I'm fairly sure they wouldn't get away with this in UK, where merchantable quality includes having a reasonable life, and I wouldn't have thought that mainland Europe would be any more lenient on manufacturers.

Either, Skoda thinks that the Indian consumer can be treated like crap, or they have been unlucky enough to employ senior people here who have established that corporate ethos.
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Old 24th August 2009, 17:17   #125
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Seeing so many threads related to mechanical failures like gearbox, clutch ,flywheel , and problems owing to fuel quality like injector gumming , fuel pump issue, knocking of engine etc

It clearly looks like Skoda has not tested there product for Indian road condition. Most are the parts are imported from Europe. These parts may be of good quality to run in European conditions read (Cleaner environment, better fuels, Lower ambient temperature)
India being a tropical country most of the engine/transmission components has to overcome high dust, temperature, humidity, poor road conditions leading to higher vibrations & low Octane fuel conditions in mind, this is typically know as tropicalization.
For example Skoda announced that due to bad fuel quality its fuel pumps & injectors are not able to perform to me its an absolutely ridicules excuse. All other cars run perfectly well on Indian fuels, what’s so special about Skoda ? Its not bad fuel but the design parameters of Skoda just don’t suit Indian road running conditions.
How come a company like Skoda has simply forgot basics before a car launch.
Wake up Skoda tropicalise your product and give better quality inside which is Value for money.
I feel my M800 is far more reliable than the Fabias and has never let me down.

I hope Sister VW is taking stock of situation before launching VW Polo.
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Old 24th August 2009, 21:20   #126
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I don't really buy the statement that DSG is not suitable for our market. What is it that they have to go through that they don't in Europe? A higher operating temperature maybe? They all run at high temperatures once the oil has warmed up. More stop start traffic? Traffic in Indian cities are sometimes less than what some of the biggest metros in the world suffer. Bad fuel quality? Nothing the gearbox has to deal with and the engine can be detuned as several other manufacturers have demonstrated.

I keep going to BMW as an example. Honda say their CRDi tech is too good for Indian diesel. Well, BMW makes some of the most advanced and downright brilliant diesels in the world. They have no problem running on Indian fuel. Similarly the cars they sell here are the ones they sell world over. How many horror stories do we hear about Beemers? We have enough of them on this forum that we will hear about widespread issues if they existed.

VW and their brands have no excuse for their pathetic state of affairs in India. Their problems are caused by continuous technical and managerial failures on investigating and engineering solutions for the Indian market. Their problems are due to a corrupt corporate environment right from the top management to the free running dealers. How many car makers DEFEND dealerships installing fake parts on cars? Any company in the west will drop them like burning coal and then sue them for defamation of the company name.

Bah, I'm too annoyed to write any more.
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Old 24th August 2009, 21:49   #127
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Another major issue is with the high headed attitude of skoda employees. They know that a superb will be bought by a corporate or a HNI customer. Still the attitude they keep is awful. They just dont care about the customer and reply to your mails.

They are not worried about their reputation. If they are reading all this they should be worried that how many prospective customers they would be loosing.

They deserve this
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Old 24th August 2009, 22:19   #128
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Yes, ImmortalZ, it is an utter nonsense. Many of my London journeys would have involved as much, if not more, stop-start traffic than I encounter here in Chennai. If I took my car to the shops on a Saturday afternoon, it could take me over an hour to do just one mile sometimes.

Whatever, if they sell a car into a given environment and market, it is their absolute responsibility to make sure that it is fit for that purpose.
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Old 24th August 2009, 22:42   #129
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom View Post
Yes, ImmortalZ, it is an utter nonsense. Many of my London journeys would have involved as much, if not more, stop-start traffic than I encounter here in Chennai. If I took my car to the shops on a Saturday afternoon, it could take me over an hour to do just one mile sometimes.

Whatever, if they sell a car into a given environment and market, it is their absolute responsibility to make sure that it is fit for that purpose.
I agree with you but o my asking them what if this failure had happened on high speed on a highway more so while overtaking. As they did not have an answer they initially said this is none of their concern. On writing repeated mails they wrote back that following emergency procedures the car can be steered to corner. This damn thing went kaput. would not start. even they were not able to start it for 10 days. How do they expext to take a car to a corner of which the engine does not start, gears is stuck in parking mode and steering does not move. Even they towed it on a trailer crane.
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Old 24th August 2009, 22:56   #130
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They told you, effectively, that they are not interested in the basic safety and road-worthiness of the vehicles that they sell?

