Paint washing off a 6-month-old Nexon: Dealer avoids warranty claims

Paint is literally rubbing away when wiping with a cloth, almost as if it is shoe polish.

BHPian motonomad recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Hi Nexon community, posting the ongoing experience of a friend/colleague with Nexon with his permission as he is not a member. For us, watching him deal with the Tata dealership and workshop for the past few months has crossed from funny the initial few times to painful now. It almost feels like trying to wrestle a pig in mud, but I am getting ahead of myself.

He bought a black manual Tata Nexon petrol from Arya Tata in Gurgaon about 6 months ago (October 2022). In a typical Tata fashion, there were long delays, way past the initially committed date, but fine. Then they were eager to allocate a car but my colleague wanted to check it in person first. The car somehow had the whole carpet soaked and even had standing water in some places near the foot space for the rear passenger. Very questionable, obviously. And when asked, no one had a clear answer of how a seemingly brand new car was flooded from the inside except "must have happened during cleaning".

So that car was rejected and the wait continued. Another unit with a different chassis number arrived a week or so later. There were some noticeable issues like inconsistent panel gaps and seemingly poor paint finish in some inner spots. He pointed those out but didn't make much fuss over it because this was fairly common across a lot of Tata cars and because there had already been a fair bit of delay already.

Fast forward to now, skipping over the pains with Tata service and Tata's endless feature list tweaking causing more confusion, the paint in some places in the car is starting to change the texture. This is happening primarily in all the door frames. With paint losing its gloss in some drip signs to the paint literally rubbing away when wiping with a cloth almost as if it is shoe polish. This has started happening only over the past 2-3 weeks.

On raising this issue with the workshop, they first tried to dismiss it with "sir ye koi chemical gir gaya hoga aapse" (translation: you must have dropped some chemical here) which, on pointing out that it is happening to all the door frames, very quickly changed to offering to get it repainted as a favour.

The problem, however, is that they are skirting around in putting anything in writing and despite multiple requests, won't make a warranty claim for it.

The dealer at first lied that the warranty claim has been made and they are awaiting a response from the company. On probing further, the same response changed to "We are yet to make a claim, we will update you". Afaik, no warranty claim has been made yet. My colleague was fairly calm throughout this whole ordeal and even with multiple issues in the past but the endless lying and lack of accountability are getting a bit too much now.

To compound it all, the communications made to Tata are re-routed to the dealership itself which is clearly the lousiest approach the brand can take. I have first-person experiences with Ford, Fiat and Skoda. I really thought Fiat was the worst there could be but I was clearly wrong. There have been issues of different scales with each but never have I witnessed this level of apathy towards the customer from a brand.

I am unable to understand why the dealer is avoiding a warranty claim for this. Why are they offering to repaint it as a favour, probably at their cost, and not put down this issue on the company with a warranty claim? Also, what can be the channels to reach someone at Tata who would actually not route it back to the dealer to go in an endless loop? Input from existing Tata owners would be really appreciated

Attaching some images below of the brilliant work of art that is the Tata Nexon paint.

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