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Originally Posted by carwatcher

Renault is silent on this negative publicity disaster with their ONLY successful product,

Its not going to affect the sales as a corporate is concerned, they know people will take it only as one off the case. They know the market very well and the reason for its success, no company will fuel the issue by reacting to it in public. Thats the main reason all the companies are not taking these kind of issues seriously unless this creates some damage like the skoda episode or we do have some strict consumer protection laws. I dont think people will change the decision by seeing this case as there is no alternative in that price range eventhough it is ~2-2.5l expensive considering the vfm factor. This helps the companies in exploiting the market.

[anand.shankar]

Okay, too many posts with a view different than mine to fight it out

I will just wait it out till more details emerge, LoL! Hope my tone din't offend anyone, I did not intend to as well. Just tried to voice my POV.

[Sheel]

Shanker,

Too many people voiced opinion contrary to yours as this is what stood out for us and there were reasons supporting it.

Having a different point of view & discussing it further enriches the forum, as well as, us. Just that, there wasn't much theory supporting your POV this time.

Its absolutely okay, healthy to have a different view. Infact, I too gave your suspicion a thought, but the more I pondered over it, it started to become clear that there was some genuine issue with the car.

Glad to have someone on board who thinks against the tide & sometimes, this thought may strike gold.

Cheers, see you around

[300 KMPH]

In small towns, there are hardly any businessmen which belong to the 'upper middle class' or 'rich' category. So wherever they go within the town, they get tonnes of respect and 'fan following' kind of thing. Any kind of problem/work, everyone says yes to the person.


Now the point is if such a person doesn't get enough respect/response from a car company's dealership, he will obviously get frustrated and do this. Remember the Jaguar XF issue?

My message was for those who think the customer has gone beyond limits.

It was a bit off topic but had to say this. Cheers.

[Urban_Nomad]

Originally Posted by anand.shankar

Okay, too many posts with a view different than mine

I think the guy is nuts too. But hey, its his car, his money, his prerogative. As long as he is not doing anything illegal, its Ok

I do question his intelligence though. What is he hoping to achieve?

We have horrors that we see or read about daily and it barely makes a dent in the psyche of the junta. I mean take your pick - Women subjugated to the most brutal crimes and our politicos openly defending the culprits, Killing a pregnant woman and her unborn child in an accident and the suspect going scott free because the guy had money, daily violence over the pettiest of things ........ need I go on?

So this person in his infinite wisdom feels some faulty wires will grab the nation's attention and make Renault pay? This is just an anecdote that would be forgotten before you can say "Duster Dustbin"

Peace

[Lobogris]

First of all it looks staged. The car is neat and clean with just some stickers pasted and a small trash can in the back with the seats removed. It looks like a media stunt done for a few hours.

Secondly, I don't see why Renault should be impacted. All they want to do is sell vehicles. Why should they care what the purchaser uses the vehicle for? If a city decided that the Duster made sense for trash collection and wanted to order 100 of them for this purpose, I doubt Renualt would turn it down. How can Renault object to the customer using his/her vehicle for whatever purpose they so desire? There is nothing lowly about garbage collection and such vehicles are quite expensive and specialised in many parts of the world including in some Indian metros. If I like the S class and I read that someone is using one to ferry farm animals, it wouldn't impact my desire to purchase it in any way. The Duster is just a cheap SUV and these things are used on farms around the works to haul tools, crops and all kinds of junk. An SUV is meant for such jobs but nowadays people have turned them in to urban vehicles.

[autobahnjpr]

Now there is a new twist to the tale. It seems that Renault has taken this as an insult and has sent a legal notice to the owner charging him with misrepresentation of facts and lying.

Roughly translated the news article says - Unsatisfied with the service of his car, the owner had given the car for garbage collection for which the company has issued a legal notice to the owner. Company claims that the owner lied and misrepresented facts related to service and has tried to malign the good reputation of the company.

Then it goes on to list down the details of how many times the car has been serviced, what was the odometer reading, when was the issue reported, how many days the car has spent in the workshop etc. etc. It says that the car was serviced 7 times and not even once problem related to AC was reported and the last time the car was in the service center, the owner took it back without getting the repairs done.

It seems overdrive website has put this news as a major story on their homepage. Click http://overdrive.in/news/rajkot-busi...cting-garbage/ to read the story.

The fun has just begun !

[sourabhzen]

Originally Posted by autobahnjpr

The fun has just begun !

I do not see any gain for Renault by sending this notice. They should rather devote their energies to better the after sales experience. Would love to see the final outcome though.

They should have sold vehicle without a badge or name if they are so worried about their reputation being tarnished.

[mi2n]

Taking the news article at face value, I'm further convinced that the manufacturer is surely at fault here. It is just all too typical to try to bully your way out in such circumstances and it seems Renault is trying to do the same.

From the article :

1. Renault officials claim that the problems surfaced after 18 months of ownership. Saying this they are supposedly trying to shirk off responsibility. So, admittedly, there was a fault in the car and admittedly, a Renault Duster is good for less than 18 months only as per article/company officials themselves.

2. The car visited the A.S.S. 9 times and admittedly stayed at the A.S.S. for 61 days in total. Now, apart from the Accidental repairs, if no other serious issue had been present in the car, it would have normally only spent 8x1= 8 days( number of scheduled service guessed from reported ODO reading) and 10-15 days maximum for a single instance of accidental repairs, that is barely 20 odd days. This is presuming that the car was serviced at specified intervals else Renault would have made a big fuss about the owner not following service manual which they have not. That the car was stranded even 40 days ( as admitted) over and above, squarely and conclusively points to it having some issue which could not be addressed by Renault.

3. That the owner took away his car without repairing on his 9th visit to the A.S.S. again seems to be because of some obnoxious advice shoved on to him by the S.A. which he did not find reasonable. Something like a major part replacement or another long stay at the A.S.S which he did not agree to owing to his past experience. I have myself denied many such advices from S.A.s simply because they were out of turn or not reasonable. If he did not intend to repair the car, why would he have brought it to the A.S.S. in the first place?

[Zappo]

I think Renault is going the slippery way here. I don't think all this bluster on their part will really hold good in the court of law, if it really comes to that. You can't have a care standing in the Service Station for 61 days. Damn! Thats 2 months of garage in 8 services! What are you trying to prove here Renault? ...other than making a few more people wonder over this whole thing. I for one am suddenly curious to find out what kind of a massive botchup you must have done to try a cover-up job through the well known threat tactics!

[Urban_Nomad]

Originally Posted by Zappo

I for one am suddenly curious .........

"Never underestimate the collective stupidity of the masses"

A not so bright fella facing issues with his motor vehicle does something incoherent (my opinion) to get some attention. Renault adds fuel to the fire by responding so defensively. And someone needs to really teach Renault a thing or two about a concept called "too much info". Was that level of detail, which could get people (like Zappo and I am sure many others) really necessary .... counting days at the workshop and all?

It suddenly has so much attention; which it would never have had if Renault would have just let sleeping dogs lie, or garbage cans clunk