[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

It seems that Zoom cars have a front-line of support that says only "we will call you back in 15 minutes."

What use is that? None at all. Can't these people apply some common sense to their procedures?

Apparently, there's no such thing as customer service in India, at least not for common-man stuff - not that premium brands don't have horror stories - and it's all to do with the total absence of consumer protection of any kind. No business does ANYTHING out of goodwill or a sense of responsibility anymore, the only tune they dance to is strict regulation. For similar money I paid Zoomcar for a nightmare, I could get a 5-star rental experience abroad. But here we're expected to pay first-world money for lousy third-world service? Why?

The gentleman who called me to 'make it up to me' was polite and empathetic, but that's besides the point. Zoomcar ruined my vacation, put me through a really pathetic experience, not to mention cost me a bunch of money in other bookings and played havoc with my work schedule. They think offering me a free ride (presumably in another stink-house piece of junk they call 'perfectly good condition cars') will make up for all that?

Principles of Indian customer service:
1. Take the customer's money.
2. Give them your worst, or just don't care about meeting service levels.
3. If/when they complain, harass the hell out of them.
4. If they make enough noise or seem like an influencer who can hurt your business, offer some freebies to 'make up'.
5. Rinse and repeat with the next customer.

Bottom line: If a customer has to escalate repeatedly just to get what he's paid for, you've already kissed your business goodbye.

[audioholic]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

It seems that Zoom cars have a front-line of support that says only "we will call you back in 15 minutes."

What use is that? None at all. Can't these people apply some common sense to their procedures?

Exactly. Last year when I was stuck with a broken down scorpio, every time I called them, the standard reply was we will call you back in 15 minutes. Everytime you call them, a different person will pick up. Another problem here is, the support team uses too many standard answers. When I tell that my car has broken down, the standard answer is you get it repaired and we will reimburse the cost to you. Then I have to explain the severity of the situation to each one of them.

My car broke down at roughly 8AM and it took till 12PM for them to arrange a single point of contact(SPOC) for me to interact. Until then, there was no pointer to what exactly must have been done by me. If this was the condition last year, I am not sure what is the condition now. My suggestion to Zoomcar is simple - If you want to improve your support, assign a single CC executive per user, or at least on a first time, every time basis. That will reduce a lot of hassle in interaction and will improve the support experience. Or to be more optimistic, they should ensure that such situations do not arise at all, unless its by accident.

Day before yesterday I was returning from my native. As I was nearing the airport, there was a Zoomcar XUV being driven very sanely(yes I mean it). The driver had settled down to a relaxed cruise and was in the middle lane, where he was supposed to be. I too followed him for a good two kms or so until the toll, and as he pulled out of the toll booth, something happened and the car just wouldnt pull. I overtook him at this point and I saw in the mirror that the car stopped in the right most lane and he had put the blinkers on. Not sure what happened after that. Last week, I again had the misfortune of getting stuck in traffic behind a really slow Ciaz automatic from Zoomcar. The car just wouldnt pull above crawling speeds and it held up a lot of traffic. If breakdowns become a regular affair, this company will go down quite soon.

[vinit.merchant]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

It seems that Zoom cars have a front-line of support that says only "we will call you back in 15 minutes."

What use is that? None at all. Can't these people apply some common sense to their procedures?

Common Sense is a contradiction in terms.
I would say a majority of the customer care operate in this fashion. CC are great when they start, but the service deteriorates over time.

[PGNarain]

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

Apparently, there's no such thing as customer service in India, at least not for common-man stuff ...

Principles of Indian customer service:
1. Take the customer's money.
2. ....

Though I do agree with a pathetic customer experience part having suffered it recently, I do also say that the users in India are mostly an inept and careless bunch, lacking any manner of civic sense. We see it every day while we are here and regrettably, I too have have at times acted in much the same way.

From what I have seen - Zoom cars are a badly flogged and treated very badly by people who hire them.

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

For similar money I paid Zoomcar for a nightmare, I could get a 5-star rental experience abroad. But here we're expected to pay first-world money for lousy third-world service? Why?

Last year I took a rental in UK and the car given to us was spanking clean - almost antiseptic, and performed flawlessly. While returning the car, I and my bro-in-law made sure that we spent a good 2-3 hours cleaning and vacuuming the car and returned the car in exactly the same condition that we got it in - if not better! In India, it may not be so easy given the road infrastructure and dusty conditions, but things like a clean interior are easily attainable if users make a slight effort prior returning the car. In my case - the car smelt of vomit / urine and instantly put me off - which could have been very easily avoided.

