[dragracer567]

There is no dearth of news like these in India. Apparently a BMW owner used his X1 as a garbage truck as a protest against BMW dealer in Ranchi.

Source: Cartoq

A frustrated BMW X1 customer from Ranchi, Jharkhand showed his anger by using the vehicle to pick-up garbage from the colonies. The owner of a brand-new BMW X1 got the car a few months ago and he was not satisfied with the problems and the way service centre handled his case. He used the vehicle to pick up garbage to show his anger and disappointment in the brand.

According to the owner of the car, he bought the brand-new X1 sDrive20d from the authorised Ranchi showroom of the brand. However, the tyre of the vehicle had a major puncture and it was ruined. After the owner took the vehicle to the showroom, he was suggested to use the spare tyre and they did not repair or replaced the tyre. After using the spare tyre in the vehicle and driving it around, the axle of the vehicle came out of alignment. To repair the same, the owner had to take insurance. There are few other minor niggles that the owner did no mention. However, he says that he is extremely unsatisfied with the service centre. The owner says that he will collaborate with the other BMW owners and will promote “Swach Bharat Abhiyan” and will also log a case against the dealership.

The vehicle was gifted by him to his father and as per the video, his father could not use the car. After posting the video of picking up the garbage from the neighbourhood, there are a few more owners who have voiced their concerns too. As per the video, around 20 BMW customers have faced similar issues.

The owner Prince Srivastav also owns a BMW Z4 and loves the vehicle. He also says in the video that BMW cars are excellent and he would recommend the brand to many of his friends, however, he will not recommend people to buy from the Ranchi, Jharkhand BMW as the service is extremely bad. He also added that all kinds of cars can face problems but it totally depends on the service centre how they handle the situation and make the customers satisfied.

It should be noted that BMW and many other luxury and even mass-segment vehicles offer a space-saver spare tyre. These tyres are not full-size tyres and have a speed limit on them. Which means that most vehicles with space saver spare tyres cannot go on high-speed runs and also, the level of comfort also reduces after the space saver tyres. It should also be noted that many vehicles with 17-inch or larger tyres demand low-profile tyres. These low-profile tyres are extremely unsuitable for the Indian roads because of the large potholes and road conditions across the country.

There have been many such incidents in the past where customers have collected garbage, have done protests by writing their grievances on the vehicle itself. There have been incidents where vehicles have been towed by donkeys too. Such things go long back in India where a king in India did the same to Rolls Royce vehicles after he was insulted in the showrooms of Rolls Royce in England.

Speaking on the usage of Rolls Royce's to collect garbage by one of the royals from the colonial era, I guess the more things change, the more they remain the same.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTavaK5Pd0A

[srishiva]

Come on, the garbage is not even touching his car. Guess he just wanted to protest but still cares about his car

Rolls Royce were really used a garbage carriers compared to this.

[RavSam]

Originally Posted by srishiva

Come on, the garbage is not even touching his car. Guess he just wanted to protest but still cares about his car

Rolls Royce were really used a garbage carriers compared to this.

Still I won't be driving around the same car which I drove there to pick up the garbage. May be he is caring just for the resale value.

[srini1785]

Probably the reason for his anger.

The vehicle was gifted by him to his father and as per the video, his father could not use the car.

Still , there is no dearth of people who push BMW's to a river or drop a Merc from a Helicopter ( both covered in the forum). Classic case of " dealer not brand" problem. Some TLC from BMW directly could solve this issue. If he is still not satisfied , them i am ready to adopt the car with or without garbage.

[silverado]

Well if you look at the video carefully, he is not dumping garbage in anger.
He is carefully placing dry garbage stuff in his car boot and that too in a 3D boot mat.

He is taking care not to damage the car, but still sending a message.

[GTO]

High end luxury cars genuinely have a "tyre" problem. IMHO, they should just go to a more reasonable rim size as big wheels + low profile tyres are not meant for India. Further, tyre models that have weak sidewalls should be dumped altogether. There are many tyres that offer high grip levels as well as reasonably strong tyre sidewalls. Also, at least for the lower model cars, the Germans should push Apollo & gang into developing better quality tyres.

