I have always had very high regard for the Tata group, considering what a wide range of businesses they have succeeded in- right from tea, to salt to steel to auto mobiles And as a result of this respect and trust we decided to invest in a Tata Nano car. Small and compact, easy to drive in Delhi’s traffic and easier to park; the Nano came across as the perfect city car.
Our nightmare began right from getting a loan approved, which was an extremely bumpy process and then to getting ownership of the car, which took much longer than we were promised. One day into driving our brand new Nano we discovered that the AC of the car was not working and making a strange rattling sound, we were quite taken aback, considering this was a new car we had purchased. We also noticed that the car was labouring when put in the fourth gear and not running smoothly.
We took our car back to the dealership the very next day, a Saturday where we were told that they couldn’t figure out what the fault was and that they would need to keep the car at the dealership for the next couple of hours. We had to take an auto back which cost us Rs.80. We were told that we would get the car back at around 5:30 pm that evening, so we went back to the dealership in an auto (spending another Rs.80), only to be told that they still could not figure out the fault and would need to keep the car for some more time and it would be returned back to us on Sunday.
By then we were furious and asked them what quality checks they had in place if a brand new car was faulty. They said that this was a very rare case and only one in a lakh cars would have such a problem, that sure made us feel special! We asked the dealership to replace our car, but they said that was not possible since the car was already registered in our name, which shouldn’t be our problem, considering that they sold us a faulty car. Khushion ki Chabhi, not really!
By then I had begun tweeting furiously to Tata Motors, Tata Nano and even Mr. Ratan Tata and Mr. Cyrus Mistry. Since it was a Saturday I’m guessing no one was looking into their social media (surprising!) and in the evening I got a reply to my tweet from Tata Motors asking me to fill in the vehicle details on a link they had given. The complain form on that link did not load, need I say more! We had also e mailed a couple of senior contacts in Tata Motors and were waiting to hear from them.
Till 1 pm on Sunday we heard nothing from the dealership and it was us who were calling the dealership who were giving us the dodge. Finally we got through to the dealership manager who told us that we would get our car by the evening, since they had figured out the fault in the car (finally). The compressor of the AC had been giving trouble. In a brand new car? I fail to see why? To add to our already ruined weekend, we did not get the car that evening either. We were told that we would get the car by Monday afternoon.
We did eventually get our car back on Monday; it was delivered to our office premises by 12:30 pm, since we told the dealership that we will not take a day off work just to run back and forth from the dealership again.
We took the car for a short spin during our lunch break and discovered that the AC was working fine and the car was running smooth overall. On the whole I am completely disappointed in Tata and it is hard to forget the inconvenience caused to us by Tata and I would like to know how Tata plans on compensating us for being stranded on the road with no car, the mental harassment we went through because of a faulty product they sold us and I would like to know if they will reimburse us for the auto fare we spent running back and forth from the dealership?