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by PGNarain

......I do also say that the users in India are mostly an inept and careless bunch, lacking any manner of civic sense.....

While it's unfortunately true (and not just in India), businesses shouldn't take that as their cue to peg service levels at the lowest common denominator of their clientele. Zoomcar isn't cheap, but their experience sure is!

From what I have seen - Zoom cars are a badly flogged and treated very badly by people who hire them.

Never quite understood that mindset, to be honest. I must be stupid to treat others'/borrowed property with as much care as (if not more than) my own!

Last year I took a rental in UK and the car given to us was spanking clean - almost antiseptic, and performed flawlessly.

Same experience on multiple trips abroad. Last time, I got a spanking new top-end Fusion sedan, barely ~3k miles on the odo, cleaner than most cars I've ever been in and drove like a dream for the week I had it. All for nearly the same cost as Zoomcar's 'demolition derby' samples.

.....In India, it may not be so easy given the road infrastructure and dusty conditions, but things like a clean interior are easily attainable if users make a slight effort prior returning the car.

A wash barely costs a couple hundred rupees at an FNG, and it's the least we owe a car in return for its services. The Revv driver who picked up my recent rental was surprised "Saar, I've never picked up a car cleaner than when I'd delivered it to a customer before". I sent him off with "I need mine in the same condition when I rent next time".

[rjalihal]

My first ever experience with Zoomcar.

Why I decided on ZoomCar

I had a wedding to attend in Coorg on 30th April and with my Honda City in the shop (after a bad rear end) I had no wheels to get me there. I am a die-hard driver and love driving myself to most places. So with no car, I had to rely on a friend of mine who was also going to Coorg early Saturday morning. I confirmed I will drive half way and he can drive the rest to which he agreed. So done, Polo it was. But last minute, he cancelled due to an emergency and I was left without a ride! This was Thursday night and I was watching the IPL in a lively place. Upon hearing him cancel, I had no choice but to take a bus. I was like, hell no! Not to Coorg, not to my back-yard. So out comes the ZoomCar app which I had installed a year back but never used it. Selected home delivery and pickup and choose the Ciaz AT for delivery on Friday at 8pm. Payed via credit card, smooth app, I got a confirmation and was happy. Overall booking experience I would give 9/10. No hassles, the only drawback is that the circular clock for choosing time was small. So, if I clicked on 20 for 8pm, my finger would accidently touch 21 for 9pm. Maybe it was because I was enjoying the IPL at the lively place a bit too much, but still, buttons could have been bigger.



Above: Booking confirmation

The home delivery experience

On Friday, 29th April at 7:15pm I get an SMS (pasted above) with the car number and delivery out confirmation. I was excited. First time renting a car in my own home town. At 8pm the guy calls me and tells me he is at BEL circle and is a bit lost. So I ask him whether he has google maps on his phone – he says yes. Then I instruct him to type ‘Anriya Dwellington’ in the search bar and hit navigate. He does so and in 10 mins, he has parked in my basement slot. Thank you Google for giving me the pleasure of never having to explain or give directions ever again. He then calls me up and I run down. This is 8:10pm. He explains the documents to me – there was insurance, registration, self-drive RTO document, and a few others I forgot. You have to give him the OTP you receive for unlocking the car and he will do the rest. The car had driven 41,520kms and you can tell it was driven like it was stolen. The bumper was coming off, there was a dent on the boot, scratches on the front bumper and side doors, a dent on the roof! – which particularly was amusing as it was bang in the middle of the long top. Guess a coconut or branch must have fallen on it. I had to fill the check-list highlighting all these damages as I did not want to take a chance. I had a bad experience once in Pattaya with my home lads while renting a jeep and we nearly got into a fist fight with the Thai renters as they framed us for causing some damages which were already there. Had it not been for the timely intervention of the Tourist police, there would have been some nasty outcome as we home boys don’t back off easy! So this time, I took snaps of all the damages and saved it on my phone with the date and time. There was no sign off. He just said showed me a few things which I wanted to know where they were located – essential things like fuel lid, boot release, bonnet release, AUX cable, USB for player, steering rake (which was not there), etc. This was an AT Ciaz, no issues as I am a punter with AT. So after a brief 15 mins, he was off. Overall, very good service; I would give it 8/10. I deduct 2 because my gate security told me he drove too fast into the basement – we have a 20 kmph rule and he exceeded that. One black mark on my name due to this.



Above: the scratches on front bumper.



