[sanchari]

I think it is better to focus on the posts than poster. If the posts are inaccurate, untruth or false claims, better to call that out. If the post's contents are none of those, calling someone paid troll is personal attack and shouldn't be resorted to.

[CrAzY dRiVeR]

Originally Posted by poloman

There is a genuine difference between fanboy and a baiter.

Just curious - when a person takes effort to compile a list of issues (genuine reported by users) to expose a brand and another person takes effort to compile a list of posts to expose that user - who is what?

Personally - it was an eye opener for me, despite me being up to date on this issue, and an affected party thanks to my booking. The numbers are almost double that of what I had in mind.

IMHO - We should be concerned if those issues are genuine or not! And as far I see - it is! No wonder almost as many as a 100 people find the post useful till now.

[poloman]

I am not doubting the genuineity of the user reports. Any new car launch will see lot of initial niggles and issues. If you list it out from various forums and concentrate it, it will look like a mountain out of a mole hill. If 16 out of 4000 cars have issue it turns out to be 0.4%. I am in to semiconductor industry, our DPMs are worse than this sometimes. Does that mean the whole of Kushaq owners have issues?

This created panic even in you, who reviewed the car for TBHP. So you can imagine how effective and successful such campaigns can be for rival brands. Suggest you to go through all the posts of the BHPian I mentioned and have an honest opinion.

I totally agree that it is for the moderators to judge the posts. But I think at least we can point out the anomalies particularly since this can affect the buying choice of thousands.

[Dr.Naren]

Originally Posted by poloman

If you list it out from various forums and concentrate it, it will look like a mountain out of a mole hill. If 16 out of 4000 cars have issue it turns out to be 0.4%. I am in to semiconductor industry, our DPMs are worse than this sometimes. Does that mean the whole of Kushaq owners have issues?

How do we conclude only 16/4000 are affected ? I am sure most of them won't post about it on social media.

[adventureseeker]

Originally Posted by poloman

Great painstaking work there. Hope these hapless owners get a speedy resolution for their problems.

Don't get me wrong. Just trying to do some investigative work here and went through your profile and posts.

June 2021.. Skoda Kushaq is launched. You create profile in Team BHP same month. Coincidence may be..But read on.!

All your posts around 17 in Team BHP have been in this thread, digging up only Skoda issues from social media. In one post you say, you are trying to decide between Skoda Kushaq and Tata Harrier. Still you are overly critical of Kushaq issues giving benefit of doubt to Tatas in most posts. If you find Kushaq so problematic, why are you even considering that as an option is a mystery. In another post you have advised a TBHpian when he had some queries on Tata Harrier.

So can you blame some one if they think that you are a Tata fan boy trying to deride another brand or a paid actor by Tata.

Skoda should sort out all critical issues with priority, but the intention of random people posting trivial accident pictures and making them viral should be suspected.

To address a your query, I am a Final year law student of the prestigious Delhi University and I also possess an Engineering degree from a reputed University.Though I am still a student I actively espouse public causes and fight for them - to cite an example I filed a PIL in the Supreme Court challenging the discriminatory covid vaccine pricing policy ie higher pricing for state governments and lower pricing for central Government. The Supreme court during the hearing of my petition ordered the central government to file a sworn affidavit why there is such an anomaly. Thereafter the prime minister altered the policy and announced that state governments need not buy vaccines and all the vaccines will be procured by the Central Government and will be supplied to states as well. I am not claiming the entire credit behind such a move of the prime minister but the Supreme Court clubbed my petition with the Suo Moto case on covid issues and came down heavily on the Central Government which resulted in the change of policy.

I merely narrated the above example just to give an idea about my character. I am not paid by Tata to post here and defame any particular product/brand. I am planning to buy a car in this segment and looks coupled with reliability(going from A to B) are the main criteria which I will be considering so I naturally zeroed upon Kushaq and the Harrier as they are the two best looking cars which falls in my budget. Also I was a follower of Team BHP since long but I got my membership recently hence you will find my posts from the recent period. As I am considering Kushaq and Harrier I am avidly following the threads of both in recent times and as much has been said about Harrier already as it was launched earlier the opportunity for my assessment of the Harrier did not arise.

Also it is not in my hands that the Kushaq was launched recently and the car has been limitedly evaluated in the forum and the car being new, naturally opportunity for my assessment arose. Breaking down in the middle of the road is a serious safety concern as I belong to the legal profession and I face threats from untoward elements(happened already) which is a natural corollary of being in the profession(I also deal with criminal cases).

