[puneetakhouri]

Originally Posted by Apex1815

Sorry but you have not understood the core problem.
So I am not talking about Software implementation in Manufacturing, the major issue is the lack of skilled engineers in core manufacturing or civil engineering etc.

Maybe I am wrong and most probably I might be, but when a company like Ather has very few complaints and sorted fundamentals whereas the problems are pertaining mainly to a few specific companies trying to rush in their products early into the market, so that got me thinking whether is it really the absence of good engineers or technologies that is causing this. Today most companies are rushing in their half baked products into the market and sending OTA updates to fix it. Bridges are inaugurated without the electricity poles, lane markers being completed and all of this going on iteratively is the main problem IMO. But as you said, I might not have understood the core problem

[satyamkolhe]

Originally Posted by RunGaDa

The whole thing smacks of tooth less laws which are meant for consumer rights. Nothing can happen in India.
A company can earn crores and multi crores by selling the vehicles but when one customer does because of factory defect instead of making the company pay our hopeless system doesn’t care one bit and allows the company to operate. This is a systemic problem.
That is why we suck in manufacturing exports. We are no good.

The thing is, this is not even a new phenomenon. Since they have started selling scooters, customers have faced one problem or another.
I have seen a lot of cases on twitter where Ola has filed legal cases of defamation against consumers who complained or shared their ordeal online.This did suppress the negative news from coming out for some time but they did not improve their product and this negative PR was bound to happen eventually.

I distinctly remember a case where a lawyer had an accident on an Ola where his front fork arm broke while riding over a speed bump(this was a pretty common failure point in earlier Ola scooters) and Ola put the blame on the consumer for not properly using the scooter and filed a defamation lawsuit as well.
Where were consumer protection agencies back then.

Now that high profile individuals have started pointing this out and the consumer complaints have reached a high of 80,000 per month, the agencies have woken up. If this was a western country, they would've faced a class action lawsuits a few years ago. But in case of India, even with these many problems, I feel like Ola will get out of it unscathed on the regulatory front atleast.

Originally Posted by puneetakhouri

Today most companies are rushing in their half baked products into the market and sending OTA updates to fix it. Bridges are inaugurated without the electricity poles, lane markers being completed and all of this going on iteratively is the main problem IMO. But as you said, I might not have understood the core problem

I guess they misinterpreted the quote "Move fast, break things" which seems to have morphed into "Move fast, break everything!" (including their own products)

[rvd8732]

Some salt on the wound!

[chandu]

I dont know how many people here are in manufacturing industries, most of the posters seem to be in Software.
I have been in a manufacturing industry for a long time and our company supplies products to many of the 2W companies. The testing is very rigorous and every change has to be tested in multiple ways. I have heard that OLA took a very easy attitude to component quality and testing. I am not surprised at the number of issues that they are facing now. They took the aggressive marketing route to build their sales numbers and never seem to have built up the service network to support the number of products that have been sold. They bought an existing scooter design but did they get the original design team who knew how it was actually designed and how did they localize the component parts. Can they actually repair anything in their scooter or is it a case of replacing subsystems. Again, sounds like a company that has not planned for products failing in the field.

The comments by Bhavish are reflective of an immature CEO who should really be fired by the board and replaced by someone who has the experience of handling an automotive company and its related service issues. But, I doubt that this is ever going to happen.

I think if they do not make the required changes now, OLA will struggle by for some more time till the legacy 2W companies like Bajaj or TVS overtake them. OLA will try to pivot to something new as Bhavish' ego will be hurt as he is not the no1 anymore. There is no way in hell that he will be able to break into the 4W market with this attitude.
I do hope that changes will be made and a good operational guy will be appointed to fix these issues asap.
Hope this makes sense.

[jaysheth]

Originally Posted by puneetakhouri

Today most companies are rushing in their half baked products into the market and sending OTA updates to fix it. Bridges are inaugurated without the electricity poles, lane markers being completed and all of this going on iteratively is the main problem IMO. But as you said, I might not have understood the core problem

Unfortunately for many companies including Ola, the above is very true, but ... (please read on)

Originally Posted by puneetakhouri

The biggest problem IMO is using Methodologies like Agile, in non tech fields. Agile basically talks about iterative feature development and the concept of MVP.

...

These fields which can be life threatening for users should never be Agile unless the core of it is fundamentally strong and proven.