Above: The loose bumper which was fluttering around like a flag on a windy day. The breeze generated while driving a bit faster made it worse. I finally managed to whack it back in place post breakfast.



Above: Handsome car with no nonsense straight looks



Above: If you look closely, the dents are visible


The car and the journey to Coorg

I took the car out immediately as I wanted to get a hang of it. It handled really well. Features were decent. This was the Vxi trim with climatronic a/c which was a boon. So after a quick drive, I was happy and comfortable with the car and figured it is not that different from my City. It felt weird that the car does not have paddle shifters – I am too used to them on my City. So I called it an early night as I had to start by 6am latest. Next day at sharp 6am I was on New BEL and heading to Coorg. Since this was a rental and not my car, I was hesitant to push hard so I maintained town speed limits in spite of the roads being empty! As I gathered confidence by the time I hit Kengeri I was frequently flirting with lower end triple digit speeds. The engine was throaty and had a nice note to it. I did feel it quite noisy though. All equipment was working in the car and it had a super duper loud horn, which is a good thing considering the idiotic traffic on the Mysore highway. And the suspension needs to be applauded. It feels more SUV like on the bad pot hole filled roads that is part of the Srirangapatna by-pass road to Coorg. This car just lapped up the pot holes without any hesitation. Kudos to Maruti for that. But this is not a car review, so I shall not go into that. I must mention one major issue though – this car tends to fishtail on the hill roads a lot. I could feel myself slipping and sliding on numerous occasions at tight corners. Not sure if it’s with all Ciaz cars or just this rental in particular. I know all the roads well and take my City effortlessly on those roads. I prefer my friend’s Polo as it sits on the road like a magnet and you can literally mimic a rally driver on song. But this Ciaz – not happening. There was a weird sound when you braked hard and the car would pull left more. It didn’t feel confident on the corners and honestly, neither did I. So I backed off and decided to cruise along. Human life is more important than ego! (I hate being overtaken in my back-yard). We reached by 11am which is okayish as we had a long breakie halt. We were staying a few clicks away from Madikeri town, towards Mangalore highway and it was decided that the Ciaz will remain parked here and we will move around in other vehicles which were headed for the wedding.



Above: Clima-tronic A/C is a boon in the sweltering heat

Return to Bangalore

We started the journey on Monday at 1pm and took it easy. I had the trotts on the way as I had eaten way too much pork – half a pig easily and Coorg weddings are never dry, so that included. Reason we left late was because I was uneasy making multiple trips to the loo. So anyways, we took it slow and steady. Range was 250 kms, man this car has a massive fuel tank! As we entered Bangalore, made a quick loo stop at the Lalit Ashok and filled up 400 bucks of petrol as the yellow warning light had come on. Overall the car gave a mileage of 15.2 kmpl which is impressive. We maintained an average speed of 80-100 most of the time as ZoomCar will fine you Rs 750 if you go beyond 125 kmph. Apart from speeding, you are also not permitted to smoke, drink, and eat in the car. I think this is a good rule and if others are not implementing this, they definitely should. Dropped the car in the basement by 6:30 and headed home. The ZoomCar drive had officially ended and it had definitely exceeded my expectations.



Above: Near the by-pass road. 40 degrees was the outside temperature reading!

The home pick-up experience

The car was scheduled to be picked up at 8pm so I called the Customer Care at 7pm and told them what was the formality. The helpful person told me to call the same guy who delivered the car on Friday, give the OTP and they will take care of the rest. So I called the site manager at 7:15pm who had sent one of the boys to deliver the car previous Friday and asked him to arrange a bloke for the pick-up. He appeared to be caught off guard as he was perplexed. He checked my booking and there was clearly a feeling of distraught in his tone. He had no drivers to pick the car up! And after running the car number to the system, he realized there was another booking for the same Ciaz at 11pm! So he said he will call me back in half an hour. At 8:30pm I get a call from him stating a driver will arrive shortly to pick up the car and I oblige. At 9pm, no driver so I call the Customer Care and report this. I make it very clear that I will not pay for any extra charges and they assure me this will not happen. At 9:30pm, the site manager calls me up and tells me to provide him with the OTP for closing and the kms reading and whether I filled extra petrol. I give him all the details and he says he will call back. At 9:45pm, the site manager calls again and requests whether it would be possible for me to drive till New BEL circle as the driver they got to pick up the car is a new bloke and does not know his way around. I am a bit pissed off at this point and tell him, that I will guide the bloke all the way, to which the site manager says he will check and get back to me. At 10pm he calls back and pleads with me to drive the car to New BEL circle. I make a deal – I will drive there, pick up the driver, drive myself back home and then release the car to which the site manager agrees happily. At that very moment I get an SMS stating Rs 5400 has been refunded back to my Citrus Wallet (Rs 5000 security deposit + Rs 400 petrol I paid). So, even before car inspection, he has done the formalities to close the booking – good bloke that site manager is. Finally at 10:15pm after picking up the driver from BEL circle and dropping myself off I release the car. The manager immediately calls me up and thanks me and assures me he will make sure this will not get repeated in the future. I decided to drop my complaint with the Customer Care. Overall experience for pick-up, I would give it 6/10. Little tardy and unplanned – not knowing when the same car is booked next. But good of the manager to refund me without inspecting the vehicle – it was a 2 way street. Too bad I played safe and did not cross 125 kmph – I am sure they would have refunded my fine!



