[lal79]

Amigos automated car wash facility is located inside the Technopark campus, Trivandrum. Before using their service I checked with my friends who have already used their service and got a nice feedback.

Went and gave my Rapid for water wash and interior cleaning on Thursday, 16th October 2014 in the afternoon. Automated washing facility was not available due to some issue with the machine/power failure and hence only manual wash was available. I was promised delivery of the car by 5.30 pm. I could go and collect the car only by 6.15 pm. Went and checked the car and it was cleaned properly. I took the car and came back home. I didn't take the car next day as I was not well and didn't go anywhere. Only on Saturday morning on day light that I found this disaster. Three of my AC vents were broken!!!

Centre vents

Close Up of Centre-Left

Close Up Centre-Right

Driver Side

The guy who cleaned the interior thoroughly cleaned the AC vents and managed to break them. Mistakes can happen. How on earth they made the same mistake on three vents . A normal human will be cautious after the first one. What is making me furious is they didn't even mentioned about this while delivery. Mistake on my part is I couldn't spot this at the time of delivery due to lack of light. Only on Saturday when I was adjusting the airflow I noticed this.

They broke the pins at the bottom of the blades which holds them at their position. So even if I remove the vents I won't be able to fix them. Now I need to replace these vents which I am sure won't be available at Skoda service centre. And I am sure that its going to cost me a fortune.

My request to fellow BHPians who use this facility in Technopark is to be very careful and give specific instruction on not touching the AC vents.

[a4anurag]

Originally Posted by lal79

And I am sure that its going to cost me a fortune.

My request to fellow BHPians who use this facility in Technopark is to be very careful and give specific instruction on not touching the AC vents.

I wouldn't visit this wash at all after such an incident.

I still suggest you to contact the incharge there and show him the damage done. If they are interested in business and good customer in flows then better they accept it and pay for the damages. Do give it a try once.

Anurag.

[lal79]

Originally Posted by a4anurag

I wouldn't visit this wash at all after such an incident.

I still suggest you to contact the incharge there and show him the damage done. If they are interested in business and good customer in flows then better they accept it and pay for the damages. Do give it a try once.

Anurag.

Sure Anurag. I am going to give it a try tomorrow. Will update the outcome tomorrow.

[jkdas]

Had a bad one last week but I thought I will give it a pass since service was ok. I am posting this coz you said the interior cleaner did it.

I keep few notes of 10's in someplace in car so that I can give it to toll booth guys when I need to. I am so used to that location that I can pull out money give from that spot when the need arises. When I gave for service, i forgot to take the money roll. I found that it was missing the next day when I reached the toll booth.

I did go and ask but they said it might have got sucked in by the vacuum and to come by eve to confirm. I did go later that day so that they can check vacuum but their interior guy denied seeing such money. I just walked off

Same guy and hence this post. My mistake of keeping the money but ...

[Shreyans_Jain]

The AC vents of The Polo/Vento/Rapid are notorious for being fragile. Many instances of them getting broken during cleaning have been reported. IIRC, there was a thread on TBHP itself, regarding a scam at VW dealers where the SAs would allegedly tug the vent hard during 'checking' and cause it to break, and then show it to unsuspecting customers to make them buy new vents.

Three out of four of your vents are broken and the cleaning seems thorough. Perhaps this is what has happened in your case.(hope it was not deliberate)

Still, feel bad for you.

[lal79]

Originally Posted by jkdas

Had a bad one last week but I thought I will give it a pass since service was ok. I am posting this coz you said the interior cleaner did it.

Thanks for sharing this. We should stay away from this place I think

Originally Posted by Shreyans_Jain

The AC vents of The Polo/Vento/Rapid are notorious for being fragile. Many instances of them getting broken during cleaning have been reported. ........Still, feel bad for you.

Me too heard about this scam. But this incident happend in a car wash place in Trivandrum. Not in a Skoda dealership. Unless otherwise this car wash centre has a tieup of some kind with the local Skoda dealership this won't be deliberate.

But this is not the first time they are breaking AC vents. When I told this incident to a friend he mentioned a similar incident happend in same place. Once they broke 3 vents of a BMW.

[thoma]

Originally Posted by lal79

But this is not the first time they are breaking AC vents. When I told this incident to a friend he mentioned a similar incident happend in same place. Once they broke 3 vents of a BMW.

Originally Posted by jkdas

Had a bad one last week but I thought I will give it a pass since service was ok. I am posting this coz you said the interior cleaner did it.

Originally Posted by lal79

A normal human will be cautious after the first one. What is making me furious is they didn't even mentioned about this while delivery.

