May 19, 2013 06:09 PM
129615 Views
(Updated May 19, 2013 06:30 PM)
I bought 1.5 Tr Hitachi inverter AC (Sr no. 100C31656 (0)-SE110D12215(I)) from dealer in Dwarka sec 7 Delhi on 21 Nov 2011 when I moved to our new house. The dealer was helpful but never warned about Hitachi's problems in India. He simply said that Hitachi is a great AC and hence premium priced. I was foolish enough to equate price to quality. The AC ran in summer of 2012 for 3 months max.
This summer it won't start and I complained on 22-4-13 (ticket: 13042201452). The service guy called next day. Said since it's outside warranty, we have to pay Rs. 385 visit charge before he could agree to fix appointment. We agreed and he came next day. He said the motor was shot and will cost us additional Rs. 3000. We readily agreed with his diagnosis and asked him to replace the motor ASAP but he was not carrying any.
He took the visit charges, did not give invoice (he claimed he did not have the bill). After several reminder calls and complaints to call center (we also learnt from the call centre that they are overworked and that Hitachi gets over 300 complaints every day in Delhi), a new person came after another 9 days with the replacement motor. He checked again, said the diagnosis of previous engineer was wrong and now claimed that the PCB is blown.
Since this inverter model had several complaints, he suggested that we speak to customer care who might be kind enough to replace within warranty as it was quite expensive. He again asked for visit charges and when we refused, we had to explain to call centre that the previous guy took the money without giving the invoice. We waited another 15 more days and after several calls to the service centre and to our own dealer, we received a call from the service guy saying that the PCB can be installed but will cost Rs. 20, 000. When I said that we have paid Rs. 45, 000 for the total AC and said its unfair they are asking for nearly half that money for no fault of ours, he said that they can't help due to fact that warranty has expired.
Since in the past, as a professional I have done some market research work for Hitachi, I wrote an email to CEO of Hitachi (Gurmeet Singh) on 15 May 2013. I was polite in the mail and suggested that Hitachi should learn from this experience and improve its service levels if it wishes to be a premium brand. To date, I have not got any reply (the least I expected). This also speaks volumes about the top management of Hitachi India.
Today, I invited an expert technician (who had worked in General) who checked the AC and came to the same conclusions that the PCB was blown (in all I have spent nearly Rs. 1000 on medical test of my AC). He said that I should not have invested in Hitachi AC which is "simply fooling the Indian public with glossy premium image" and is also peddling extremely poor quality products in India.
Also, he said that inverter ACs are not a success in India and that the service engineers of the company itself sometimes spoil the PCB without knowing how to repair and then load it on the customer (the PCB is in the outdoor unit and hence you will never know if they blow up the PCB). Hitachi's window ACs are probably good as some of my friends are happy with it. However, they all agree the service is terrible. I am surprised how such a reputed Japanese company could behave like this in India?
On the advice of the technician, I have decided to scrap this AC ( he said I could get a new 4-5 star Panasonic for Rs. 26000 instead of repairing this AC). He advised me to buy Panasonic non inverter version and not fall for gloss. I am a bit wary of Japanese AC now (although I have been extremely happy with the 2 General ACs at home). Can anyone advice a good brand given that I have wasted 45k on an expensive AC running it for just 3 months. But I am sure I will not waste money on expensive "apparently Eco-friendly inverter AC." Lesson learnt the hard way.
I am also writing this to warn all potential customers of Hitachi. Their service is really really bad. Their dealer is unhappy with them and claimed the company is arrogant (the dealer gave the name of a senior person in Hitachi but requested not to take his name). The senior I called (Arvinder) never picked up my phone call. The service centre probably even told our dealer to tell us to be nicer on phone as otherwise they will be slow in servicing (although not once we were rude or raised our voice with the call centre!). Finally, their inverter product sucks.
Moral: Be careful in deciding to buy Inverter ACs. It might take some time for these technologies to stabilize in India.
Bottom-line: BEWARE !!! Do not buy Hitachi inverter AC. I will never buy any Hitachi product in future. Bye bye Hitachi! (I request the company not to waste its time in responding to this feedback. I think I gave you a lot of opportunities...now the time is past).