Above: Overall mileage achieved. 15.2 is really impressive for this car.



Above: Bye-bye ZoomCar. We will meet again soon!

Would I recommend ZoomCar – If you have not already, just do it! But you are better off taking a ZoomCar from this part of Bangalore. I heard plenty of complaints from users located on the IT corridor and the outlying sub-urbs where service is bad due to super high demand. I now have a friend in ZoomCar, the site manager near New BEL circle and I know he is scared of me and will ensure no negative service is ever imparted to me.

Cheers!
-Rohan

[aswin ajith]

Originally Posted by PGNarain

Coincidentally, I had booked a ZoomCar on the very day you posted your query and unfortunately don't have a good review to post.
.

Thank you so much for posting your experience. I was very close to booking a car with Zoom.Decided against it at the very last moment. I am going to be in NCR for the very first time. I really don't want any such hassles. I have booked an Ecosport with Voler Cars. Will be picking it up from the airport itself. Keeping my fingers crossed.

[scarecrow]

All FYI.

received a mail from Zoomcar today morning requesting for improvement suggestions, specifically focusing on Car cleanliness & mechanical condition.

The suggestions need to be emailed to suggestions@zoomcar.com.

Thought of sharing the same as based on the personal experience of several team members, i am sure we can give a laundry list of suggestions.

PS: Top suggestions wins the person a mercedes for a day

[audioholic]

I wrote a detailed mail to them suggesting some crucial aspects. Let's see if they read the whole mail

[biggrin]

A close friend is thinking of hiring a Zoomcar on next Tuesday. He will cover 80 kms (total) and will need the car for 6 hours (total). He was thinking of hiring a Honda City from Zoomcar. After going through the Zoomcar website, he is thinking of hiring a bigger Scorpio/EcoSport instead as the rates are same @ Rs. 120/hr (10 km per hour and Rs. 12 per extra km) as the City. They will be 4 adults in the car.

Another plan is to take his Ritz Petrol (with ~13 kmpl FE) instead of hiring the Zoomcar.

Which one would be a better bet? He doesn't mind paying some extra bucks if the car is much better than his Ritz.

Location is Delhi. I have no idea about self-drive rentals and hence posted here for an opinion. Thanks in advance.

[Tanveer_2558]

Had seen a couple of zoom car's when were parked nearby, And have to say they were in really really bad shape, I saw an XUV which had countless number of dents and scratches with damages to the car, Also have to mention the car was very very dirty, What if you hire such a car for your trip with family and if it breaks down?

I saw such a car like 2 times, I wonder how much abuse these car's take mechanically.

[audioholic]

Originally Posted by biggrin

They will be 4 adults in the car.

Another plan is to take his Ritz Petrol (with ~13 kmpl FE) instead of hiring the Zoomcar.

Which one would be a better bet? He doesn't mind paying some extra bucks if the car is much better than his Ritz.

.

If you have your own car and if it fits the need, then going for Zoomcar is not worth it. Renting out a car in such a scenario is a waste of money and a risk. Hence, tell your friend to take his trusty car to wherever he wants to go.

IMO, seeing the condition of the cars in the fleet, I would never recommend taking a zoomcar. If at all he really wants to go for Zoomcar, tell him to personally visit the pickup site in advance and take a look at the cars available, to get a general idea of the upkeep of the cars and age. Maybe there could be new cars that would be good to go.

[sandeepmohan]

What to do with zoom? This is a colleagues account and experience with zoom car. Would much appreciate some advice.

Colleague hires a XUV5OO for a trip to Ooty on 5/8 - 5/11.

