Team-BHP - Manzil Motors uses my Royal Enfield for transporting wheels!

Quote:

Originally Posted by MHG (Post 3949350)

Hi Deep,
I see a lot of people bashing you or reacting sarcastically to your decision to sell your motorcycle. I would like to stand up and support you fully.
!

I have read the various comments, but I must admit i certainly see your point of view. If the experience spoils your enjoyment, why would you continue?

Nothing as drastic as yours, but I had something similar some years ago when I bought a laptop. It was a pretty high end one. After about a week it gave me all sorts of problems. Took it back to the shop, they were very apologetic and fixed it for me within a day. Week later same thing.

Again, they were very nice and in all honesty, to date I can’t tell for sure what the problem was, it could have been the laptop, or the applications or some of the programs I put on it. Who knows. Anyway, they were very sorry, very helpful and promised to fix asap.

But I told them, this thing is just a huge disappointment. And I’ll never trust it again, I’ll never really enjoy it again. The manager came, I told him my story and disappointment. He said; I completely understand, I would feel the same. He offered me a full refund or I could exchange for any other model laptop and settle any price difference. I choose a different laptop an paid a little extra.

I was so happy on the way home that I got rid of the damn thing and very happy with the excellent support of this particular PC shop.

I had researched this laptop carefully, I had been to several shops before I made my final choice. I was excited when one Saturday morning I set off to go and buy it. I was really looking forward to fiddling endlessly with it. But then it becomes a very disappointing experience all together.

The best solution is, if necessary and possible, cut your losses and move on to something that hopefully will give you more and better satisfaction.

So, I do sympathise with your story and your choices. Good for you!

If you want the contacts of some reliable RE-mechanics, but not official RE workshops in the Delhi area I’ll gladly help out.

Jeroen

Quote:

Originally Posted by sam_sant2005 (Post 3947457)

A careful search on this very forum will reveal workshop folks taking joyrides on a Audi Q7 when it had come in for service, the only way owner identified this is via cc tv, or the police caught the joyriders, I don't remember, and it happened in Mumbai not a small town. What is Mitsubishi when compared to Audi? Lets not classify brands as being cheap or expensive based on how Indian workers working in these companies behave. I am sorry, this cheapness is inherit to few of the Indian worker class, who will not hesitate to cheat and loot, all under the garb of being poor and exploited. And mind you not all of them, a few bad pennies here and there spoiling the entire barrel.
Do I agree with people saying let it go? Of course not, no one has the right to misuse my personal property when it has gone for servicing in good faith. I would ensure that the worker/his manager are sacked, if needed I would go to the top management of RE for this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sam_sant2005 (Post 3947457)

Hold on hold on hold on. I am sad to hear this and I admit it hurts. When you say that this doesn't happen when you give your Pajero, it makes sense because those dealers are big and they don't usually need to do this. They have transport cars and they are much more organized and more under pressure from the Company as such to provide quality service.

However you should agree to the fact that the Indian motorcycle franchisees and smaller players. They fight hard to make both ends meet. I don't support their fraudulous activities but still, I beg you to forgive Manzil and do not end your biking because of this reason. Yes you should take this up, fight with RE however please do not quit biking.

Bottomline is that, yes lots of things happen during a bike service, however I don't think all of those dealers really intend to break a motorcyle. They might do things ranging from running errands, oil frauds, steal petrol and stuffs but I don't think all of those will really cut short anyone's motorcycle life substantially. I am saying this because I have been using motorcycles for past 20 years now ranging from Bajaj Sunny, Kinetic Honda, Bajaj 4S, Honda Activa, Pulsar 150, Pulsar 220, Bullet CI 350, Karizma, ZMR and now NS200. All of my bikes have kept rolling, except for few niggles here and there. Hence I beg you, ignore these and ride on !

And lastly, I always tell my friends - In these days of bad service, bad fuel quality, cheating in fuel quantity, if our vehicles are doing this well with x amount of mileage, imagine how good our vehicles are :)

We cant say that this doesn't happen with cars. Recently one of my friend in Pune gave his Polo for insurance repair work as he had some minor damages. It turned out that his car had additional dents on the door when he got his car back.

