Regret giving my Seltos to a Kia service centre for an accident repair

An MG ZS EV rear-ended my SUV damaging the boot so I took it to the workshop to claim my car insurance and get it back in shape.

BHPian dipdawiz recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

It's already 4 months, this incident needs to be logged.

Last December, I decided to drive to Kolkata from Bangalore. And started our journey on 10th December. Plan was the same as my previous journey - Day 1 till Rajamahendravaram (Rajahmundry), day 2 till Bhubaneshwar and finally reach Kolkata on day 3.

As usual, I started at 4 am on 10th December. The journey was as usual till Vijayawada. Then the mishap happened.

At one of the traffic signals when I just stopped at a red signal, an MG ZS EV rear-ended my car. It was not too high an impact, but the protruding number plate of the MG ZS EV put a dent in my car's boot.

The thick-skinned gentleman started explaining to me that in his 25 years of driving this happened many times with him and blah blah. As I had to reach the destination, the boot was opening without issue, I did not spend much time there and left the place. The rest of the journey till Kolkata was excellent, most of the under-construction roads I saw in 2022 were ready by now and the toll till Kolkata became 2900 one way. Only some diversions were there due to road construction, before and after Balasore.

Long post, would try to be to the point.

The story I want to tell starts now. I reach home on 3rd day around 1:30pm. And decided to give the car for repair that day itself (12th December). My plan is to stay for a month so I thought it was enough to get my car back.

So, took the car the same day around 4:30pm to the nearest Kia service center. Service advisor was assigned within 10 min and he took all the details and some photos of the car. And we finished the initial insurance paperwork the same day. I was assured that I would get the car in 8-9 working days maximum.

Now one thing to remember, they do not have a body shop in the service center, so they send it to their body shop which is 30km from there. Service advisor told me that it would be sent there the next day on 13th Dec. And all updates I would get on the Whatsapp group they created.

On the 13th, there was no update, evening I called up, service advisor said that too many cars in the queue, so he would do it the next day. On the 14th, I got a WhatsApp message that the car had been taken to their body shop and here are some images of the car.

Good thing that a WhatsApp group was created with an escalation matrix given and all communication (or lack of it) would happen through that. All members of the escalation matrix are in that group.

Now to make this long post short:

• The insurance approval took 5 working days.
• In between I used to hear from the service advisor of the body shop that the insurer asked to repair it. I was fine with it.
• They never commit approximate date of delivery. Every time service advisor would say - "I'll give a date once the car goes in painting" as there may be cars that come with reference from bosses or VIP cars, they would be attended first, so cannot commit.
• I had to call up always to get updates, no proactive update was given until I called up the Head of body shop.
• I got my car back on 29th December (It was ready only by 27th December, I was not in town, so collected it on 29th)
• Even though everyone there in the group - from the service advisor to his manager to CRM to the body shop manager; no one takes action if requested in that WhatsApp group.

I would like to add some more points - the body shop service advisor went on leave for his brother or cousin's wedding without a backup, and even the service center was not bothered to assign someone else. And he used to tell me that all work was going on whereas nothing was done. Not even insurance approval. Then after a week, they said that the insurer actually asked to replace the boot, and as they just got approval, the store ordered the part after that. Had to escalate to expedite the procurement. Till the end, they could not give an approximate delivery date.

I had to leave for two days on the 27th. Somehow they promised to give it on 26th. On 26th afternoon they said, the paint needed to be polished a bit in some parts so they would deliver in the evening directly at home. At 6 they call they needed some more time and would deliver at 10pm. I denied it, then in 30 minutes they called again and asked me to clear the insurance payment of 1000 and the driver would bring the car the next day early morning at 5:30am (as I told them I had a train to catch at 6). This was totally unacceptable and I asked them to send the car to the same service center and I would collect it from the same place I had given it. He tried to convince me how trusted the driver was and he would definitely bring the car, I had to message the group so that this would not happen.

I had to escalate to the Body shop manager a couple of times to get things done.

In India, customer service is taken for granted by the service providers, but Kolkata takes it many levels higher (generalizing a bit, but in many cases I faced it, not only Kia; it's compared to what service I got in various service centres in Bangalore for many products).

No update from the service center made the wait seem longer. In the end, it was like I should get the car back ASAP whatever they do. I regret that I gave the car there when it was functional and could have been fixed on my return to Bangalore.

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