[zaks]

It's sad to hear this, and it looks like this news is gaining more circulation on social media as well. But, I feel, may be just may be, he going to court was bit hasty, I think it could probably have been better resolved taking the dealer into confidence and working with insurance. Once it goes to court thing will get ugly since no party wants to be seen at fault and go to any lengths to have their claim. Also leaving the car at dealer was bad idea, its really painful to see the car suffering the weather out in open for months.
Just hope they settle this quickly and both party can move on.

[Kickdown]

If Newton were alive today he would come up with a new law. "Every positive news from the VAG group (read 5 * rating) is met with an equal and opposite negative news". Sorry, I don't mean to be apathetic towards the owner. The jibe is at the VAG group.

This irony here is that the VAG group can easily address and fix the issue without it having to spill over into media and social networks. But they seem to be irrationally adamant at times. We can only hope that common sense prevails and the issue gets resolved amicably.

[raman.aries]

It is quite unfortunate that Kiran (the owner) had to face this. However, I am not at all surprised at the way EVM dealt with the issue.
Out of all the makes of cars I have owned, the worst after-sales and service experience I have had is with VW and it was dished out by the very dealer in question, EVM.
Volkswagen also deserves equal blame for their unwillingness to step in and resolve this. I don't quite understand the stand taken by the manufacturer here. Aren't they trying to improve their operations in India?
My ordeal was not as bad as this and I started a thread on tbhp regarding that.

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/techn...sc-wear-3.html (VAG cars (Polo, Vento, Rapid) - Premature brake disc wear)

After seeing the response from the make as well as the dealer, I made a decision to never buy a VAG car in India. I sold off my Polo before the warranty got over.

The thing that hurt the most was the cold response I received from the VW personnel. They were at first unwilling to share their email ids after the issue had been escalated to them.

[SulemanP]

Originally Posted by CrAzY dRiVeR

Personal take - Looks like the case of an egoistic dealer and apathetic management.

Dealer tried to pass on a large bill claiming some issue without any real proof, and now doesn't want to back out when the customer has proven his side. Company doesn't want to get involved because EVM is a large dealer network that handles multiple operations for them across districts.

It is sad that the onus to prove innocence is on the customer, and he is made to run around despite having done so.

I second your take, it is evident that the dealer goofed up royally over here and tried to squeeze the customer by giving false information to the OEM. Now the dealer cannot backtrack from his own statement/report provided to the OEM and as a result the customer is seen running around + paying the EMIs.

[cityslicker86]

Absolutely infuriating, totally expected from VW group. Few months ago when my dad was in the market for a new car, I went to great lengths to ensure he doesn't buy a VW/Skoda (or KIA for that matter). This is exactly why. My sympathies are with the customer, who is losing time, money and health over this ordeal. What a horror story.

I'm sure VW group has lost many prospective customers after all the negative publicity they are getting from this incident.

I agree with GTO though, get the car out, get it fixed outside and continue fighting the case. No point in going through this ordeal at one's own cost.

[warp_10]

Every other post I read is about how M&M has treated their customer horribly, Tata dealer has wrecked a EV, VW dealer abuses the warranty terms. Is this how it has been all this while (and folks are now using forums and opening up) ? Or is this a change in how the new age dealers are behaving.

I believe GTO nailed the fact that we rarely see such Maruti posts (when they form the max vehicular population). Hope they too don't buckle under this trend soon.

Reminds me of the newspaper first page, which was filled with flurry of bad news. Hope the trend reverses soon and we see lesser of such cases down the line.

Hope the dealer realizes the cost of this bad publicity is much much higher than the cost incurred. But I believe at this point its not a financial equation for him now, but more egoistic.

Just re-read my post and see so much of 'hope' in it. Looks like thats all we got and reminds me of the statement Andy mentions in Shawshank Redemption - "Hope is a good thing" !

[yashg]

Feel sorry for the owner, however I think he should have got his car back before getting into lengthy legal proceedings. Get the car fixed first, may be at some other VW dealer or any other service center. Get your car running again and then fight.

When I read such instances of dealer apathy, those rare instances of influential and connected customers turning on the tables on arrogant dealers seems like a fair game like how a customer got Skoda to refund the money along with compensation for a mere repainted panel.

[blueather]

Feel really sorry for the customer. If this happened to me, I'd probably break down and start crying.

[KGS]

Pathetic.

Such cases need to be dealt with iron fist by Consumer forum. Along with the full repair of car , VW group should be forced to pay compensation to customer for this unnecessary delay . When Govt lab has confirmed that there is no water in fuel, it is really poor attempt by VW group to hide behind excuses.