I didn't find any incidents of Harrier breaking down in the middle of the road and if I did now, I would have responded in the same way as I have been doing with Kushaq. Also the situation was aggravated by the lackadaisical attitude of Skoda and the fanboys in refusing to acknowledge the widespread issue and taking corrective measures.

Also as I am certified professional of competition law by the University of Chicago Law School, I am aware of the regulatory market mechanisms of the USA to protect the consumers. I naturally compared the mechanisms available in the Indian scenario like the consumer protection forums of India and in the present situation after research I found the breaking downs of cars is certainly a 'deficiency of goods' issue and I felt that the customers and the Indian market at large should be protected and hence have been vocal about the issue. I would have done the same if it was any other manufacturer whose cars were breaking down.

Also I felt that Skoda is gaining fat profit margins by charging a premium price to a product belonging to a segment below(strictly my opinion) and not doing enough to command that price. (Some times budgets also determine the purchase decision let alone the size ). You might ask why I didn't consider Creta/Seltos, and I have reasons for the same. I didn't consider Creta/Seltos because my own brother passed away in a crash of the first generation top of the range i20 Asta, and my parents didn't let me touch a car for quite a few years. I felt that the Harrier/Kushaq are also the safest in the budget range but when buyers had complaints regarding the Kushaq crashes and its build quality I deemed it fit to share those concerns here.

Originally Posted by nitkel

It's quite normal for someone new to a forum to concentrate on one or two threads which interest them, until they get an overall feel of the forum and find acceptance amongst members. Even I started out with a lot of posts on this thread as it was the most active one, until the XUV700 review was out last month. So let's not judge/suspect newbies by the threads they prefer to post on, unless you can prove that they indeed have vested interests which are detrimental to the community. That's for the mods to handle and I believe they're quite a competent bunch.

You are absolutely right Sir. I am new to the forum and I don't consider myself an expert in automobiles and I feel that my knowledge is limited in the mechanical aspects and this forum is a learning experience for me. It is also pertinent to mention that I don't have enough free time to engage with many threads in the forum so I might be inadvertently limited to posting on this thread and one other. But I do read many other threads, it's only that I did not post in those threads.

Originally Posted by poloman

I am not judging anyone. I am raising certain doubts. This is a standard practice to segregate genuine reviews v/s manipulative reviews, i.e. to look at the user profile and review history. No one opens account to just bash a brand unless there is something sinister behind it.

There is a genuine difference between fanboy and a baiter. A person who owns a particular brand can become a fanboy if the experience is good. If his experience is bad he can become a basher. But no one bashes a brand just for the sake of it or from hearsay. I don't think this gentleman is an affected Skoda customer. So why is he so concerned only about Skoda Kushaq issues is what got my attention.

I need to be affected to be concerned about others. If that is the case no one else should be posting other than the buyers of the specific products in the forum including the fanboys. It shouldn't be that I have bought rapid/polo so I would prejudge the quality of Kushaq and would give my stamp of approval.This is contradictory to your own statement that no one unless affected by that specific product should judge and pass comments.

I am a public spirited individual and I will be concerned about others if injustice is meted out to them. Also I believe you cannot term me as unaffected as I am prospective customer and I should have concerns regarding the specific product. Also I didn't resort to any defamation but merely stated the facts available in the public domain.

Please show me a single instance where I resorted to needless bashing of Skoda or unreasoned praise of Tata. If I have done so you might doubt my intentions but without any such instances anyone cannot impute conspiracy theories. This is precisely the reason why I compiled such data of breakdowns i.e to save customers and other parties like me from the conspiracy theories of fanboys.

[vishy76]

Originally Posted by poloman

I am not doubting the genuineity of the user reports. Any new car launch will see lot of initial niggles and issues. If you list it out from various forums and concentrate it, it will look like a mountain out of a mole hill. If 16 out of 4000 cars have issue it turns out to be 0.4%. I am in to semiconductor industry, our DPMs are worse than this sometimes. Does that mean the whole of Kushaq owners have issues?

This created panic even in you, who reviewed the car for TBHP. So you can imagine how effective and successful such campaigns can be for rival brands. Suggest you to go through all the posts of the BHPian I mentioned and have an honest opinion.

I totally agree that it is for the moderators to judge the posts. But I think at least we can point out the anomalies particularly since this can affect the buying choice of thousands.

Firstly, I don't think this can be classified as a niggle. It's a serious issue. Infotainment systems freezing, electronic glitches and the likes are called niggles and they are acceptable to a certain extent but should be rectified.