And in my case, while servicing my car, for filling up 4 litres of oil for diesel car, they filled 1 litre of branded oil bought from the store and rest of 3 litres were taken from some barrel from the workshop. This happened in front of me. After I complained to the service team, they said its the practice for everyone.

Both of this incidence happened with the same dealer.

Learning is its worth to spend 1/2day or what evertime to be with our vehicle during servicing.

Thanks MHG and Jeroen. I was travelling and didn't get a chance to respond.

That's exactly my rationale as you mentioned Jeroen. Since I have realised that the ownership of a Royal Enfield entails dealing with cheap service centres and that the brand allows such practices to become rampant, I am better off not dealing with them. I don't want to spend my energy looking for the less corrupt service centre.

I wrote to Siddharth Lall and to RE Customer Service. None of them bothered to respond as noted as an expectation in my first post. After all Manzil Motors is selling motorcycles. No big deal if they use customer motorcycles for errands. That bike is already sold.

The reason why I call RE a cheap brand is simple and exactly on the lines of what MHG has written. When I pay for a motorcycle I am paying for an experience and an equipment. BOTH. If RE didn't void warranty if I got the bike serviced at a place other than their authorised service centres I would know what to expect. But if they force me to utilise the services of the service centres to avail warranty as a direct corollary of buying their product then they are responsible for ensuring that my experience all through is as promised and expected including at the service centres. Since they don't do it and don't even respond to customer emails, they prove themselves to be a cheap brand - at least in my view.

Why people have been sarcastic is also perhaps easy for me to understand. I didn't seek validation of my decision to sell the motorcycle from anyone. My post was limited to seeking opinion on an effective recourse and some folks did advise me to write to RE Customer Service and to Sid Lall. I had shared my decision to sell the motorcycle and some folks commented on that. It was perfectly acceptable till some chose to become sarcastic.

If I had run away from a situation earlier, adopted an escapist attitude and didn't take a stand or try to find a solution and later rationalised it by calling it a mature thing to do, anyone who deviated from that path would in certain situations make me feel bad about my weakness/past action. I would react to that in a way that justifies my accepting injustice to me. I understand this which is why I didn't react to sarcasm. As MS_Auto noted "when it comes to our own mates, everything is 'chalta hai'".

If Audi allows misuse of customer vehicles then to me even Audi is a cheap brand. Good I bought a BMW and not an Audi. I know for sure that Maruti terminated a dealership on allegations of overcharging. To me Maruti is not a cheap brand. The price of a vehicle alone doesn't make a brand cheap or expensive in my view- its the overall package that one gets including customer satisfaction. RE is not for me as I expect more than a vehicle when I buy one.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MHG (Post 3949350)

If they don't, they are going to continue living upto their reputation as the cheapest and lowest quality brand of motorcycles in India, only in the market because of extensive amounts of hype coupled with the fact that nobody else makes such retro/classic looking bikes or pseudo cruisers and they thus live competition free.

I mentioned to the owner of Manzil Motors that I made the mistake of buying a cheap brand. He said RE is not a cheap brand and it sells good numbers. My answer was exactly on the lines noted by you above. RE sells because of lack of options and some nostalgic value.

If the amount of time, energy and resources RE spends on 'RIDES' was spent on improving customer experience they would do much better. I am agnostic to whether they do better or shut shop. RE definitely do not tick all my boxes and I am happy to get rid of them.

Cheers

Deep

Hello Deep,
After reading all the points given by fellow BHPians here is what I have to say. This incident is really disheartening for you and it's a shame that many service centres do malpractices with our hard earned rides. But even though after owners seeing that, a drive or two in their beloved ride is enough to love the ride again. The same has happened for you and it has penetrated way too deep in your heart that you have lost the entire trust on your bike within it's 1000 kms journey with you. If have lost the trust on the bike, it's better to sell it away. Why to have something in hand that you don't trust. It's human psychology that you'll always recollect this incident and this incident has deeply ruined the love for your bike. So if you don't trust it anymore time to post it on the classifieds.