If you can't resolve issues of customer, stop selling cars.

Happy that I have always stayed away from these so called brands.

[Dhruv29]

Pathetic to say the least.

I don't have any hopes with VW to improve their Customer Services. I shudder to think what will happen in case my vehicle needs to be at their service centre in case of a fault which renders it undrivable. And seeing the history of my car, i don't think that day is too far away.
To be honest, I'm just waiting for E.W warranty to expire and hoping that DSG goes kaput in last year of the warranty. So that, post warranty i don't have to deal with this big ticket item for long term, and then i'll happily take my car to FNG and not deal with VW anymore.

In recent case,
After many back and forth in October w.r.t to steering rack noise which included multiple visits to service centre and their plant engineer coming to check the vehicle, the Steering rack replacement was approved on 8th November, 2022. After that the car was returned to me.
Still today i'm waiting for replacement rack to come to the dealership for replacement. But here even the dealer can't do much, as the Logistics of VW India is terrible at best. Steering rack of such a new vehicle is out of stock in Germany as well and is put on back order.

God help VW and it's customers in India.

[07CR]

This is shocking on many levels. If a TV celebrity is being treated this way, I am afraid of how the commoner's like us would be treated. I would like to share how in a contrasting manner Ford and Kia have treated us as customers.

Ford- This was after Ford left India. I had given my car for routine service. There was no issue with the car as usual and service was top notch as well. I received a service feedback call and I rated them 8. Next day I received a call from service center and they asked me in a very concerned tone about what was wrong. I was little unhappy with the way the car was cleaned and there were some swirl marks. Hearing this the dealership offered a free teflon coating for the next service, and requested me to rate them better when the next service feedback call came. I rated them 9. The dealership SA was very happy! They also did a free teflon coating for the next service as promised.

Kia- I had installed a aftermarket accessory which was a puddle light on both front doors. One of the units was broken by service personel during the service visit. I complained about the same during the feedback call. The service center offered me a complimentary interior wash as a replacement and to waive off the amount for one puddle lamp in next service. I gladly accepted the interior wash, but cancelled waving off the amount for puddle light (hardly costed me 250 bucks).

Hope VW,Skoda and Tata learn a thing or two from the ASS stalwarts of India.

[headbanger]

What's the point of manufacturing 5 star safety rated cars if you want to treat the end users like this?

EVM dealer may have other brands to work with but it's VW whose reputation is being taken left, right and center with incidents like this. They aren't selling too many cars already in the market and these incidents ensure that conservative consumers continue to flog the Japanese and Korean manufacturers.

Feel sorry for the pain that customer is going through and also for VW. We may end up with one brand lesser in the market soon.

[TorqueKnight]

As a former owner of a Volkswagen Vento, I understand his situation. Our Vento 1.6 TDI had fuel injector failures, Volkswagen service centre blamed the fuel. They said the fuel was adulterated with water. Our Vento failed on 600 KMS after the last refill. I was not satisfied but my vehicle was out of warranty, hence replaced 2 fuel injectors. After replacing the fuel injectors, I again got that coil spring error in MID after just 400 kms. Out of frustration I sold my Vento and bought a Hyundai elite i20.

We thought the problem was only with Volkswagen’s diesel vehicles. After 5 years, now we booked a Volkswagen Virtus 1.5 GT for my brother in law. We were convinced that Volkswagen petrol vehicles will be good. Now after seeing this thread, we are contemplating buying Volkswagen again. I just shared this thread with my nephew and we are discussing seriously.

One can change their getup but not their character. Volkswagen just proved it again. We would rather go with Innova Hycross this time.

[Cresterk]

EVM autokraft is not a small group. They also deal in BMW, Mini, Porsche etc and probably spend crores in advertising and branding campaigns as well as customer relations. The amount of 1.2L might as well just be a rounding error for them. I wonder why they wouldn't just repair the damn car instead of making this poor fellow run around for years. Especially since he is a repeat customer who even bought extended warranty.

Now they will probably spend another crore next year hiring PR groups and trying to erase this bad publicity. I never can understand how the leaders of some Indian firms think. Penny wise and pound foolish to the extreme.

[enj0y_ride]

Really horrible to have faced such a fate. Considering the fact that no decision on warranty is taken, can't the car be taken somewhere where he can atleast maintain it. Going by the sequence of events, court matters are going to take ages, unless VW decides to step in here to avoid further damage to reputation. Glad that he decided to fight than going by their playbook. Wishing such visibility in public forums are going to help settle it sooner.