On the other hand, what is happening here is carnage. You have multiple owners reporting the exact same issue, some even claiming it has happened for the second time in less than 15 days. Most importantly, this is something that has left people stranded on the side of the road with their brand new cars done less than 2000km. All the owners who have faced this issue have every right to voice it and those who are prospective buyers have every right to be concerned about it. I won't be able to buy a 17 odd lakh rupee car with complete peace of mind knowing that there have been multiple instances of people being stranded with the same one.

And lastly, let's be honest, Skoda is no Maruti Suzuki or Mahindra that they have sold 5 digit numbers of their Kushaq in a month. You cannot brush aside these complains saying they are few in comparison to the number of cars sold. This forum stands for bringing issues to light. No one here has asked anyone to not buy the Kushaq. It's for the end user to decide. But that also doesn't mean members here should not discuss about it just because most of the other auto rags have turned a blind eye to it.

[07CR]

Originally Posted by poloman

So why is he so concerned only about Skoda Kushaq issues is what got my attention.

There can be a number of reasons-

1) Kushaq is still new to the market and people might be interested in how it is faring.
2) Maybe the person could be thinking of buying a vehicle in the price range, or maybe looking out for a close one.
3) The person could be in general intrigued by the fact of what is a EPC failure. (My dad was, and I asked him to open the Kushaq thread to understand more).

Take my example for instance. I was highly interested in the new VW group vehicles before the price announcement, as I would be buying a vehicle in similar class next year or two. The atrocious pricing did kill the interest. Am I still visiting the thread? Yes. Am I being critical of Skoda for not providing a well baked product? Yes. Does that make me a hater/paid bad marketer of Skoda? You decide.

Originally Posted by poloman

Any new car launch will see lot of initial niggles and issues. If you list it out from various forums and concentrate it, it will look like a mountain out of a mole hill. If 16 out of 4000 cars have issue it turns out to be 0.4%. I am in to semiconductor industry, our DPMs are worse than this sometimes. Does that mean the whole of Kushaq owners have issues?

There are many incorrect things being mentioned here-

1) EPC error is not a niggle. Infotainment system freezes/fails is a niggle. Instrument cluster freezes is a niggle. Your glovebox doesn't close properly is a Niggle.
The car simply stopping in the middle of the road due to EPC error is not a NIGGLE! Moving people from point A to B is one of the basic things a car is expected to do.
2) It's not just 16 people reporting issues. From whatever I could gather there are nearly 25-30 individuals who have posted on social media about the EPC issue. 25/4000. Numerator could be much more, as not everyone is so much social media savvy.

Originally Posted by poloman

This created panic even in you, who reviewed the car for TBHP. So you can imagine how effective and successful such campaigns can be for rival brands. Suggest you to go through all the posts of the BHPian I mentioned and have an honest opinion.

Brand new car having EPC error should create panic! It's not one person reporting, about 25-30 of them and with pictures of the error. You could say Skoda team could have disabled the error message, before handing the demo cars to reviewers and therefore no one could highlight it.

[Vid6639]

Originally Posted by poloman

If 16 out of 4000 cars have issue it turns out to be 0.4%. I am in to semiconductor industry, our DPMs are worse than this sometimes. Does that mean the whole of Kushaq owners have issues?

This doesn't seem right. I too am from the semiconductor industry and 0.4% DPM is pretty much not even close to acceptable for volume production. Secondly we usually don't go by a small sample size. Total cars sold is 4000 but reported failures only on the forum is 16. What about the rest?

DPPM numbers are no longer acceptable for automotive chips, it's now DPPB which we target. (Defective parts per billion).

[Oomph11]

My father is moving ahead to book the Kushaq 1.0 TSI Ambition AT. However the EPC problems are concerning. Should we wait for some months for issues to clear out or go ahead and book it?

[CrAzY dRiVeR]

Originally Posted by poloman

This created panic even in you, who reviewed the car for TBHP. So you can imagine how effective and successful such campaigns can be for rival brands.

Actually no. I cancelled before this itself. My state has moved on from panic to joke (except when thinking of the owners) about how badly VAG has screwed up India 2.0!

What affected me was the nature of issues, not the number. When I pre-booked the car, I was fully prepared for multiple user complaints on niggles - with infotainment, rattles, rubber and plastic fitment issues etc - even we observed and mentioned fitment and quality issues with the media car, and I still booked one. Would have been ok even if a hundred of such issues were reported in 4000 cars.

Breakdowns - that's where they lost me! Unacceptable even if the numbers were far less than currently reported. Brand new car leaving the owner stranded twice in the first month - is possible the worst kind of car there is, for now!

