[hypermiler]

Originally Posted by abhatt

The tool kit and reflector velcro should be stuck behind the back seat than the boot floor. This is what the SA told me. Thats where it belongs as per him. And i have it hanging there really well.

Love the cloth interiors of Longitude. Limited has the auto IRVM.

I will try to stick them to the seat back. The Velcro seems strong enough to stick to an inclined surface.

FYI: the seats are a mix of fabric and artificial leather in places. But do not understand why we have this new trend of light colored seats. I know the higher variants have darker seats for the Compass. But the Safari also has a similar scheme for the top variant. I think they call the color scheme Oyster white or something. These are going to get dirty quickly.

[livelyyoungman]

Congrats @hypermiler. It is indeed an excellent car own. Wishing you many more (s)miles with this car. My friend just got hold of this beauty - a pre-owned Limited Plus 4x4 AT variant 2020 registered and 10K on odo at an excellent price point. Had taken the car to Salem for the first annual service and got the EW cover as well (We don't trust the Chennai ASC at all). It was really a pleasure to drive this car. The only issue is the headlight. The throw is bad and so is visibility. Now we are planning to upgrade the lights. How are your lights? Do you face the same issue?

[abhatt]

Originally Posted by hypermiler

FYI: the seats are a mix of fabric and artificial leather in places. But do not understand why we have this new trend of light colored seats. I know the higher variants have darker seats for the Compass. But the Safari also has a similar scheme for the top variant. I think they call the color scheme Oyster white or something. These are going to get dirty quickly.

I have kept a microfiber cloth and soap spray handy. I have a toddler, so always scared. The leather getting dirty can be wiped easily with soap water. The cloth piece is tricky. Limited has the arm rest which is covered with cloth and I already see it getting dirty.

[hypermiler]

Originally Posted by livelyyoungman

The only issue is the headlight. The throw is bad and so is visibility. Now we are planning to upgrade the lights. How are your lights? Do you face the same issue?

Thanks. I usually make it a point to drive during the day time. Further I mostly stay on the low beams when I do my drive back home nighttime via the Chennai bypass and occasionally switch to high beams. High beams seems adequate. Low beams seems inadequate compared to other cars on the highway. I thought it was a characteristic of LED white lights.. I drive comparatively slower during the nights anyway. So, it is not an issue for me. For night time city driving, this will not be an issue I think. For now, I do not have plans to upgrade.

[hypermiler]

3000km update

• Mileage is hovering around 16kmpl with a mix of highway and city runs
• Noticed this Easter egg on the left front windshield, partially hidden by the left wiper. Projects a nice shadow when you drive facing the sun on the pillar. I am surprised no one posted this. I think this is in the face-lifted model only? Pre-facelift owners can confirm.
  
• Got the first scratch on the left rear door. Pretty sure the ugly deed was done at my parking lot. 90% of my previous car scratches were done while the car was in the parking lot as well

[abhi_tjet]

Originally Posted by hypermiler

3000km update

• Mileage is hovering around 16kmpl with a mix of highway and city runs
• 90% of my previous car scratches were done while the car was in the parking lot as well

A bit late to the party but a hearty congratulations on owning a well built crossover. Mileage seems pretty decent as well.
Regarding scratches, +100. Its same for me as well and how I wish I can have a small row house just for private parking space.

Happy mile munching!

[ronnie1985]

@hypermiller, thanks for the nicely written and witty piece on Jeep compass. I am considering buying it and your buying and ownership review is deviney helping

[hypermiler]

Going strong and managed to complete 8500 kms in 8 months. Drives great on highways. Off the 8500 kms completed, 7500 would have been done on the highways. Here are the observations:

Positives:

• I feel less tired with my periodic trips to Coimbatore from Chennai (~530kms) and Trichy (~300 kms).
• Mileage of 16.5 kmpl on highways with a bit of spirited drives. During my first long distance trip, I kept the speeds between 80 - 100 kmph and extracted ~18 kmpl. In city, gets me 12.5 to 13 kmpl.
• Has good power and no effort is required when going over ramps, steep inclines.
• Good ICE to listen to during all those long trips.
• Looker. Few have considered getting the Jeep after seeing this in our apartment complex. There is one more Limited Diesel now in the complex

Negatives:

• Auto Start-Stop performing erratically. Though this is not a major blocker and I cringe every time I stop at a signal and the engine shuts off to start again later, it is still a niggle that indicates that something is wrong. As part of the 5000 km service, the service center identified that there could be an issue with the auto-start-stop battery and recharged the car overnight so that they can make a warranty claim. Looks like the car retained the charge. I was in a hurry to take the car as I was planning to travel that day and indicated that I will come back before the 1 year service to get this resolved properly.
  