Agile is not to be blamed for this. Agile methodology never advocates "launching" an iteration and then refining it. That would be a disaster!

Instead, agile methodology advocates repetitive successive iterations so that there is something tangible built with each iteration which can be seen/touched, visualized, and the feedback can be factored in the next set of iterations. Rinse and repeat until you reach perfection! But the process never recommends or advocates "market launch" until the product is absolutely and fully market-ready. Hope that explains.

[RunGaDa]

Originally Posted by jaysheth

Agile is not to be blamed for this. Agile methodology never advocates "launching" an iteration and then refining it. That would be a disaster!

Instead, agile methodology advocates repetitive successive iterations so that there is something tangible built with each iteration which can be seen/touched, visualized, and the feedback can be factored in the next set of iterations. Rinse and repeat until you reach perfection! But the process never recommends or advocates "market launch" until the product is absolutely and fully market-ready. Hope that explains.

Absolutely. True Agile by the book is hard to achieve 100% but one can always get close.

[bmw_lover]

Just one question to everyone.

Which major automobile company in the world hasn't dished out faulty products and has had to do a major recall running into hundreds of thousands in numbers. That too multiple times? (BMW, Mercedes, Tata, Ford, Boeing) And mind you some of those companies are more than hundred years old. Why do consumer companies like LG, Samsung have a return policy based on manufacturing defect? What happened with Tesla when they launched?

Give the man some slack. Yes, manufacturing industry is tough to master but Bhavish is not some idiot, nor he is rogue. He will get through it. He may have rushed it, but he is not running away. neither the investors who have poured in money have free money to waste. It's not as if the IPO money have made good their years of losses. They must have pulled up Bhavish long ago.

i am from manufacturing industry. Trust me quality issues can arise time to time even if you have a perfect running system. Sometimes even vendors too play like cheap stakes.

As for his rant though he should have exercised better control, but I can understand people like Kunal can get to you sometimes. He has no right to publicly humiliate/ridicule the CEO, management or the company specially when he doesn't have any interest in the matter. Even if you are a disgruntled customer the first step is to complain through official channels. If the company doesn't respond properly only then social media shouting may be justified. It's not easy to build or operate a business. Kunal cannot attack the image and reputation of a CEO which is a work of 14 years especially when Kunal has no domain knowledge, no solutions to offer. He just had to inflate his ego feeling all powerful that he managed to rattle such a big company. Plus, long time since he went viral for something.

Due to his ignorant post, an already loss-making company will now have to spend more money because now they will be diverting their resources to manage social media, government and the regulatory authorities.

Easiest job in the world - Armchair critic. Btw Kunal, will you refund all the money i paid for your show tickets because you failed to make me laugh?

[doomketu]

Originally Posted by bmw_lover

Due to his ignorant post, an already loss-making company will now have to spend more money because now they will be diverting their resources to manage social media, government and the regulatory authorities.

But this situation could have been avoided if the product was sorted or if product had issues, the customer would trust the company to do the right thing. Seeing as OLA on fire and OLA issues have been happening for quite a while and still customer trust is not rock solid, thereby leading to 10k+ complaints, this is a cause for concern right ?

In the end whether it was a 'comedian' or a mango man who raised the issue, at least it got highlighted enough. Customers are already hamstrung when it comes to legal recourse . Our Own BHPIAN had to fight tooth and nail and reach to the GM of the franchise (and possibly tag the tata motors head) to get the restitution for their faulty Tata Safari.

This does not mean that we should be quite and let Bhavish Agarwal tweet like a Desi Elon musk. If his head is down and focused on improving the product, no one would care. Unfortunately much like Elon musk, his main traction is from Twitter.

Mods : If this is off topic or a diversion from the main thread, please feel free to delete this message.

[whitewing]

Originally Posted by bmw_lover

Just one question to everyone.
....
Due to his ignorant post, an already loss-making company will now have to spend more money because now they will be diverting their resources to manage social media, government and the regulatory authorities.

The monthly complaint inflow is apparently 80K, against a sum total of approx 6 odd lakhs ola scooters on the road.
If those numbers are true, I only wish that the Govt did not wait for viral post before taking notice of the matter.

