Mods: Please take note. If you find it worthwhile, feel free to delete the first couple of lines and start this as a new thread. If it doesn't meet your standards, apologize. Would like to meet your expectations going forward.
This is my first thread and second post on TBHP. I just want to share the nightmarish experiences I've had with Maruti and seek (not sympathy) solutions to my problems.
How it all started?
It was June 2011. I had been married for about 1.5 years now and my newborn daughter was about 6 months old. Plus, the Money-back policy that I had been investing for close to five years was about yield its first return.
After the first 5 months of her life at her grandma's place in Bangalore, I had just brought my daughter to Hyderabad. I had been a very enthusiastic bike rider till then, but didn't have the guts to take my little one and my wifey on the ever-thrilling but threatening RX-135. I had moved up in life (to a small extent) and thought I was now able to afford a second-hand car to take my small family out on the road safely.
The Decision:
I consulted a couple of my friends, and a real close one who owned a Wagon R LXi Duo. He was all praise for the vehicle he owned and how loyal, practical and trouble-free it was. Being someone new to this world of cars, I was impressed. I had been doing a lot of research on Maruti's TrueValue website and selected a car that fit my requirements. And one fine day, end of June 2011, we went to the TrueValue showroom to have a look at the car I had selected.
Surprise! The car I had booked was not available; not only was it unavailable, but it was to be refurbished and would take at least a week to be back to the showroom. So, without choice, I and my friend started looking at other Wagon R options there were. Some flashy modified, some abused and some end-of-life Wagon Rs! And then the rep drew my attention to a silver, nothing to be amazed of, Wagon R Duo, and also offered me a discount of 15k over the 3.3 lac price he quoted. The car had done only 36k kilometers! My friend did the TD (I was a novice and didn't know what cars were all about) and said it was quite good and worth the money. That was it! We came back to the showroom; I paid 5k as booking advance and left the showroom
The Delivery:
Being someone that had just "moved up" in his life, I was relying on banks to finance my loan. Loan did get sanctioned by HDFC (thankfully), and that too pretty soon. July 9, 2011, I took possession of my car (financed) after all the formalities had been taken care of. A novice, I was able to drive through and negotiate Hyderabad traffic, especially through Kukatpally between 6 and 7 pm (Hyderabadis would know what a pain it can be). I had two of my very close friends with me to celebrate our first car (and also make sure that I reached home safe). All of us were happy! And after our celebrations were over, my friends took leave.
First Adventure:
Being from lower-middle class, the car was a luxury. I drove it all the way from the showroom to home and boy, did I enjoy!? On the other hand, my wife also wanted to take a ride! So after my friends left, my wife suggested we go on a long drive within the city (in the middle of the night). I said, today being a Saturday, why don't we go out of town and be back by Monday morning!? My wife agreed. We packed all the essentials, took a couple of pillows and blankets to keep our daughter cozy in the backseat, filled the tanks up at the nearest petrol/gas stations and hit the Bangalore highway. And so the adventure began!
And the nightmare begins (Shock Number 1) :
210 kilometers from Hyderabad, around 5:45 in the morning and the first morning after I bought my new second-hand car, I had my first puncture entering the town of Kurnool. Enthusiastic, I just took the spare tire and started unscrewing the left-front wheel. One of the wheel nuts was jammed. Drove it to the nearest puncture shop, which luckily was only about 100 meters from there. The puncture guy continued what I started, and the bolt broke! He charged me Rs. 250 to fix the puncture and patch the tire that was torn (TrueValue!). We left Kurnool at 8:45, after the guy was done with fixing the tire and blabbering about how greedy these showrooms were and their sub-par service, towards Bellary. The plan was to visit my wife's cousin at Savanur, between Haveri and Hubli. We tanked up again on the way to Bellary and reached Bellary by noon through all the bad roads that my Wagon R barely managed through. We lodged at a hotel in Bellary, took some rest and by evening as we had hardly slept, and we were back on our way by 6:00.