It gets worse.
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Old 24th August 2009, 23:16   #131
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom View Post
Will that wash, even in Indian law?

I'm fairly sure they wouldn't get away with this in UK, where merchantable quality includes having a reasonable life, and I wouldn't have thought that mainland Europe would be any more lenient on manufacturers.

Either, Skoda thinks that the Indian consumer can be treated like crap, or they have been unlucky enough to employ senior people here who have established that corporate ethos.
The position is the same in Indian law.

Quote:
Originally Posted by gagananand View Post
I agree with you but o my asking them what if this failure had happened on high speed on a highway more so while overtaking. As they did not have an answer they initially said this is none of their concern. On writing repeated mails they wrote back that following emergency procedures the car can be steered to corner. This damn thing went kaput. would not start. even they were not able to start it for 10 days. How do they expext to take a car to a corner of which the engine does not start, gears is stuck in parking mode and steering does not move. Even they towed it on a trailer crane.
I have said this many, many pages ago - the car showed symptoms of electronic or electric systems failure from the first days itself - sensor breakdown, ICE breakdown etc. They kept looking at the sub-systems instead of looking at the whole damn electricals + electronics i.e. they behaved like quacks and treated the symptoms not the disease. Finally the car froze (LOL how I love the Padminis, Ambys, Heralds etc. of our world - no electronics = no problems).

I do not understand why the gear box is being fiddled with (replaced) now - just so that the new one can fail too? Also irrelevant (IMHO) are discussions on RON of petrol and adulteration, unleaded vs. leaded etc. bad fuel cannot cause a multi-organ failure in a car!

If the engine, gearbox and (power) steering locked up - the common factor connecting all three is the .....yes - ELECTRONICS & ELECTRICALS! If the car froze when at speed again the suspect is Electricals and Electronics (controls). Unless somebody figured that the electronic brain of the car or its nerve centre was in the gear-box, they might as well leave the gear box alone. Of course, if the DSG box was malfunctioning from day one and sent wrong signals to the ECU and other systems to foul them, then replacement of the rogue DSG box would remove the cause for the electric/electronic failure.

Cheers,
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Old 24th August 2009, 23:59   #132
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Quote:
The position is the same in Indian law.
I think you've explained this to me before <Blush>
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Old 25th August 2009, 00:00   #133
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Well, I am worrying that, what can we do to improve skoda's ***.

As, our one big attempt (initiated by GTO) on behalf of HarishV, has not that effective.

Please guys put your suggestions, so that, other skoda owners will not suffer like this.
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Old 25th August 2009, 06:21   #134
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Complain in detail to Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) and request them to cancel the homologation certificate of Superb. Even if ARAI do not cancel the certificate, they are bound to ask Skoda some uncomfortable questions.

Also log a case in consumer court, and send your complaint to all major news papers and car magazines. Generate as much negative publicity as you can. Contact all news channels and car shows. Hopefully it will bring about some results and let us see what happens.

Last edited by akj53 : 25th August 2009 at 06:23.
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Old 25th August 2009, 11:00   #135
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I have been reading through this thread since the past few days and to put it mildly, I am

Why is Skoda on a suicide mission?! How can we help gagananand and other owners stuck with lemons? Considering that Skoda doesn't listen and feels that there is nothing wrong with what they are doing, I feel there is very little that we can do to help Skoda customers.

I agree with gagananand. Even if the car is put back on the road, how much confidence will the owner have on a brand new car that died on the road and whose dealers took 10 days to restart it?!

Quote:
Originally Posted by akj53 View Post
send your complaint to all major news papers and car magazines. Generate as much negative publicity as you can. Contact all news channels and car shows. Hopefully it will bring about some results and let us see what happens.
Newspapers wouldn't care about a helpless car owner. At most, they will print the story on page 10 in some corner and forget about it. Auto magazines? They love Skoda's. One of the magazine chose the Fabia as their COTY. Why will they help? News channels are useless. They wouldn't care unless you are SRK. Even a punture in your car will then be breaking news.

Last edited by amit : 25th August 2009 at 11:01.
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