I recently became a sucker to full page advertisement promotions by Hyundai Motors India Limited. Let me tell you this interesting story. In fact it will be more readable as I take you along-with two letters that I wrote to the "customer relations" of Hundai motors & am yet to receive any feedback. Letter 1 - "I am a gynecologist practicing in the city of Mumbai. I have
previously owned cars from the Maruti Co., Honda as well as the Mercedes Benz. On May 16, I booked the Verna CRDi Sx model from Jayabharat Automobiles. I was told that the waiting period is two weeks but if I make a complete down-payment for the car, I would probably get the car within 10 days. I gave them the full payment by check on May 16, 2007. The car was booked in my personal name. No one contacted me till I went to the dealership myself after 6/7 phone- calls in the first week of June 2007. Everytime I would make a call, someone would promise me they would call back and never did call. The car was finally delivered on June 13, 2007. The dealership is a shame on your company. The attitude of the staff is like a Government of India office ten years ago. No one is driven or is customer attentive- the whole atmosphere is Babu-like!
My car has two major problems. The auto function of the Climate-Controlled A/C is not working and the polyglass covering the Milometer-Odometer panel is defective (opaque in parts like some chemical has corroded parts of it. I wonder how did it get past the quality checks. Never before for any of my previous 8-9 cars did I ever have a problem in a brand new purchase.
I do not want to get any services or trouble-shooting done with Jayabharat. Please recommend another dealer/workshop where I can send my vehicle for the rectification of problems.
I hope your customer care is not like the dealership:(
I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely yours,
GNA"
I got a reply that someone from Jayabharat would contact me. The story continues thus-I wrote again to the "customer relations" cell - Letter2 -
"I got a call from the Jayabharat workshop and had visited the same. Mr Ashokan there was extremely courteous and receptive to the complaints. He mentioned that the polyglass is not available separately and the entire milometer/odometer assembly needs to be ordered from Chennai and he would write to the factory. I have not heard from them again.
The "automatic" climate control problem could not be solved! He made me speak to a Hyundai Motors representative who explained that the A/C was not defective but was set to European standards & nothing canbe done about it. Let me explain again what the problem is to me &possibly to all end-users. Till 21 degrees Celcius, the A/C works as an automatic climate controlled A/C and automatically adjusts the blower speed to reach the preset temperature between 17-21 degrees Celcius. The moment we set the temperature to 22 degrees or more, the Automatic Function is disabled automatically & the A/C moves automatically to the Fresh-air mode and starts pulling in air from the outside! Imagine driving in Mumbai with the temperature set to 22 degrees and getting Diesel & Petrol fumes being sucked in. This is very unfair to the customer. I was explained by the Hyundai representative, that after 21 degrees, I could very well move to a manual function!
Sir, the only reason I paid some extra money for the CRDi Sx model was the climate controlled A/C. If I wanted to use the regular car A/C, I would have bought your regular diesel Verna. I drive other vehicles like the Honda CRV, Honda Accord, Mercedes Benz C 220 CDi -all with automatic climate controlled A/Cs, but none of these A/Cs switch to a manual mode after 21 degrees Celcius! Please give me a satisfactory explanation. I'm sure your engineers can set the problem right. There is no other vehicle on the Indian roads with a malfunctioning automatic climate controlled A/C such as in the Verna CRDi Sx model if the above explanation is true. I look forward to your response."
I have since written twice more to their "customer-relations" cell, but there is no response. The company believes in no customer-relations. Their existence is only till the great Indian customer reads their color ads in National dailies & color hoardings in the city and buys one of their cars. Post sale, there are only suckers like me writing letters to the motor company, blogs & letters-to-the editors of National dailies, hoping someone exposes the mighty Koreans.