Easy to say only 10%, 5%, 1% cars are all that's affected. Zac and Skoda is repeating the same dialogues on social media too!

To rephrase that - it claims 99% of other cars are reliable because they could successfully complete 2000 kms - and that would be setting the benchmark as low as possible, isn't it?

[07CR]

Originally Posted by Oomph11

My father is moving ahead to book the Kushaq 1.0 TSI Ambition AT. However the EPC problems are concerning. Should we wait for some months for issues to clear out or go ahead and book it?

If you can wait, strongly suggest waiting it out. I hope Skoda issues a recall for these vehicles, and post the RCA is done, you can go ahead with your decision.

[poloman]

Originally Posted by Vid6639

This doesn't seem right. I too am from the semiconductor industry and 0.4% DPM is pretty much not even close to acceptable for volume production. Secondly we usually don't go by a small sample size. Total cars sold is 4000 but reported failures only on the forum is 16. What about the rest?

DPPM numbers are no longer acceptable for automotive chips, it's now DPPB which we target. (Defective parts per billion).

The initial fail rate during pilot production was around 0.4%. This is not directly translated to DPM. We have an acceptable DPM of around 500 DPM0. This is not 500 bad parts per million units. 500 defects per million opportunities and takes in to account the validation cycles as well. Naturally yield goes up once process matures.
In a complex product like automotive where you have thousands of components, these numbers will be higher.

People are questioning only 16-20 people reported issues and what about rest. There may be other affected people or may not be. Unless we have proper samples we will never know. Usually people with issues make huge noise. That way samples on SM will be hugely skewed towards -ve experience.

Again I am not saying there are no issues or people are being judgmental. But unnecessary brand bashing and blowing out issues should be avoided. If there is an issue with EPC. Skoda should fix this on priority. If they are not admitting this or pushing things under carpet, that should be highlighted. Here I am seeing Indian head replying to each and every complaint. Why are the owners not prepared to give Skoda some time?

One reason for the outrage among Skoda or VW owners may be the loss of standing among family and friends. Many European car buyers go against the advice of family and friends who naturally expect them to buy Maruti or Hyundai. Despite this if they buy these brands and product gives them troubles, they will be agitated more.

[ashis89]

Originally Posted by poloman

People are questioning only 16-20 people reported issues and what about rest. There may be other affected people or may not be. Unless we have proper sample we will never know. Usually people with issues make huge noise. That way samples on SM will be hugely skewed towards -ve experience.

Not everyone is media savvy or would like post on social media. They might have just reached out to the the dealer after failure (there are such cases here on our forum too, for Seltos Harrier and more). The Skoda dealers would have the full picture.

Also since a RCA is not available, some others might face it in future after they clock more KMs. As others have mentioned earlier, a complete breakdown on the road is serious and feels like a ticking bomb. One wouldn't trust to take such a car on a long drive.

Here I am seeing Indian head replying to each and every complaint. Why are the owners not prepared to give Skoda some time?

India head's response seems more like damage control than an actual fix for the problem. If they have an actual solution, then let them share an ETA or a proper recall plan. Meanwhile stop deliveries of cars until the fix is in place.


Edit: I am curious. Aren't the 1.0 and 1.5 engines already in use in VAG cars like Rapid and T-Roc (or are these different engines)? Why would they have issues now when they run well in existing models?

Ford's DPF issues started in a similar manner and slowly snowballed. But Ford stopped deliveries until they fix it. Maybe something to learn here.

[viscosity]

Originally Posted by poloman

Why are the owners not prepared to give Skoda some time?
.

I think for consumers, tolerance to a failure or product not able to meet expectations is "inversely proportional" to the premiumness of the product.

If you claim or price like that your product is a premium one vs the competitors, you better have the required quality to meet expectations.

A car breaking down within a few days is simply not acceptable as simple as that.

[PatienceWins]

Surprised to see people defending Skoda when new cars broke down and owners were stranded on the road. However small the reported numbers are, this is not acceptable from a brand which keep stressing safety, reliability and build quality. The actual number maybe much higher than what is reported on social media as many people do not prefer or ignorant of social media groups, forums, tagging zac for resolution etc.

We are not discussing minor niggles which is part of any new launch. A person even got stranded again after repair. Skoda has made a mess of their India 2.0 strategy and localization.

I was eagerly waiting for this vehicle and I am glad that I went ahead with my Creta diesel auto SXO delivery as the product did not predominantly meet my rear space requirements.