[SixPistons]

Is this the original Santro or the recent one

[PetrolRider]

Originally Posted by abaliga

he revealed that Hyundai has a separate parts catalogue for under warranty vs out of warranty replacements where the part quality is significantly better on the paid ones

Quiet interesting and weird. I doubt that is the case though as it might results in multiple warranty claim for same part. Let' remember Hyundai offers up to 7 years long extended warranty. I believe, if a part replaced under warranty would remain good for let's say 7 years, is anyway of acceptable quality.

One example here, my Verna also developed steering rattle on 4th year and "worm" motor has replaced under the extended warranty. This year as my car turned 6, I went for 6th and 7th year of extended warranty. So, the replaced part is anyways now got covered till 7th year, i.e. for 3 years.

Originally Posted by fazayal

Only thing is that while the car is under warranty, they might repair it or replace just the child part. If it is out of warranty, they might insist on replacing the parent part.

+1.
This seems to be a logical case as the same holds true for insurance / non-insurance parts change. For steering rattle, out of warranty cars have been asked to change entire steering assembly where in case of under warranty car, specific problematic parts are replaced.
Even for my case, SA told me that apart form the worm motor, one more part was reaching its limit, but wont give away right now. So they didn't change the part. I asked her to get that part replaced anyway as my car would be under warranty till 7th year. To which she agreed, but explained that those kind of parts are not ideally available with their parts bin in Chennai, but has to be ordered from Korea. In Chennai, they normally hold the entire module / assembly, rather than small internal components.

I can not validate my SA' statement here, but seems logical. My replacement part was under order since and estimation given to me was for 3-6 months.

[GTO]

All the parts we bought & replaced in our erstwhile C220 CDI lasted more than the factory part or the warranty replacement part. Many times, what we bought from outside lasted twice the km. It was quite telling as to the kind of cost-cutting OEMs do.

[abaliga]

Thank you all for the valuable feedback, Appreciate all of you sharing your knowledge, experience and insight on this!

Originally Posted by fazayal

I don't think that any OEM has different parts for warranty replacement and paid replacement. If it was true, it would have come out considering crores of people working in the industry.

Only thing is that while the car is under warranty, they might repair it or replace just the child part. If it is out of warranty, they might insist on replacing the parent part.

One example from my days working as a service advisor in a Hyundai dealership. Santros had issues with rear brake cylinder leakage. While the car was under warranty, only the wheel cylinder rubber was replaced. Once out of warranty, customer was asked to replace the complete wheel cylinder assembly.

I think this is probably the apt explanation of what my SA was pointing out, when I probed further, SA mentioned that they do not release many of the child parts into the open market that are otherwise used for warranty replacements and insist on assembly replacements when its out of warranty

All in all I feel OEMs should not be stingy on warranty support and ensure quality work is done, this will avoid multiple service center visits in many cases (like in our case for the steering rattle), timely resolution of genuine issues will add to the goodwill and get more customers into the fold.

[androdev]

I find it hard to believe such a practice exists. Let's first understand some terminology.

Genuine parts: Automaker branded - what goes into your car at the factory, passed QC of the automaker. Expensive to due to automaker margin.

OE parts: Same as above, without the automaker brand. Sold with vendor branding directly. These are excess quantity produced above what's need to supply the automaker - importantly passed QC of the automaker. Except for the packaging+logo, there is no difference between genuine and OE parts. Limited availability.

OEM parts: Parts made by the same vendor who supplied parts to the automaker or has license to manufacture these parts (has access to the complete technical spec of the part) - who may or may not be the current supplier. Likely to meet the specifications but no obligation of passing QC of the automaker. Quality depends on the reputation of the brand.

Aftermarket parts: 3rd party suppliers with no connection to the automaker.

These suppliers can have multiple factories in different countries and the parts may come from any factory.

Dealers are only allowed to use genuine parts. Period. The only "tweaking" they can do is that use locally sourced parts for warranty jobs and imported parts for paid jobs to have higher profit margins. The difference in quality maybe a coincidence - the primary motivation could be to keep the profit margins high (local vs imported, repair vs replace, child-part vs entire part).