And then started another nightmare of a drive, to Hospet and then through local roads towards Haveri. We reached Haveri at around 12:30. And unfortunately, we happened to pick up a passenger at Haveri who was travelling to the same destination that we were. We were about to hit the Pune-Bangalore highway, 30 Kms away from Savanur and another puncture! And the same tire again! I tried unscrewing the nuts and the nut opposite to the nut that had broken that morning was stuck. With no option, I called up the Maruti Helpline who promised help would be on its way in 45 minutes.
Fortunately, for me, my brother was travelling from Bangalore to Hubli that same night. I asked him to get down on the Haveri bypass. He, unfortunately for him, accompanied us in our misadventure.
By the time one of the Maruti A.S.S, guys arrived at the crime scene, it was almost 8 am, more than 6 hours after our ordeal had started. He tried hard to unscrew the wheel nut for more than 30 minutes, and failed. He then asked me to drive the car with the punctured tire to a welding shop 2 kms away. I did. But the punctured tire gave up. The nut was melted down and replaced by the spare. I took the car to the Maruti Service Station. I then noticed that the spare wheel was not an original, or was from an older Wagon R, which was much more aged than the car and would live for only a couple of months with all the rust it had gathered. After almost 3.5 hours, the tire was replaced, along with a couple of other things, and the whole thing cost me 4k. And we were back on our way to Savanur. And in all this hoopla, the passenger I had picked up had left us.
Rest of the trip back to Hyderabad was not all that eventful. We came back to Hyderabad with mixed emotions. A good trip with some bad experiences.
Shock Number 2:
In a couple of weeks, after the initial congratulatory conversations, my friends/colleagues pointed out that the car was registered in Vijaywada, AP 16, which is kind of a taboo in Hyderabad. It would be one of the first to be targeted by regionalists (for the lack of a better word) whenever there was unrest in the city (that explains the 15k rebate offered by the dealer). Nightmare! I was a non-local, unaware of things.
Shock Number 3:
The car started giving me trouble on LPG mode, especially in the 2nd gear where I had to move over a speed-breaker/road hump. There was no response and the car used to stall (which still is the case, but I've gotten used to it). I took it to an M.A.S.S. to have it inspected. They did something, didn't charge anything, and told me that the problem was rectified. But it wasn't!
A couple of months later at a scheduled service, I came to know that the air-filter was broken and had been screwed in whereas it was meant to be held together by a clamp. They replaced the air-filter, cost me Rs. 650 for it. They even accused me of having taken the car to an unauthorized service station.[list=1][*]The problem with throttle response continued. The air-filter broke again when I tried to move the vehicle over a speed-breaker. Seemed as though the engine was gasping for breath and it wasn't supplied with the air it needed. Till date, two years since I bought the car, I've replaced the air-filter assembly completely three times, and the problem still persists. I've highlighted this problem to the service engineer every time I've visited the service center, and they don't seem to have a solution to this.
Additions, Replacements & Service:
1. Tires: 4 tires replaced. 2 of them about 30k kms old and the other 2 20k kms old. (That was how I could afford to change them)
2. Central Locking and Keyless Entry: Installed a security & keyless entry system.
3. Replaced all 4 speakers.
4. Fog lamps: Helps, and acts as a substitute when your headlights fail.
5. Installed 130/100 (illegal) Philips Rally headlights for highway duty. Though I'm normally a law abiding citizen, I can't stand the glare of the 8+ headlights of an oncoming truck on the highway. I use the low-beam within the city.
6. Service as per schedule provided.
Conclusion:
As of date, the car has done approx. 70k on the odo, 34k kms since I bought the car, and still has the same problems. All my visits to the M.A.S.S. haven't yielded anything but pain after all the service charges. And in 2 years, none of the authorized service centers have been able to fix my problems. And their attitude! I'd liken it to the government officials. They treat you as though you don't know how to drive and maintain a car.
I'm totally disappointed the way Maruti handles its customers. So much so that though they have a very good lineup of cars, I would never want to be a Maruti customer again.
PS: I might be biased, immature or inexperienced in my approach. Your suggestions would be helpful.