[Resolved]  Volkswagen India — Cost that I had to pay for trusting and being loyal to VW brand-delivered me a car with broken- defected parts as new car

Address: Volkswagen India, mumbai

Website: www.volkswagen.co.in/en.html

I have used VW Polo TDI 1.2 for past 8-9 years and thought of buying a new compact SUV, since I was using VW Polo and was very satisfied by the built quality, driving dynamics and overall after sale service, so the first brand came to mind was obiviously VW...and opted not to go for any other brand...

On 13.05.2022 i paid the booking amount and booked a VW 1.0 highline TAIGUN Automatic, from VW Dealership at Mandi Himachal Pradesh. on 04.06.2022 the car was delivered to me. On driving the car for 2-3 days I observed few issued with the car which are as listed below:
1. Driver side window sometimes hungs up in the middle and automatically comes down, and only after trying 2-3 times it goes up completely.
2. Instrument cluster light goes off sometimes.
3. Water drops were leaking from the passenger side seat new the foot area, initially I ignored it but later I observed that leackage was more.

I had informed about the above within 7-8 days of purchase to the sales person from whome I took the deliver, and I was told that these issues will be checked during my fisrt service i.e. due after 1000 kms. 0n 19.06.2022 I went for my first service (due after 1000 km) to the VW service centre at NCR as i work in the NCR.
Regarding water leakage from passenger side, the service manager asked the technical guy to check, he inspected the car from passenger side in my presence and opened the flap and went under the dash board with a mobile light and instantly told me that there is a hole in the AC housing and on my request he clicked a photo of the defect/hole (copies of photo attached), I enquired about the part, part no. and way to install the new part from the technical team at the service centre.

I came to know that to install the broken part the dashboard has to be removed, and firstly the part needs to be ordered and shall take arounf 15 days time, as the same was not available. My concern/ distrees is that when I had paid for the new car how can a company like VW whome a trusted and had faith deliver me a car with a broken part inside and now I have to open the dashboard of the new car only after 14 days of getting the delivery and drive for the remaining 14-15 years. How Am I to ensure that once the dashboard is opened it will not produce any sound for the rest of the life of the car because original fitting of the the dashboard need to be opned for this replacement.

Since it is rainy season therefore I requested the service team to kindly do some temporary fixing so that the water is stopped and they obliged me and asked one of ther team to go & buy m-seal from the nearby market. and they sealed the hole with m-seal and tape .

I am in great distress as I was handed over a car with a broken part inside and now to replace that the whole dashboard needs to be opened. How can a customer accept that sort of repairing in a new car because the VW handed me a car with broken part as dashboard is main part of the car from inside, doing that would mean that I got a repaired car for a price of a new car. I failed to understand how a company like VW do that.

I have raised my concern with the VW customer care and got call from the dealership (mandi), when I told everything about my distress they informed me that replacing the car is not possible as the billing is already done, here I want to request the VW team that I trusted your brand and paid for a new car but in return I felt like cheated as your dealership is telling me that they will not replace the car, instead replace that part, which means they will open the dashboard of my new car which iam going to use for the rest of 14-15 years. In doing so I will always get a feeling that I was cheated (im sure VW would not like their loyal customer to drive their car with that cheated feeling) if the original dashboard is opened this will going to give me some noise/problem in future, this will also mean that I was made to use a repaired car for the price of new car at no fault of mine which as a customer is totally not acceptable.
I think this is the price that I had to pay for being loyal to VW and trusting the German Brand, had I thought of other Brands, instead, while I was planning to buy a compact SUV things would have been pleasant at my end. I am waiting for a resolution at the earliest as this issue is giving me lot of headache…