Caught on cam! Maruti Suzuki Baleno RS owner sends car for servicing, gets it back after just a wash

If it was dealership of a carmaker in India that was the talking point last week in the auto corridors  for duping a client last week, a service centre of a leading brand finds itself in the dock this week. In the former, a Skoda dealership in Bengaluru recently made headlines for selling a regular Rapid disguised as Rapid Edition. Now, a Maruti Suzuki service centre is on the back foot for allegedly cheating a car owner. Interestingly, both incidents have been reported from the city of Bengaluru.

Earlier last week, a Baleno RS owner took his car for scheduled servicing at Maruti Suzuki's centre in the city with pre-installed dash cam only to realise later that his car had not been serviced but just washed and returned.

The owner, also a TeamBHP member, posted his experience online, leaving many wondering if this could have happened to their vehicles as well. The owner uploaded a 33-minutes long video of the 'servicing' recorded by the dashboard camera he had installed in the car. The owner who goes by the name ROG_AK on the online forum said he always had doubts in his mind when leaving the car at the service centre and hence, decided to install a camera to record the entire servicing process.

The video starts by showing the car owner leaving his car at the service centre and asking the staff at the station to do the checks on petrol smell in the car, for which he answers with a "Yes". The car is then seen driven to the workshop and the next moment it is reversed into a service bay. By this time, the owner of the vehicle is still standing at the service bay. Then, 57 seconds later, the mechanic shouts, "washing! washing!"  To his dismay, the service advisor responds in Kannada: "Wait for the customer to leave at least".

The real story unfolds after this. The car is then driven to the washing area and the washing begins. That is when the service advisor notices the dash cam in the vehicle and wonders whether it actually recorded before getting into a conversation with the service staff. The car is then washed and driven to the parking area to be delivered to the customer. Not at any point during this period was the car taken to the workshop or inspected. Thereafter, the vehicle is delivered to the customer.

The owner checks the recordings in the camera and realises that his car was only washed and nothing else had been done. The next day he confronted the service manager who promised to take action.

"He reacted in a very sympathetic manner and told me that these things don't usually happen and it is their responsibility to check everything in there, before promising to take action against the staff involved," says the car owner. " I told him that I was sure they do this in the first and second service vehicles because nothing really happens in those services anyway and the customers would never get to know. The attitude of the manager showed remorse and concern (may be he was feigning it)," the owner's post on the forum indicates.

He also got calls from GM of the service centre, Regional Sales Manager of Maruti Nexa and Managing Director of Mandovi Motors, apologising for the poor service and asking him to take down the video from Youtube. However, the owner says, "The damage has already been done and the best thing to do is move on and ensure this does not happen again."