[Resolved]  Skoda, Fabia Car — Faulty product

This is the sad story of a disgruntled customer, who has the misfortune to have a Fabia 1, 2 reg. no - TN 09 AX 9740



The issue is threefold – the car has a faulty engine, the service folks cannot report it and cannot sort it out and worst the senior most folks in the organization cannot do anything about it and if they give a guarantee it is of no use. On the roll of (in)fame from Skoda are all these people who gave us lukewarm responses or never responded -

Ramesh, Karthik and Sudhir, Srinivas and Dixit, Nitin and Joseph, Gerald and Borgen K, the MD himself



In the first week of March 2009, the car had excess vibration in the engine when it was idling.On the 4th of March we ent it to serviceing to (Gurudev Motors, Madras).



He had it for 1 month and allowed factory folks to see the car, take photos and do some jugglery that we have no visibility into. No one could find out the problem or have the courtesy to tell us what the issue was, we started doing daily trips and calls and nothing worked. In deparation we called and spoke to customer care and Rahul Kulkarni said in a mail –

“ We would also like to honestly inform you that, even we are surprised by this exceptional concern and therefore have taken up this matter personally to investigate into the cause for immediate resolution. We would like to apprise your good self that our Service Engineer has inspected the vehicle and necessary job work is being carried out under his supervision. It is therefore we submit to you that, you clear all your apprehensions on your concerns, be assured on the Quality of our products and services.”



This standard answer, mind you took almost a WHOLE month to get. You would think that the issue would have been resolved quickly but that was not the case. While we heard nice things, we didn’t get responses to the following questions –



1. what exactly was the problem in the car

2. how you propose to address the problem

3. a clear confirmation that you are not touching/dismantling the engine of the car.

4. why it took 1 month to diagnose the problem in the first place.



Our worry was what if the engine would sieze when we were driving on a highway or something else of a similar nature happen. Not being told the real issue made things worse. Dissatisfied with vague answers and a refusal to change spareparts or the engine( after all this happened within 4000 kms and within 6 months of having bought the car). As you can see, we have patiently waited for more than a month) despite safety being at stake we spoke to Mr. Joseph, Executive Secretary to the Skoda M.D



By now, it was difficult in not having the car and we were tired of trying to find out why there was a delay, we just wanted the car back and since there was a failure of the 3rd cylinder in the cylinder head and opening the cylinder head is as good as opening the engine and we demanded the replacement of a new engine and not just mere replacement of the cylinder head.



By now, it was April and the MD’s secretary forwarded it to "Ramesh, Karthik" <Karthik.[protected]@skoda-auto.co.in>; "Sudhir, Srinivas" <Srinivas.[protected]@skoda-auto.co.in>; "Dixit, Nitin" Nitin.[protected]@skoda-auto.co.in, more new people for us to fight the battle with! Too many cooks spoil the broth, 6 days NO REPONSE!! We wrote a mail and got a “will respond” again from the Secretary and not the Service dept guys



Finally we got the car back after the 7th of April with no assurances for what was done and a vague commitment that it will not happen again. For what it’s worth the problem repeated, and on 14th of April the car went back to service for the same problem! We have a few more issues now, engine shuts off more often, the engine is sluggish and has lower power and of course the vibration is still there, what did SKODA do?



Moral of the story – Skoda’s customer service sucks and I am happy to have dissuaded 6 friends from choosing a Skoda and choosing a Honda City instead!