Honda Cars India Ltd. — a very bad service and harrowing experience with magnum honda body shop dealership kanakapura road, bangalore

Address:

Bangalore, Karnataka

To whomsoever this may concern,

Would like to bring to your attention an absolute terrible service provided by magnum honda dealership's body shop in bangalore.

I own a honda city with registration ka-05-mr-xxxx which i purchased from magnum honda bangalore in early 2015. Recently the front bumper of my car (Fibre part) had gotten severely scratched for which i wanted to claim insurance for replacement. Note at the time of going to magnum honda body shop i wasn't aware of the reason for these abrasions on the bumper, however i doubted that kids while playing on the road might have done it on purpose with a stone.

On 21st of november 2017 i booked an appointment with magnum honda body shop with mr satish shetty, upon reaching the workshop, satish and another engineer mr girish attended to me and asked me how this happened. I mentioned that perhaps kids playing on the road might have done it and i want to claim insurance for full replacement of the front bumper, initially both of them said that i will not get a no claim bonus and that i should just do the patch work to hide the abrasions for which i didn't agree and asked them to file for a complete replacement of the bumper, mr satish shetty repeatedly told that the abrasions are caused by a dog bite, which i denied as i don't own a dog nor is there any dogs in the vicinity of my house and that the car is never unattended to, as it is always parked in office car park for better part of the day. However when trying to fill the insurance claim form i asked if i should write the reason as dog bite satish shetty mentioned that i should write that the abrasions were caused due to an accident so that i can claim the insurance.

He even went a step further and said that he will break the plastic part of the bumper and get the insurance claim.

While mr girish wanted to help me filling the form, satish shetty took the form and threw it on my face hurling abusive language and asking me to fill it up. While i don't have a problem to fill the form, is this the way honda as a company asks its dealership to behave with its customers?

Post facing all this humiliation along with my mother who had accompanied me, i didn't receive any response from magnum honda for 2 days, on thursday evening (23rd november), i called girish and asked him for the progress, he then directed me to speak to arun from bajaj allianz insurance and check for the progress.

Please note here, like what was communicated and promised to me earlier by satish shetty and girish, the bumper was not broken to facilitate the insurance claim, instead, when i called girish he said it cannot be done!!

Question here is
Why did satish shetty and girish in the first place said they are going to break the bumper to facilitate insurance claim and 2 days later refused to do it?

As a matter of fact, i would have been happy to do the bumper replacement without insurance but by paying it from my pocket.

When i called the insurance guy (Arun, bajaj allianz), he was pretty non responsive but also didn't tell me that the insurance claim cannot be honoured.

In this process of running pillar to post to get my car repaired i called mr girish again on 23rd and asked him the next steps, while also asking for an escalation contact who can help me with this.

While clearly refusing to provide an escalation contact (Reason quoted is that he doesn't know and cannot provide any escalation contact)!!, he mentioned that he's speaking to mr jinu and will call me back in 10 mins, the call off course i never received back.

Fast forward to 24th november, after having waited for a failed call back from the previous day, i called mr girish by 11:30 am only to hear him say that i need to call the insurance guy again. Note here that girish now said that insurance cannot be claimed as the insurance people are not agreeing to honour the claim. He also mentioned that the insurance person wanted to speak to him and that i should call him.

I called the insurance person, who said that girish never spoke to him about the claim on 24th and he didn't ask girish to relay the message for me to call him back.

Utterly exasperated, i called girish again asking for an escalation contact, for which i got the same answer again that he cannot provide me any contact. After a lot of pleading, he eventually messaged me the number of one mr joseph.

Frustrated with this behaviour of misleading, lying, unethical, rude and bad customer service, i asked for my car back which was delivered to me sometime back without fixing the issue. I only hope that they haven't done any damage to the mechanics of the engine after all this!!!

This harrowing experience of mine begs a few questions to be answered.

While im throughly enjoying the quality of the car, if only magnum honda's customer service was much more customer centric and ethical, the reputation of honda cars would be multiple notches higher.

Questions:

Does magnum honda and honda cars as a whole train its staff to be rude and downright abusive to its customers?! (Read satish shetty)

Does magnum honda encourage its staff to mislead, misinform and lie to its customers?

Why did mr satish shetty and girish promise me to facilitate the insurance claim by breaking the bumper and 2 days later retracted their statement saying that it cannot be done?

Isn't it the work of magnum honda dealership to liaise with insurance company and get the claims processed?

Why was i repeatedly asked to liaise with insurance guy when he clearly didn't expect me to do it?

Why would magnum honda's staff (Satish shetty and girish) outright refuse to help me fill even a claim form?, is it because i refused to acknowledge their comment of the abrasions on the car caused due to dog bite?

Why wouldn't anybody from magnum honda body shop keep me updated of what needed to be done?, i literally had to plead and beg them for an update on the repair for 3 days

While i spoke to the gm mr satish (Not satish shetty) later, who promised to look into this matter, iam still awaiting for a solution/fix and a more civilised conversation from magnum honda.

While honda cars are great (I have 2 of them), this kind of experience will only bring down the whole driving experience and it's brand value in the country.

Please let me know for any questions/clarifications

Regards
Suneel sathyaprakash