In the case of Hyundai, it's unlikely that factory assembly line uses a more expensive part compared to a warranty repair job. They are both likely to be locally supplied parts - cheaper. When it comes to the paid jobs, the dealer might use more expensive imported parts or parts from a different high-cost supplier - never based on quality - but more to do with profit margins and supply chain constraints. At the end of the day, the dealer has to use only genuine parts.

[na_agrawal]

Originally Posted by androdev

I find it hard to believe such a practice exists. Let's first understand some terminology.

What you say actually makes sense, & I find it hard to believe otherwise.

However, below is the casual conversation I had with the workshop manager while my car was under insurance repair. As for the brand, yes, it' Hyundai.

Last year, A police van had hit my i20 Active on a traffic signal and it didn't stop to check on me. Long story short, my car required some part replacements, primarily left front fender, left front cladding, left skirts, left ORVM, front bumper cladding and left rear alloy wheel.

Insurance approved everything except the alloy wheel since it was just a chipping of the alloy spoke. (the scar is still there ). While my car was being inspected and initial estimates being worked out, I went for a casual chat with the Hyundai Workshop manager and he, without any hesitation, in a very normal tone, just like a everyday business, blurted out, "Sir, anyways the metal and plastic quality is never same with these spare sparts as one with the factory fitted ones."

I was shocked and re-confirmed his statement. To my good luck, these were just sheet metal parts and cosmetics ones. Thankfully, all mechanicals were unharmed.

Same dealer, AC compressor failure for my i20 Active

This episode happened in 2023. Got my AC compressor replaced due to a premature failure. I happened to meet the same guy this time and inquired about the part quality/factory standards for AC compressor.

He stated, that, since YOU are purchasing this part out of your pocket and paying the full price,(almost 21k) and not some insurance company/in-warranty replacement, you will be getting the best quality part which might even surpass the factory fitment.

By this, I have come to a conclusion, that all such mass-markets brands eventually will start some malpractices to cover for the uprising demands which obviously cannot be met with very strict standards if set for each and every Knick and knack.

-Cheers,
NA!

[UD17]

Well we sell lot of parts to OEMs and their OES (service) requirements. From Supplier point of view we do not have separate variety for OEM and OES. They are same in design, process and shop floor treatments (only packaging may differ due to quantities).

Some components (air filter, belts, batteries, clutch, bearings, Tyres etc.) have multiple vendors due to capacity, supply chain risk, business dependency risks etc. In these cases the quality may differ but marginally to the extent that the durability/reliability are not perceivable (Although the perceived quality/feel may differ in some cases).

But when you move to FNG or in open market, you get parts from many vendors, countries, distributors, copy cats et.al. The price and quality variation then would be quite significant to observe in terms of durability/reliability on the vehicle.

[raptor_diwan]

Honestly, I don't think such a practice has been around. If something like this were happening, it would have come out a while ago. There are so many people on the inside who would have spilled the beans ages ago.

It's possible that someone might be saying this to justify selling you something at a higher price, hoping you won't shop around for better deals. Or they might have received incorrect information from someone else.

[VellVector]

Originally Posted by abaliga

This was a shocking revelation to me and is something that I find down right unethical, has anyone else on the forum come across this practice of varying part quality for warranty vs paid repairs by other OEMs?t

As a tier-1 supplier to a number of the auto manufacturers, I can definitely tell you this is completely made up by your advisor. Otherwise he should be able to show you the parts manual of supposed different part numbers for warranty items.

The cost of developing, manufacturing and keeping a supply chain for a different set of parts to be used for just warranty parts would be exponential compared to just using the running production parts.

Further in 90% of the cases the OEMs do not pay for warranty claims at all, the cost of the failure and replacement is billed to the vendor from whom the part was bought. So there is no incentive to have this expensive shadow supply chain at all.

[dmaheshkumar]

Hi,
Frankly most of the after sales were taking advantage of customers. But Customers need to be more wise in understanding their machines before they opt to buy that. They need to know what is the life time of Spares and when is the time to get it replaced. Based on the Manual and their driving style we can opt for the spare changes.