Out of 10 luxury car owners I speak with, 5 have had a damaged tyre.

The dealer is also caught in the middle of the crossfire. Tyres get damaged due to a variety of reasons (wrong choice of tyre model by the OEM, large rims, driver carelessness, bad roads). With brands tightening their warranty budgets, many won't cover the cost of the tyre. Should the dealer foot the bill? And if he does it today, he will have to for many more customers. Worse still, the same guys might keep coming back with more damaged tyres. Should the dealer replace them for life?

[Wanderers]

BMW Ranchi dealer is indeed hopeless. There are many instances of owners not getting good service support. I did start a thread on our X1 breaking down immediately after delivery from this dealer. For last two years, we drive X1 all the way to Delhi to get good service or repair but emergency repairs needs to be taken care by this dealer only.
It’s not just the attitude problem but service people are truly incapable. BMW is not doing enough to train them. If you raise a concern to BMW India, they will forward your email to service manager asking them to attend.
This dealership is doing well due to lower road tax in Jharkhand and people are buying from all over India. The agents manage the address. RTO is happy and not complaining.
This dealership earlier owned Toyota showroom as well but was removed by Toyota.

[aniketi]

Originally Posted by GTO

Tyres get damaged due to a variety of reasons (wrong choice of tyre model by the OEM, large rims, driver carelessness, bad roads). With brands tightening their warranty budgets, many won't cover the cost of the tyre. Should the dealer foot the bill? And if he does it today, he will have to for many more customers. Worse still, the same guys might keep coming back with more damaged tyres. Should the dealer replace them for life?

Agreed but most of users in India don' care much about their car tyre's. We have good, average, bad and very bad roads here in India, still never faced any issues with my tyre's. Apart from filling air periodically, I use them roughly on all types of roads. Guess same case with most of the people. In fact, I always have opinion that tyre is meant for abuse and it should withstand.

Coming back to case, it's really unfortunate that BMW owner facing such issues. It tyre is faulty, they should replace it for free. I think he should sue company and dealer in consumer court. Hopefully he will get reimbursement.

[adi58]

The problem is with BMW after sales network. Wouldn’t be surprised seeing more of such news in the future. I’m struggling to get my car fixed since Feb. Anything beyond oil changes for their dealers is nothing less than rocket science.

[Kosfactor]

With roads being what they are a small pothole when hit at a rather high speed is enough to give them premium cars a ride on the flatbed.

I do not see an end to this anytime soon, customers will demand big wheels - in another thread we see a 'Competition' version of an SUV with wheels that are just painted on.

[vikramvicky1984]

Originally Posted by Wanderers

BMW Ranchi dealer is indeed hopeless. There are many instances of owners not getting good service support. I did start a thread on our X1 breaking down immediately after delivery from this dealer. For last two years, we drive X1 all the way to Delhi to get good service or repair but emergency repairs needs to be taken care by this dealer only.
It’s not just the attitude problem but service people are truly incapable. BMW is not doing enough to train them. If you raise a concern to BMW India, they will forward your email to service manager asking them to attend.
This dealership is doing well due to lower road tax in Jharkhand and people are buying from all over India. The agents manage the address. RTO is happy and not complaining.
This dealership earlier owned Toyota showroom as well but was removed by Toyota.

I second this information about the dealer.
They also have MG dealership for whole Jharkhand. Plus Ranchi dealerships for Honda, Hyundai Nissan etc.
I know so many people (mostly Toyota owners ) who won’t buy MG/ BMW ever here.
I have heard that they’ve used to sell/ install more Toyota filters than those Toyota India supplied them.
Unconfirmed, they also had Tata dealership earlier and had beaten up a Tata employee who raised some issues.
Confirmed : beating up IT guys
https://www.dailypioneer.com/2013/st...-brothers.html

https://www.telegraphindia.com/jhark...ing/cid/251438

Have dealt with them for crackers) their main business) once. Truly memorable experience.

Google to find more about them.
I have always wondered what kind of background research OEMs’ do before granting dealerships!

[SUPERSPORT]

Originally Posted by dragracer567

There is no dearth of news like these in India. Apparently a BMW owner used his X1 as a garbage truck as a protest against BMW dealer in Ranchi.

