My wife and I took my German princess to the 3M Car Care dealership in Andheri W. I had taken a prior appointment, and had a good feeling about the manager Parag. We had to wait for a few minutes because he was attending to another customer. We looked around the workshop, and saw mostly luxury cars. In fact if it weren't for an Ertiga, my Polo would have felt very out of place.
We bought the Polo in June last year, and have been guilty of completely neglecting its upkeep. It hadn't received any attention other than the daily car wash. There were white hard water stains in every crevice, the alloys were really dirty, and the body had swirl marks galore. After taking a look, Parag recommended the Paint Sealant program. At Rs 5,800, it would have burnt a smallish hole in my wallet, so I opted for Powershine New. It burnt a hole too, but a slightly smaller one at Rs. 4,200. He also gave us a small demo on the hood which left us suitably impressed.
We dropped the car at 1 pm, and Parag said it would be ready by 5 pm. So the two of us walked down to the nearby Infinity Mall for lunch and a movie (and what a waste of 700 bucks was 'Holiday'). We were done by 6 pm, and Parag called to say that the car is ready. So we went down in eager anticipation, since he had promised us that she would be in showroom condition.
They say expectation leads to disappointment, and they say so for a reason. We were five feet away from the car when we realized that 3M does car detailing without attention to, um, detail. So here goes:
- The alloys were far from clean. The circular slots where the bolts go were all dirty.
- The chrome on the VW badge (both front and back) was not clean. I had expected them to be gleaming. The hard water stains were also not all gone.
- The area around the door handles was really dirty. When I suggested that they pull back the handles and clean, Parag looked at me as if I was a genius. Not very inspiring.
- The space between the beading and the window glass was not clean. I could still see dried bird poo.
- The honeycomb grill in between the front fog lamps was also not clean.
- There was dirty spots at a number of places on the body.
The only silver lining is that Parag personally supervised a group of 3 "boys" who addressed all the above points. But it ended up taking more than half an hour, and my wife started grumbling, "What were they doing in the five hours that they had the car for?"
One last observation: Given our experience, any customer oriented manager would have made some effort to make amends, be it a discount or a voucher for the next time. There was no such effort. So not surprisingly, I am NOT going back. A new dealership has opened at SEEPZ. It is bigger and much closer to my place. Based on the reviews, I am going to give it a shot.