My poor experience booking a Toyota Urban Cruiser Hyryder online

Compare this to Mahindra - when I booked the Thar 2 years ago & also the Scorpio N recently, I got all the necessary details immediately.

BHPian 84.monsoon recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

The online booking process that Toyota has established is very poor. I tried to book the Hyryder G Strong Hybrid and the process started last Wednesday, Sep 28th. I selected Lanson Toyota in Cenotaph Road Chennai as the dealer while booking.

• I sent through the web form and tried to make payment through my credit card. The payment page hangs and would not go through after entering all card details. I tried three times and gave up.
• Tried again with G-pay. I had to re-enter all information each of the 4 times I tried to book, as the site has no user log-in or persistence of information. It is just like a Google form that collects some info and then re-directs you to a payment page.
• I finally paid via G-pay and all the site provides is a payment confirmation stub of Google pay. There is no return to Toyota booking page and no confirmation of the transaction from the Toyota page. This looks like a site and process that a flower shop would design and build to take orders for flowers and make payments. This is not the kind of design one of the world's largest auto manufacturers should have for booking their 20 lakh rupee cars.
• I then received an e-mail from Toyota - a barebones e-mail saying the booking is done, but with no details of the variant booked, dealer booked with, amount paid or booking priority number.
• Two days later I received a call from the dealer. All that the SA knew was that a booking had been done for Hyryder at their dealership. He had no idea of the variant, color or even whether the strong hybrid or weak hybrid had been booked. I had to repeat all this information again and asked for the payment receipt and the booking confirmation with variant details and the booking priority number.
• The SA now asks me to send Aadhar Card and PAN card and says this is mandatory to issue a booking receipt!
• In the next few hours,, I received no less than 5 calls/WhatsApp pings from the SA - each time asking for one additional bit of information. I think he was trying to go through and fill up a booking form and with each new field he came to, he realized he did not have the information, and he would call me. I asked him if he received the information from the Toyota booking site, where I had already keyed in most of the information he was asking for, and he says he did not receive any details other than the fact that a customer had booked a Hyryder with the dealership! So he wanted variant and color again, then wanted the the back side of the Aadhar card, then the e-mail ID, and then even nominee details! God knows why one needs a nominee when booking a car!
• He then asks for the booking payment receipt and UPI transaction ID. Although I sent him whatever I received as part of the process, he was not satisfied and wanted the UPI transaction ID, which was not available on the Gpay receipt nor the e-mail from Toyota. I told him this is all the information I have and you have to work with this.
• I then asked for the payment receipt. The SA then tells me that the google payment would have gone to the "Lanson Corporate Account" and it will take 3 days to reach the dealership account, and only then can he make out a payment receipt!
• After insisting I need something, he sends me a photo of a half-filled written, manual booking form, in which he gets the nominee relationship and age wrong - I inform him of the error and he says he has corrected it. I insist on the corrected form and sometime later I get another photo of another written form - this time the nominee details are thankfully correct.
• Three days go by and I again follow up for a proper payment receipt and booking confirmation. "Sir, payment is not reflecting yet" is the answer. Same answer on the next day and I then got busy with work and forgot about this. I again messaged him this morning (Oct 8th) about it and finally, I received the Computer generated "Customer Receipt" - 10 days after I booked and paid. It has an Order Number but this seems local to the dealer. No national booking ID reflecting the priority number is provided.

Compare this to M&M - when I booked the Thar 2 years ago, and also when I booked the Scorpio N recently, I got the complete booking receipt and booking ID immediately after I completed the payment. I can go and check the status of my booking anytime by logging into the portal provided by M&M. I can see the sequence of steps from "Order under Planning" to "Being produced" to "In transit for delivery" etc. in the portal. With Toyota, I cannot even retrieve my booking on the site as they have no login functionality. One has to rely entirely on the goodwill of the dealer to get the status and the delivery.

I think as a leading global car manufacturer, Toyota should set up a more robust, customer-friendly process. The process should ensure the details of the order reaches the dealer in its entirety. They should also train their SAs to create booking receipts without calling and messaging the customer half a dozen times. These are basics without which a manufacturer has no right to do business in today's times.

Here's what BHPian d-g-p had to say about the matter:

My overall experience with Maruti Nexa website booking is not much different either. I did an Urban Cruiser Hyryder booking with a Toyota dealer but opted for an online booking with Grand Vitara. Calls from the dealer came after 2-3 days and almost the same process to go through.

They too faced the same issues with payment confirmation from Nexa.

Interestingly while I booked a Grand Vitara Alpha+ Nexa blue AT (Other colour options were not available initially) later I found the same being converted to Zeta MT when I logged in after a few days. Nexa SA assured me of converting this to Alpha+ AT or any other variant after the price announcement.

At least in Maruti Suzuki Nexa you can log on and cancel the booking from the website itself.

As the service adviser has a target each month, do the bookings from the website which are allotted to them help in their monthly target?

Check out BHPian comments for more insights and information.