Well, it's not just Ranchi BMW, same is the situation with BMW EVM Autokraft in Cochin too. I had visited them 9 times in the first 3 years of ownership for solving minor issues. Except 1, all the other issues remain unresolved. They also messed up the work for warranty recalls under TSB by BMW.

It didn't end there, as they also messed up the 2nd year service where even though I paid for the oil change, the same info is not available on the idrive. This was brought to my notice when the car gave a false low oil warning few months later. And EVM's response is they can't update the info on idrive as the time period has lapsed. I have doubts whether they actually performed an oil change on my car. Coz if they did, it shouldn't be that difficult to update the same to idrive from their server. So I paid for an oil change, which may or may not have been performed. Visits for other minor issues which still remain unresolved, the less said the better.

I had mailed BMW in detail about all this and BMW's response was dealer will take care of all the issues, but none of them has been taken care off. The only change was the guy who was allotted to me was keen to help though not much was done. Since I don't have any more patience left, I have left things as it is.

What's more surprising is, we also have an 11 year old Linea that always goes to Authorised service centres, and not even once I've been cheated, neither any poor work performed, neither SAs behaving to customers in rude manners, so all this from BMW was shocking. We also have been VW customers for 7 years, & I would call VW experience average, but BMW, well below average. Hope they improve coz otherwise this will be our last Bimmer. If they can't handle such easy things on an entry-level BMW, I can only imagine the plight of those opting for more complicated machines. No matter how good a car is, poor after sales experience can easily wipe off all that joy.

[stanjohn123]

This is clearly BMW's fault more than dealers. We have been saying this for many years, RFT's are not ideal for our roads but are they listening to us, NO !

They now give us much bigger wheels too 18 inch and above, which is not practical at all for our highways.

For the 5 series we have already replaced 8 tyres in 2 years. The first 4 happened within 2 month's of purchase. We quickly moved to Tubeless but that too didn't help because the Tyre dealer managed to convince us that Pirelli's were good. They are in terms of performance but not life due to the huge 18 inch wheel size and softer sidewalls.

In my opinion Michelin Pilot Sports are the best in terms of performance and life but they are never available in stock and now due to import ban its more difficult to source them. This time I have got 2 tyres from Bridgestone ( Potenzas). I think they are way better than Pirellis in terms of life but not sure how long they will last on the 18 inch profile on our roads though.

All this could have been avoided if BMW could take the trouble to make wheel sizes and tyres appropriate for our roads and driving conditions.

[Axe77]

Honestly, this seems more like an entitled idiot who’s pappa has bought him the car.

I think we have reached a point where such stunts have lost their novelty now and i would imagine it does less damage to the brand and only makes the car owner look like a fool giving people on social media some laughs at his expense.

Will this video by itself prevent me from buying a BMW, if otherwise I was convinced it was right? No

Will I think less of the maker of the video? Probably Yes.

[yd_gli]

I am always amazed when Indians expect premium service and cars designed for Indian roads from the big three German OEMs. These OEMs + Indian Govt basically conned you into paying a ~200-300% premium for a product which was never designed for Indian roads and conditions to begin with.

They sell a few thousand cars in India every year (~2-3% of their US sales) and the effort needed to re-tune wheels/suspensions etc is simply not worth the effort.For simplicity sake if they make 100 cars a month globally, ~ 1 car is packed and shipped off to India with the assumption that there will always be one person ignorant enough to shell out a fortune for a car that may or may last on Indian roads/conditions. My friends BMW had its wiring chewed off by a rat over the lockdown and on questioning the dealer regarding the lack of rodent protection, their reaction was a simple shrug of the shoulders and a "its not required in Europe" statement. Ended up costing ~30k.

With regards to premium service, none of these salesmen/technicians have been magically transplanted from Germany to India. They are all ex MS, Hyundai, Tata, VW etc guys who are trained for a couple of days and sent off to the wild. We are not at that point yet scientifically where you can reprogram ones DNA from the Maruti Suzuki chalta hai model to BMWs German efficiency.

So long as the political/real estate moguls keep buying and replacing rims, tires etc without blinking an eye, the rest will have to do the same.