  Mostly, auto-start does not work when we start. But after 40 - 50 km of ride, it slowly starts working. Must be a problem with the battery charging.
  
  The thing is, even if I switch it off, the next time I start the car, it reverts back to auto-start/stop on.
  
  
  
• Minor rattle, particularly at low speeds, somewhere near the center dash speakers. This occurs some time and not all the time.
  
• First tab (Home screen) in the ICE that shows the consolidated view of all your connected devices calls, music etc., is stuck at the loading screen. Android auto, apple car play, music tab and others pages work fine.
  
  
  
• There were some ECU updates around Dec and I was asked to come to the service to update the software. Coordination could have been better. I got a phone call to drop the car. But at the service station, no one was aware that I am coming. Luckily, they obliged to update the firmware despite the heavy load. ECU updated resulted in a message while at slow speeds to use the 1st gear while travelling up to 8 kmph and now the center console remembers the last mode I was in (speedo or trip details etc.,) when I switched off the car. It used to always start with the digital speedo earlier.
  
  
  
  A couple of months later, I was asked to come again for an update. I mentioned that my car has been updated a couple of months back. Despite that, they asked me to bring the car for a check. Turned out that there was no further updates. Being a connected car, I do not see how they cannot get the software version details remotely.

Other things:

• Purchased the rubber boot mat. Quite impressed with the floor slush mats and a tire inflator.
• Plan to black out the front grille and the top in the near future.
• Filled in ~7 liters of DEF at 6k km mark. I got two cans (1 5 lit and 1 2 lit) from VTK Sholinganallur
• Scuff plates maybe

[hypermiler]

Completed 1 year with 9k kms in the ODO. Had not been able to drive much the last 3 months.

Booked for service with VTK Kattupakkam. The web site and app based booking were not working and had to resort to the old-fashioned booking via the phone. The Mardas Jeep Club forum was quick enough to share the contact details.

Got the car dropped in the morning. Had to complete the 1 year service (labor free) which covered engine oil replacement, air filter replacement, cleaning, wheel alignment and balancing. Plus I had two issues:

* The ICE home screen was continuously in loading mode
* Auto start stop was unreliable. Only after I run the car for a 50 - 100kms, it starts working.

I get some rare rattling sounds when driving through rough roads, but decided to let it be and did not report it.

First service center to ask me if I had done Wheel balancing or alignment outside so that it need not be included as part of the service. . It costs ~3k.

Routine services and resetting the ICE was done as planned. However, for auto-start, they wanted to recharge the battery and see before claiming warranty. That took ~4 days as a Sunday was falling in the middle. After the 4th day, they indicated that the battery was able to retain the charge and auto-start was working. And that it is normal for the auto-start to start working only if you have driven the car adequately for the battery to charge. They have told the monitor this again as the battery is covered under warranty for 2 years and if it still has problems, they will replace it under warranty.

My run is less now and I get to take the car out once a week. The next time I took out the car, the same 'Auto-start-stop not available. Service battery' message came up. Though this is not a big issue, I still wonder why a 'Service battery' message comes up. It gives a feeling that there is something wrong. Perhaps if the message is more like 'Auto-start-stop not available. Charging...', it would be more appropriate and acceptable. Anyway, this was the same issue that I reported during the 5km service and the there is not much change in the 1year 15k km service as well.

I have not faced any battery drain issues that most of the other owners have reported ... yet. The battery voltage stays above 12.4 even though I leave car unused for 10 days. Touch wood.

I am a bit skeptical to make any changes to the components (to address the rattling or start-stop function) and decided to let them be for now.

Post service, no noticeable difference. Got back a couple of used filters (they look mostly clean anyway) and a bottle of windshield wiper fluid that was left over from filling.

Except for the auto-start-stop, I think the rest of the service experience was ok. Overall cost: ~13.5k

Based on my service experience, here are the plusses and minuses observed from various service centers. Note that they may be specific to the service centers and not the car maker in general

* Maruti (they were quite punctual and able to resolve issues first time)
* Toyota (Minor misses - glove box cover not fit properly, huge crowd and long waiting time for pickup and delivery, an app that gives you service history, cost and progress of service)
* Honda (Frequent service interval - 6 months, mostly first time right, SA tries to push a lot of unwanted items: rat repellant, silencer treatment, bonnet cowl cleaning, headlight cleaning etc., app that you can use to view service history and cost, parts were mostly available except for a few rare component - my FIL's WRV had the fuel pump replaced in warranty. Later, they had a recall for the same I think)
* Jeep (quick response time to attend to the car once you get to the service station - pickup and delivery, no or late updates or progress, you can actually see the car's movement, start / stop timings from the Jeep Life App, so you know that some work is going on)
* Ford (delays in attending to the car, and delivery multiple trips on hard to fix issues - oil sump leakage, AC cooling, able to address warranty issues quickly - factory nearby?)