Still my Linea with ODO 121000kms (Sold to my friend when its 82000kms or so), running with the same Stock timing chain. But we cant risk when its a Timing Belt where we cant be sure and we cant recognize with the engine sound idling.


Even for Two wheelers its the same.
From the year 2000 (Splendor) i do oil service only between 4500 and 5000 kilometers. That time we doesn't have lot many advanced oil options, Only Castrol 20w-40 we use. Still by Gods grace its running in Stock engine crossed 1.3 lakhs kilometers.
For the current generation motorcycles, they say to service every 2000 kms which i feel its surely cheating. Now we have advanced oils and even super bikes are running with 6000 kms interval, but 100cc to 300cc motorcycles which have the most population need to be serviced in 2000 kms interval.

Also,
old oils which you drained from your vehicle will fetch around 50 INR per liter to the dealer and the spares scrap is another part. For example, Innova have around 7 liters of oil capacity and in each service we give 350 INR extra to the bill we pay.

[vagster]

AFAIK, when you order a replacement under warranty, it goes to the same manufacturer who made the particular part (Ex - Bosch, WABCO or any internal vendor). So technically we would be getting the same issue whatsoever or a rectified one if the same manufacturer has updated it.

[rajvardhanraje]

Here is my experience based on my stints as a service provider to the automotive companies (assembling line).

• Most of the components were always sourced from various vendors, with very less being manufactured inhouse.
• The same component would be supplied by various vendors. In the system, the component code would be the same irrespective of the vendor that supplied it.
• These components are tested internally at multiple stages, right from inbound, upto the part where it is fitted on a vehicle.
• The ones which would fail, or not pass the benchmarks would be rejected, and sent back to the supplier in most cases.
• Component quality & failure rates would vary depending on the supplier. Based on these metrics, vendors would be categorized in different tiers. The ones falling in Tier 1 would be incentivised with larger orders, and the ones in Tier 3 would be penalized with lesser orders.
• Despite the categorization, there would always be a higher limit in terms of percentage allocation to a vendor to supply the component.
• At the individual vendor level, they always produce components at mass level with the same quality, with no differentiation as such.

Based on this, there could be a possibility that for paid replacement requirements, the automotive company allocates parts from Tier 1 vendors, and Tier 2/3 for warranty replacements. While I do not have any visbility into this, it could be a possible explanation for the variances in part quality.

An automobile consists of thousands of such components from hundreds of such vendors. At the assembly level, these parts would be allocated randomly to batches, without segregation of components based on the vendor. Once they get stored in the warehouse, they are kept together without any differentiation, from where they go the assembly line.

[FAIAAA]

Originally Posted by GTO

All the parts we bought & replaced in our erstwhile C220 CDI lasted more than the factory part or the warranty replacement part. Many times, what we bought from outside lasted twice the km. It was quite telling as to the kind of cost-cutting OEMs do.

Thanks. I just purchased Honda's Anytime warranty (renewable annually, till 10 years) as I was nearing the end of the extended warranty (EW) period for my Honda BRV V CVT. Given yours and others responses on this thread, does it mean one shouldn't purchase EW or anytime warranty ?

My thinking is - I paid Rs 8904 plus taxes for 6th year warranty. Even with B grade parts replacement under warranty, cost of Engine / GB and other key components will be in Lacs and cover the cost of warranty cover several times over

[harikrishnansp]

This is just and excuse for any lapse in workmanship from the workshop. The paint finish, though very difficult to get factory like quality would still look good if done properly. Same thing goes to installing different parts. Though some might appear plug and play, many things can go wrong such as the tightening torque, not following manufacturer recommended SOP(these operating procedures are there for a reason) for replacement etc.

[flipflop]

I think Turbonator has addressed this bang on. Spare parts make may be different than those used in production - Turbonators example of batteries is perfect - where stock products used in production may be of cheaper quality than those availed as spares later on. Cost cutting is a huge problem we end users face, buts less face it - we too are in perineal search of cheap prices, discounts and deals. I suppose what we look for is what we get