[Ragavsr]

I have had nothing but a nightmarish experience dealing with Maan Sarovar Honda. Things started with us looking out for a used automatic car. We saw a diesel Amaze CVT available for sale and we checked it out. Took it for a small test drive and it drove decently. The exteriors were spotless but let me start with the several red flags.

1. The salesperson said the Amaze in question was taken on exchange from a buyer who bought a new Elevate. I asked if they had the NOC and hypothecation removed and they said the dealership had themselves settled the customer's loan with the bank and hence they would get the NOC immediately.

However, it took over a month for the dealership to collect the NOC from the previous owner and that too after multiple follow ups and harsh words from my dad.

2. It was agreed the buyer that is us would cover the transfer charges for which the exact amount was never revealed. After the full price of the car was paid, the dealership wanted 5k for transfer and hypothecation removal charges which I absolutely refused to pay. I don't see why the buyer has to pay hypothecation removal charges for a loan the previous owner has taken. I put my foot down on paying only the transfer charges and after a heated argument ended up paying 3k only for the transfer charges, which is on par with industry standards.

3. During the purchase process, when i was removing the carpets to check for any rear ending accidents, the salesperson rushed to accept the car had an accident and that the car was repaired properly at Honda ASS. This fact was true but the scale of the accident was hidden.

4. I asked for service history on the first day of evaluation and again the next day. They later sent a screenshot of the service history but not the details. I trusted them and went ahead with the deal.

5. Initially I made a token payment of 10k, got a receipt. The next day, my mind occupied with several issues, I ended up transferring the entire amount without deducting the 10k advance. I realized this mistake a couple of hours later and brought up the issue with the sales guy who escalated it with the manager. The manager had the gall to ask us to buy 10k worth of accessories which I promptly refused. When the manager persisted, my dad who accompanied me asked him not to take advantage just because we had paid 10k extra. I had to write a letter requesting refund and a refund was promised in 14 days.

6. After 14 days, the refund never came. Meanwhile I had moved to a different city and my dad followed up with the dealership. One month later, after a lot of harsh words and arguments, the dealer manager called me that the refund cheque is ready and was complaining that my dad didn't know about the deal we had. I told him you haven't honored your own word of processing the refund within 14 days and you can't really complain about my dad.

7. The transfer of ownership and updated RC was delivered 1.5 months after the purchase of the car, a process that should have ideally taken 3-4 days.

8. Now comes the absolute shocker. Few months after the purchase, I had downloaded the Honda Connect app and checked the service history and was shocked to know the repair done was of around 2.9L and included damage to rear and front of the car . No wonder they were elusive and tried to hide service history as much as possible.

Our family has purchased 6 new / used cars over 20 years, and this has been the worst experience ever. Remaining cars all had good purchase experience be it from dealer or individual sellers.

My takeaways from this ordeal are
1. Review service history in detail to see what work was done, not just the summary. Preferably, get it from 3rd party sources like cars24 instead of relying on the seller. If I had known this service existed at the time of purchasing the car, I would have avoided this vehicle.

2. Don't buy any vehicle on hypothecation even if the seller is a brand authorized dealer. Walking away is better.

3. Better to buy a new car for peace of mind. Will be the last used car I purchase.

[GTO]

Thanks for sharing, Ragavsr! Moving your post out to a new thread so as to warn others. A new thread means 100X the views & 100X the visibility in search engines, including Google. Will add to homepage later this week .

@ BHPians, if you should spot any good post in an existing thread that deserves its own new thread, please report the post and we'll move it out for greater visibility.

Thank you!

[searacer932]

Originally Posted by Ragavsr

I have had nothing but a nightmarish experience dealing with Maan Sarovar Honda.

This is a shocking experience and thanks for sharing the same. There are multiple Manasarovar Honda branches in Chennai. Which specific branch are you referring to here?

[Ragavsr]

Originally Posted by searacer932

This is a shocking experience and thanks for sharing the same. There are multiple Manasarovar Honda branches in Chennai. Which specific branch are you referring to here?

This was from their Porur branch . Do they even have other branches for Honda cars ?