Jun 25, 2009 08:08 AM
3345 Views
I own a Maruti Esteem 1995 model. I have been servicing my car with Solar, Mandovi and UM cars(airport road). Recently I shifted to the ORR area and hence gave my car for service at Pratham since its walkable distance from my house.
I gave for the car for a basic service. I did not find any major satisfactory issues. There was some mineral stains that originated from the hard water in Bangalore on my glass. They said they cannot fix it. I noticed that the head lights were not focused properly. One of the speakers in the back was misaligned.
Giving the first service poor quality benefit of doubt, I gave after 6 months again. This time I ensured to talk to the service advisor and Sr.Manager that earlier service was poor and it needs to be improved this time. They assured that it will be taken care. I get a call at 3:30 PM and they said that car is ready.
When I took the car, the experience was terrible. It costed me around Rs.10, 000/- , but there was nothing much done other than changing brake pads. I had asked them to check the rattiling of my steering, to clean the car properly. The results were as follows:
The rear dash (speaker areas) were not touched at all. I could see all the dust from the past 6 months
The remote locking stopped working for one of the doors
There were couple of screws that fell down under my steering hood
My beige seat seat covers were covered with black grease.
One of the horns stopped working.
The engine tuning was pathetic..No difference in mileage, but power was reduced
After reporting the Sr.Manager that the service was pathetic, he just tried to cover up what ever issues were there. There was nothing beyond that. The technicians tried for couple of hours but the fixtures were not satisfactory again.
After that I took it to UM cars, Airport road and they fixed most of the issues within 1 hour.
Looking at their business, it looks most of the cars are pretty new as Pratham gives good discount on selling and most of the initial services are taken care by them. Hence the volumes are very high and the skills of the professionals are just basic to just do the basic service for a new car. I realized that the skills are not sufficent to handle a bit old car, say more than 4 years where they genuinely need experience to handle and fix things.
Hence my recommondation is that if you have an old car, please do not go there. The best recommondation is UM cars at airport road.
