Jul 31, 2011 01:04 AM
11458 Views
Since my purchase of my Honda City ZX EXi car in 2006, I have been facing hardships and terrible service experiences from Peninsular Honda, Trivandrum.
Being the only dealer/service team in Trivandrum, I am unfortunately left to their mercy.
There has been covert replacement of original parts with defective ones when the vehicle has been given for routine service.such parts have included tyres, windscreen wipers, small parts etc.
The service engineers are incapable of locating faults, correcting them or returning calls made to them when they are not available to talk to.
The latest outrage happened during my last service with them at 55000 km. I complained of a noise from my airconditioner which they were unable to diagnose. Finally they suggested replacement of the airconditioner pulley mechanism. Their precise words were "We THINK that is the problem!"
My own feeling is that it is a problem with the airconditioner clutch mechanism since the vehicle seems to drag a bit when the airconditioner is switched on.
Moreover, on taking the car out later in the rain, I found to my horror that my super smooth wipers had been removed and some other car's wipers had been installed instead. Adding insult to injury, they also abstracted the cap which covers the wiper nut from both the wipers leaving the nut visible!
I was so disturbed that they were not able to diagnose my airconditioner problem that I did not notice that these were missing when I took delivery of the car after service.
Anyway, bowing to their advice I ordered a replacement pulley mechanism from them last month as they don't seem to have any spare parts available with them at all. I was told I would be informed in a week when the part arrived.
A month later and after several frustrating attempts to get the service engineer on the phone, I was told today that the part has not been procured by them as of date and they had no idea when it would be available.
They are probably waiting for my entire airconditioner to break down so that they can make more money!
Which ingenious mechanism they have used earlier too when I complained of squeaking from my brakes and was told that everything was fine. Only to be told that my entire brake mechanism had to be replaced just 1000km down the line!
Once after a service at 15000km, I had not travelled 20 km before I noticed that the car was behaving erratically and found one of the tyres was not matching with the other four! They had simply swapped my good tyre with another car's tyre!
Before that in another service at around 10000km, I had noticed uneven wearing of the tyres and excessive road noise from the tyres on the move. Again the engineers told me that was normal wear. My tyres had to be replaced at 25000 km. On replacing with Bridgestone tyres all problems were settled.
Such unscrupuous and incompetent people has Honda Siel appointed as sales and service managers for their excellent cars!
Complaints made directly to Honda have only elicited token response. No actual remedial measures are ever taken by Honda Siel and the customer is always left to the mercies of the dealer/service team.
No wonder they are losing customers faster than they can make new ones!
Even though the car has been excellent, the whole ownership experience has been vitiated by the terrible service provided by Peninsular Honda, Trivandrum.so much so that in spite of loving my Honda City ZX so much, I would never buy another Honda Car or recommend any of my friends or colleagues to buy one either.