Car is handed over at around 4am or so. Visual inspection suggests poor condition of the XUV. Delivery chap says the car has just been serviced. The car runs okay up to start of the Ooty climb via Masinagudi. In this time, the observations made were bad wheel alignment or balancing as there was steering wheel vibrations and the last row was unusable even for two 10 years old children. The cushion on the seat had sunk and the metal seat frame was protruding. They moved up front later in the journey.

The trouble started while climbing up the steep 36 hair pin bend. There were multiple points where they had to come to a complete stop due to traffic and the XUV was struggling to resume. Colleague had to slip the clutch to get the car moving. In this time, he start getting the smell of a burning clutch via the AC vents. They some how manage to reach their hotel. He calls up zoom to inform them about the problem. They ask him not to drive the car and Mahindra will pick up the car the next morning. For local travel, zoom confirms over the phone that my colleague can use a local taxi and that they will reimburse the amount on producing bills. The next day, before Mahindra has come to pick up the car, my colleague fires up the XUV. The AC blower was running and the same clutch burning smell was observed. He did not drive. Ran the engine for about 30 seconds and shut down. Later in the day, the Mahindra folks arrive and load up the XUV on their flat bed vehicle. They were taking the car to their Coimbatore service centre.

The XUV isn't returned by the end up their stay. Colleague hires a Innova for the journey back to Bangalore. Zoom says they will pay for this too.

On return, the fight starts with Zoom Car. After a week, the report from Mahindra says he fried the clutch. They won't refund anything. Its unfortunate that my colleague did not get all those cab approvals in writing. They won't refund the amount even for the days the car was not with him. In their books, he rode the clutch which caused the damage.

My colleague is an experienced driver with around 100,000 km of driving experience. Though he drives a automatic today, his previous cars have always been a manual and he has never been through a clutch failure on any of his rides.

He has taken it to their Facebook page where they seem more proactive. Calling them over the last week resulted in the usual line; "We will call you back sir", which rarely happened. I am not sure if this is smart move or not but he held on to the original documents of the XUV. The chap who delivered the car keeps calling him to return the documents and assures him on reimbursement of money. We all know that this ain't going to happen.

Zoom have confirmed that they are not going to reimburse anything and he is accountable for vehicle damage. What to do?

[biggrin]

Originally Posted by Tanveer_2558

And have to say they were in really really bad shape.

Originally Posted by audioholic

IMO, seeing the condition of the cars in the fleet, I would never recommend

The friend has decided to take his own car. He went through this thread and realised that Zoomcar service has gone down over the years (in terms of quality and customer experience, esp. in case of a crash). The Zoomcar Scorpio and City were working out to be close to 1100 bucks, the cheaper Swift/Figo were close to 700 bucks. Even with a mediocre mileage from his petrol Ritz, he would spend only 400 bucks on fuel. He was thankful to Team BHP and now owes me a treat.

P.S. The last post on this thread sealed his decision.

[audioholic]

Originally Posted by sandeepmohan

What to do with zoom? This is a colleagues account and experience with zoom car. Would much appreciate some advice.

If you have read some previous pages, I had posted about my breakdown experience with a zoomcar scorpio. To cut it short, the gearbox broke and no one knows how. The housing developed a huge crack and started leaking oil. Hence I had to take it to a Mahindra ASC nearby after plugging the leak and left it there, reaching back bangalore by bus. In a similar fashion, the Zoomcar guys promised to provide the transport costs back to bangalore which they did, but with some good amount of escalation;

Firstly, with respect to the clutch burn, I think its better you make it clear to them that it is a wear and tear part and is not a damage - Obviously meaning it will take considerable time to wear out and fail, and not within say 500kms. Of course I know that there are examples of clutch burn and failure much earlier, but to support your claim. Next, tell them to show when the most recent clutch replacement was done with the service history. If all this is clear and it points out that the clutch was old, just refuse to pay up for the damage. Since the documents are still with your friend, keep that as a leverage and bring them to pay up.

In my case, the kind of rampage I had created in my calls made them refund the security deposit and the fuel costs even before I reached bangalore and though I still had not returned the documents. I took around four hours to reach the fleet manager on call but once I did, everything went smooth. He kept me updated throughout my journey to bangalore and simultaneously processed the refund. I handed over the documents along with the bus tickets the next day and the only issue was with the refund of the tickets. Since the fleet manager had already closed the booking and issued the refund, the extra amount could not be refunded directly. It took them a week and a few calls again to refund the money, but to my bank account directly.

I think you should catch the collars more tightly Or not sure if those were the good days of zoomcar. But never believe the customer care folks, I hope you have a single person contact.