[fawad0222]

Hey Everyone,

I have recently acquired a new Jeep Compass MT. Has run just 350 kms. I find that my key less entry( knob on the door) doesn't work if I want to lock the car. I have to use the remote key to do that. It automatically opens the car if reach the door though. Sorry I have been too lazy to go through the manual.

Regards

[hypermiler]

2 year and 12,000 km update

Did not manage to run much the last year and had to take the car this Aug for 2 year / 30,000km service (had run ~3k kms the last year). Service person was not too happy when I was bringing in the car for 30k service with just 12k on the ODO and advised me to drive more

The items covered were over and above the standard service were:

• Wheel rotation & alignment
• Replacement of the right side ORVM - A biker hit the glass housing area and the glass popped out and cracked. Luckily, there was no damage to the harness. So, I popped back the cracked glass.
  
  Later, purchased a replacement from Amazon for ~350 INR. But they were plain. Missed the progressive convex tapering at the extreme ends of the original part. So, decided to later get the OEM part. That costs ~780 INR + 300 labor (I could have simply got the component and fixed it later myself) to save on labor.
• Replacement of the rubber cowl that covers the drain area between the windshield and bonnet area (driver side). A small portion had come off. Service person indicated that it must have been a rat (as they seem to like the taste of the Jeep rubber parts). This part was quite expensive at ~3.3k INR + labor.
  
• Rat repellent spray to ensure that our rodent friends do not find the newly replaced cowl savory and the engine bay unwelcome for a daily huddle
• Auto-start stop feature was not working
• Lost Jeep app connectivity since last Dec (2022)

Overall, service was done in a day, but auto-start stop battery was a blocker and VTK had to claim warranty to replace the battery. They took ~4 days as it required that they recharge the existing battery for a day and the request Jeep for a battery replacement. As I understand, battery was readily available for fitment, but they were waiting for the remaining 3 days to get approval from Jeep India to do the replacement. Post service, auto-start / stop seems to work fine. It had been acting up since the 5th month of purchase and I could not afford to wait a similar duration during the 1st year service as I had planned to travel at that time. But with the auto-start properly working, I find that it is annoying every time I stop at an intersection. The compressor cuts off in this state and it starts becoming quite hot with the weather at Chennai.

Service alone with wheel alignment and balancing, interior cleaning and rat repellent was quoted to ~22k. With the extras, came to 27k for the 2nd year service.

Another observation was, the steering seemed lighter post service, which is good.

Did notice a couple of paint chips in the driver from side panel.
. But as the car had amassed a lot of battle scars elsewhere already (kids at the apartment showing off their prowess in squeezing through narrow spaces, preparing for the future real-world traffic conditions) and decided not to pursue this, grateful to get hold of the car.

Jeep app was reactivated again. The service person switched off the car, unplugged the dongle and after some time, plugged it in and called the Jeep customer support call center to reactivate it. It seems to work now and has started lecturing me whenever I accelerate or hard brake.

Not sure if there were any software updates, but the sound seems to be more bass heavy after service. Maybe the service people fiddled around with the equalizer settings. But I still feel that there is a positive difference even if I reset the equalizer settings back to normal.

A nice thing about the service was, on dropping the car at the service station, they created a Whatsapp group with the service advisor and upto 3 levels of escalation points along with me. So, was not at loss when I was unable to get hold of the service advisor as I had someone else to reach out to. Atleast I got an update every start and close of day, on what was done and where they were blocked. Had not experienced this in any of the other car service centers so far, which is positive. But still had to follow up a couple of times...

General observations not related to the service

• Whenever I get a call or make a call while connected to the ICE, the AC blower goes to the lowest level, thereby reducing the noise generated so that I can focus on the call. I think it is a nice touch, as I mostly stopped relying on the auto AC mode as it seemed too feeble and mostly set the blower to level 3 or higher to get a good breeze
• Driving on highways still as good as it was and the family is always ready to go for a drive on the Chennai bypass to Tambaram and back (~35km), just to experience the car and ride.
• Do get some slight noises when I go through rough patches. But this happens occasionally. Solution? Just jack up the music volume

About the battle scars, any advice if there are simple ways to minimize the scratches on the car rather than paining the doors? Was thinking off TurtleWax Color Magic and cover the scratches with a coat and finish up with a ceramic polish...