Dear Chevrolet and Astavinayak,
This is to bring to your notice about the horrendous display of customer service I experienced at the Astavinayak showroom at Veera Desai Road, Andheri (W), Mumbai. India
Its all nice to say on your website that “buying a car is a celebration and the purchase experience should a joyous one”. But when it comes to delivering the same, you have made the experience everything else but a joyous one.
To start with, no one gave a damn about even calling us once and informing about the status of our car that we had booked. It seems that the money has come in and the customer is now helpless now so we can mess with him.
We have booked a Spark LS (mid variant) and our delivery was scheduled on 1st October. Hence, we paid multiple trips to ensure that the payments were done on time (90% of the payment was made in cash before the delivery date), documents were in place. Heck, we also went there to give our current car deck to be fitted in Spark. We just realized that we were fools to be so prompt when it seemed the delivery was not happening on the scheduled date.
A day before the delivery, I called up the accessories guy, Sagar to find the status. He said, “You can come in the morning to take the delivery as your car is ready”.
Though frustrated with the recent past experience, I decided to forgo it as my car was ready for delivery.
Now comes that CLIMAX or D-DAY or the DAY OR SUPRISES
Me and my wife were in an excited mood as the car was coming. I called the sales person in the morning, Sanjay Rana and he said the “CAR is READY”. I told him that we would come in the afternoon as my wife was taking a half day.
Time 2p.m. we were ready and all set to take our car and here comes the FIRST SURPRISE..The sales person calls up and tells us that the RTO approved number has not come and hence we cannot take the delivery. I was SHOCKED to say the least and wished this was an April fool’s joke. I asked him: Was Chevrolet and Astavinayak sleeping all this time and it seems someone’s woken them up and are talking rubbish.
It was difficult to digest what he was saying. Putting my patience together and sarcastically told him that “Ok, but we want to see that car”. He said Yes you can come and see the car as it is ready. Its just the RTO number issue.
We went to the showroom and there came the SECOND SURPRISE.. The salesperson, Sanjay Rana and the accessories guy, Sagar. Both were missing. We were told that Sanjay Rana has been transferred to Goregaon. We realized what fools we were to trust him and think that all was fine. The fact is he didn’t have a freakin clue about the car and was shooting in the dark. Least he could have done is handed over our case to somebody else.
Already disappointed, we were in for more..They sent a watchman with our car keys to show our car which was kept in some godown of theirs. When we were shown our car, we could not believe our eyes. For a moment, I thought that I had come to a buy a second hand car. The car was far from being ready as promised by Sanjay Rana and Sagar. The body of the car was so dirty from outside that for a moment we forgot which color car we had booked. Then we were shown the inside of the car and the drivers leg space there were footmarks of mud. This is when we decided that enough if enough. I called up Sanjay Rana, who was in Goregaon. To my amazement, he told me that all the cars are washed half and hour before the delivery. The state the car was in, it would take half day with 10 people cleaning it. Worse, we were made to pay for the wheelcaps, can you beat that..and even after paying for the wheelcaps, we see duplicate wheelcaps being installed which didn’t even have the Chevrolet logo.
Disappointed again, we wanted to see the Manager, however, there was no one on higher grounds to listen to us. In the meantime, Sagar, the accessories guy arrived. We questioned him about the scenario. He started with a high tone of voice stating he had done everything from his end. We asked him, was he a part of Astavinayak/ Chevrolet or was he just an independent operator? He was speechless.. We went on to ask him if he has scene the state of the car? He again drew blank.
There was a another salesperson, Vinaya. She has no clue about the car scene. We had to run the whole story past her even when disappointed. She tried to firefight the issue to no avail.
Dating back to the wheelcap issue mentioned, Sagar insisted that you will not get the chevy logo on the wheelcaps and would have to do with the fitted wheelcaps. At this moment, we would not take it any further and walked off from the showroom.
We can believe what hit us…and here we were made to look like fools going to take the delivery of our car. This incident has dented the Chevrolet brand image in our minds forever.
This is not what we expected from a dealer like Astavinayak and definitely not from a brand like Chevrolet. It was total lack of communication internally, absolute carelessness towards the client, arrogance and rudeness. All amounting to failure in commitment.
All this being said, at least now, if at all there is some sanity left, take some action and salvage whatever is left of it..
Forget the wheelcaps for which we paid Rs.850/-, we definitely owe and demand a compensation to say the least for this display of appalling service, waste of our time, energy and damages done to our faith in Chevrolet and Astavinayak and customer service.
If no action is taken, we would not hesitate to go to Media and Internet propagation.
From a very frustrated and hassled customer,
Russel Baptista
9821830443 | [email protected]
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