The Bengaluru-based company has been receiving nearly 80,000 complaints every month, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation, and its service centres are struggling to keep pace. On some days, the number spikes to 6,000-7,000 a day, causing long delays, leaving service staff overwhelmed and customers frustrated, they said.

https://www.livemint.com/companies/o...572880202.html

The issue is not about Kamra or Bavish as individuals, rather about what rights an Indian consumer is entitled to and how the CEO of a publicly traded company behaves.

[Bluengel180]

As the owner of a Ola S1 pro. Two cents.

When the product launched, the promise was free at-home servicing, which then turned into free at service centre service. Which then turned into a mandatory push for the 3.5k annual service pack of you wanted any kind of service.

Service intervals are not clearly mentioned. The manual states that warranty is void if scheduled services are not done in a timely manner. The service staff maintains that service should only be done of there is something is wrong with the scooter and there is no scheduled services. This is dangerous IMO.

Even for the initial "free" service the waiting period ran into months. And with no clear job cards on what servicing or checks were done in the first place.

Once the subscription plans were announced talking with customer care was hopeless. All they did was push you to buy the annual care plan. If not there was no roadside assistance offered even if you were willing to pay for it. And dragging the scooter to the service centre was your responsibility, which is not easy when the scooter is dead and locks itself.

My scooter bricked itself once. Had to pay for "Ola care" to even get people to show up. Post pickup had to visit the service centre 7-8 times in a month to even get them start working on fixing it. Was later released and the issue apparently was fixed by a "software update" which could very well have been fixed if there was competent RSA.

Don't compare OLA to other players. Have owned every possible brand that is brickbatted by the general public and each of them is miles ahead of OLA when it comes to professionalism. The company literally reminds me of the Chinese phone market that was prevalent years ago. Where you just bought the product and knew that service wasn't an option. But in this case you aren't getting the products for cheap either.

I'm happy that this issue is viral now. And people defending Bhavish are part of the problem. No founder has the right to keep doing trail and errors especially when the customers are paying full price for your product.

[Gennex]

Originally Posted by bmw_lover

Just one question to everyone.

Which major automobile company in the world hasn't dished out faulty products and has had to do a major recall running into hundreds of thousands in numbers. That too multiple times? (BMW, Mercedes, Tata, Ford, Boeing) And mind you some of those companies are more than hundred years old. Why do consumer companies like LG, Samsung have a return policy based on manufacturing defect?

I remember other manufacturers recall the defective products and get some sort of repair done. Even with so many issues post production I don't see OLA recalling any.

Yes any new company can have problems, but should customer suffer from that?

[volkman10]

More details sought from Ola:

[volkman10]

ARAI to step up its investigation on Ola Electric even as industry circles raise voices for recall.

Recalls occur when there is a failure in the manufacturing process by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) or when a specific batch from a supplier does not meet quality assurance standards.

To ensure affected customers receive a fair resolution, the ARAI has instructed Ola Electric to submit documentation related to customer interactions and service data from all Ola Electric service centers.

The ARAI plans to enhance this audit by correlating it with customer complaints to pinpoint components that exhibit the highest failure rates and assess the measures taken by the OEM to address these issues.

Ola Electric which has sold around 705,346 units since 2021, noted in 2023 while addressing the front fork, one of the primary sources of customer complaints, "Typically, a recall is mandated when the failure rate exceeds a certain threshold, which in India is set at 2% of all vehicles sold."


Link:

[navin_v8]

Here's some more news about OLA electric doing rounds. Some customers are claiming OLA has hired Bouncers at OLA Service Centres to handle customers. Not sure if this is true, but if it is, then this will go down in history on how not to handle disgruntled customers.

https://www.freepressjournal.in/busi...ndle-customers

https://www.hindustantimes.com/trend...440201958.html

[greenhorn]

Originally Posted by navin_v8

Here's some more news about OLA electric doing rounds. Some customers are claiming OLA has hired Bouncers at OLA Service Centres to handle customers. Not sure if this is true, but if it is, then this will go down in history on how not to handle disgruntled customers.

https://www.freepressjournal.in/busi...ndle-customers

https://www.hindustantimes.com/trend...440201958.html

Sadly not really new in the industry

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/india...personnel.html (Creta owner gets beaten up by Hyundai dealership personnel)
https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/india...-customer.html (Landmark Jeep staff beat up a customer)
https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/india...utozone-5.html (I paid 5 Lacs to Fiat India to beat me up(JOSHI AUTOZONE))
https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/india...-customer.html (Video: Tata Motors Delhi dealer (Malwa) manhandles a customer)