So this guys has proven to be trigger happy. He needs to be behind bars (err..thrown out of the service station). And the management seems to take little notice. Is there any other way they get the message clear?

[Shreyans_Jain]

Originally Posted by lal79

Me too heard about this scam. But this incident happend in a car wash place in Trivandrum. Not in a Skoda dealership. Unless otherwise this car wash centre has a tieup of some kind with the local Skoda dealership this won't be deliberate.

I should have phrased better. What I meant was that the cleaning fellow (a poor guy trying to make his living) wanted to do a good job with your car but ended up applying a bit too much force on the fragile vents.

Lets face it, these flap type vent adjusters are not the sturdiest of designs. I have had at least one of them broken on practically all of my cars at some point of time. And those things happen to be particularly delicate on these VAG cars.

The rotary type vents which are so commonly found in hatchbacks nowadays are quite robust in comparison.

Its bad, but you gotta live with it.

And if its a recurring issue with the place, maybe its time to give them some genuine feedback so that the concerned person can be trained better.

[DRIVE_ADDICT]

Even my bro's Polo had these fragile vents broken twice. Once after service, now I came to know about a scam in this thread . The other time, it just gave up so easily, when my bro was adjusting the vents. Now we dare not touch those vents. Don't know why VAG group left these fragile vents on an otherwise good quality interior.

[RohanDheman]

Originally Posted by lal79

I am sure won't be available at Skoda service centre. And I am sure that its going to cost me a fortune.

You are right on both of this. My niece broke the left vent on my Laura. Took Skoda 6 weeks to arrange for the vent and then the shock pricing: damn thing costs INR 2500!

See if you can source this from ebay and get it done from a FNG!

Rohan

[paragsachania]

BHPian Mighty_Lothar too faced similar issue at one of the washing centers here in Bangalore when the left side vent was broken for his Vento.

Seems like the vents are way too delicate for the machines to handle and hence so many instances?

[govigov]

To add to this thread, do not feel pity for the workers there. The cleaners always have the ICE blasting on a near high volume while working on any of the customer cars, (with just ignition and not with engine running) I have even asked them why they do it, they just smiled.

One of my colleague gave his grey figo for service and the bonnet was left with a faded spot. On questioning, they used toothpaste (which is fine) to clean the bonnet and it just created a permanent botched up spot. He had to give his car for repainting to get rid of that ugly spot.

Lesson learned, never to go to them and the management turns a blind eye to the quality and the workman ship of their service. It is a waste of time talking to them about this. Just don't go there any more.

[lal79]

Sorry for not updating the thread. I was busy with office work and didn't want to reply in a hurry.

Monday, 21-Oct-2014 itself I went to the shop. But the owner was not there and I didn't want to speak to the employees. I got the owners phone number and contacted him and explained the whole incident. He started telling like they work with almost all types/brands of cars their. This is very unlikely to happen in his shop as the employees are well trained and experienced. He assured me that he will come to the shop the very next day and will check the CCTV recordings to find anything unusual and will contact me.

Next day in the afternoon he contacted me and requested me to come to the shop. I went there and he came and inspected the damage and told me that he went through the CCTV recordings and couldn't find anything suspicious. Me too had a look at the CCTV recordings. I couldn't find anything suspicious. Owner was not ready to accept the fact that this incident occurred in his shop.

In my opinion, there are two possibilities. The person who cleaned the interior was so carless in his cleaning activity and broke the vents and he didn't even notice that. But chances of this happening is very rare because unless until someone put their finger inside the vent and try to rub it hard it will not break. If this happens the person will definitely come to know about that.

Second possibility is that they have tampered with the CCTV recording. Why I am forced to think this way is that they have got almost 24 hours between me complaining about this incident and the owner meeting me and showing the recording. Owner himself told me that he came in the morning and was going through the complete recording and noted down the places where my car appears in the recording. So he would have deleted those AC vent cleaning portions.

The final dialogue from the owner was this. "It is difficult for me to believe that this incident occurred here. But still, if you believe so I can do something to compensate". I got really irritated at this point because he was talking as if he was doing me some favour. I told him that me or anybody in my friend circle will never come to this place and came out.

Later I called up Skoda service centre and checked the price for 3 AC vents. Its Rs. 3000 + fixing charges. I am planning to fix it along with the 45K service.

[condor]

IMO, the CC-TV footage was an excuse. I dont think the CCTV would cover work inside the car - and definitely not close up enough to show work on the vents.

[rajeev k]

Is it that the cleaning activity done on the inside of the car and especially, cleaning of the dash is recorded in its entirety. Even the guy who did the cleaning would not have noticed it as usually personnel who are employed in such joints are all casual type workers without any experience in the automobile field. Better not to take the car to similar unprofessional centers.