Booked a Thar online; Mahindra has no clue

They responded to it by saying that they can't find my booking on their booking website.

BHPian dr_TJ recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

I finally decided to get the new Mahindra Thar last month (July 2021) and because of the local restrictions in my state, Assam, I planned to book it online. Upon doing a bit of Google search, I found Mahindra's accessories e-Market website of m2all.com and it had the option of online booking for the New Mahindra Thar with a booking amount of Rs 5000. So I proceeded to book my Thar, LX HT AT Diesel in Galaxy/Deep Grey on 09-July-2021. I got an email with my order number from m2all.com, Then for a week or so, there was no update. Upon enquiring on Twitter with Mahindra support, I got a call from my Local selected Dealership. They sounded clueless regarding my online booking. Two weeks went by with no update whatsoever.

Then on 26-July-2021, got another call from Mahindra Dealership asking me screenshots of my order on m2all.com and I also got a call from Mahindra Support regarding the same.

Afterwards, Mahindra Support emailed me to share the same booking screenshots, which I did. They responded to it by saying that they can't find my booking on their booking website of auto.mahindra.com and so they have escalated the matter to their seniors. Meanwhile my m2all.com account got updated with details of my booking, variant, color plus a SKU code.

Thereafter I got a new sms from Mahindra regarding booking of my new Mahindra Thar on 30-July-2021 and a personnel from the local Dealership called me to inform he placed a new booking on auto.mahindra.com and said that the booking amount is Rs 21000 and since I paid Rs 5000 already on m2all.com, I need to send the Balance amount of Rs 16000, which I did on 30-July-2021. Now, my concern is, which booking date is to be believed, 9-July-2021 or 30-July-2021. The delayed booking date will also push back my delivery date.

The biggest question is why does Mahindra have two websites for booking and don't they have any communication between the two? I don't want to have any argument or any bad vibes with my local dealership because it's not their fault, but what is wrong with Mahindra?  Feels like I am taken for a ride. Can't they solve such trivial issues immediately?

As of now, Booking facility via m2all.com is closed it seems as it now shows out of stock.

What do you guys suggest?

Here's what GTO had to say on the matter:

Typical of many of Mahindra's initiatives. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

Here's what BHPian tilt had to say on the matter:

I too discovered that site and thought it would be good to book at 5K instead of 21K since the amount would be stuck for a year.

It took me all the way to me providing my credit card details on the Razorpay screen and then glitched at the OTP screen saying "Server error, this has been communicated and will be set right".

This kept happening. I involved the dealer I selected, and had them escalate to Mahindra. Over a period of two weeks at least, there was a lot of back-and forth between me, my dealer, my dealer's web-marketing-manager and Mahindra and the M2ALL site.

Finally someone from Mahindra/M2ALL's senior team called me and told me that it is not possible to book on M2ALL. And since that facility had been removed, what they apparently did was instead of completely removing that option (meaning, do not show a booking option at all), they decided to disable the very final stage of accepting payment (but they still collect all your info and also your credit card info along with the CVV).

And they informed the dealer that they will either remove this feature completely; or enable the booking feature with 21K as the booking amount.

And here I thought I was being smart and gaming the system by booking for 5K while every other "sucker" booked for 21K. The joke's on me after all.

Also, yes, Mahindra had no clue that this was an option on M2ALL and nobody seems to remember that the site even exists!

Here's what BHPian HP-BHP had to say on the matter:

Mahindra M2all.com did offer car booking for a year or two but the whole experience was always a half baked one. One of my colleagues tried booking the car during the lockdown but it never went through. He finally booked the car through the dealer by sending payment through UPI.

It seems that idea of having two online booking platforms came during two seperate meetings at Mahindra with separate teams who developed the product independently (and never met). While M2all.com works well for accessories (tried it a couple of times) but I guess booking the car from the dealer is still a better option in India (for the time being).

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