[Dr.Naren]

I have seen many cases here on Team BHP where owners would be charged for multiple additional jobs. Service centres won't even inform us or take the approval.

Maruti Suzuki has made it a lot easier now for the customers. We get digital copy of job card. In case, if they find any additional parts replacement to be done..The owner will receive SMS with an online link of updated job card. We can approve or reject the additional jobs / parts replacement. This is mainly done by Maruti for transparency and documentation. This has been introduced by Maruti few months back. But, I got to experience it today after sending Baleno for service. I was given an initial estimate and approved the same. Later they found out that few suspension components are weak and I got SMS to approve or reject the additional jobs online. Really impressed .

SMS about new findings


Login using registered Mobile number


Initial Estimate



New Findings / Revised cost / Customer Approval



This was also followed by Phone Call from SA. The online approval helps in transparency and documentation which is a big plus point for both Maruti and Owners. The dealer can also upload pics of the parts to be replaced and send it to customer in the same link. I was always happy with Maruti Service experience and now it has become more better and transparent .

[theexperthand]

Awesome feature - this gives us a clear picture of what is being replaced and how much it will cost.

Hats off to Maruti for introducing this tool and I hope this will curb the habit of surreptitiously adding things to job cards and inflating the bills.

Can we reject anything from the list or only the parts\jobs which were identified during service and have marked for additional approval?

--Anoop

[Dr.Naren]

Originally Posted by theexperthand

Can we reject anything from the list or only the parts\jobs which were identified during service and have marked for additional approval?

The initial job card would be also opened after customer approval. Here, Maruti is asking the customer to authorise for the additional jobs found during service .

Every Floor manager would be having a tablet and they will update the new findings.

[giri1.8]

Originally Posted by Dr.Naren

The initial job card would be also opened after customer approval. Here, Maruti is asking the customer to authorise for the additional jobs found during service .

Every Floor manager would be having a tablet and they will update the new findings.

Yes, this seems to be for additional replacements, had told the SA to just do regular work on my swift, he later added few minuscule items and asked me if they need attention, I checked the same and told him they won't be needed to be done and they were not included.

Quiet nice, since sometimes final bill amount was good 1 or 2K more than the initial estimate once or twice.

[srishiva]

Good job. Just 2 days ago, I dropped my car with the FNG and he took the details on his phone and clicked pics to record the state of the car body for scratches etc
Soon, I received a SMS job card saying my car has been taken in for the mentioned repair and later during delivery, they sent me OTP for something which I did not understand and never used. So there have been such systems in use.

I think they should provide a portal where these things become persistent and we can easily track all modification history.

[itwasntme]

Excellent move, hope Skoda adopts it soon ;-). To be honest, my SA has always called and informed me in detail prior to any extra work/parts. However, this takes it to a different level!

[audioholic]

This is great news. Its been a while since I had visited any service center but the last time I visited in August, they had a full fledged RFID based tracking system all over the service center to track the movement of vehicles right from the entrance gate till all the service bays. Now this is a huge step forward. Most of these estimations were earlier done by word of mouth. All the add ons would somehow slip into the estimations and people would agree that what the SA was saying was good and end up with huge service bills. I guess quite sometime earlier, they had converted service estimation to electronic form with all the details entered in tablets which would be easily accessible for anyone up the management chain. That also meant that people in Maruti could see this too. Hence, during my last service, there were no such additional charges and only labour for service was charged. With this, the system gets far more organised. Guess they did take the billing inflation issues seriously finally. Even after this if a customer is not vigilant enough to know what is needed and what is not, then it will be the customer to blame.

[Dry Ice]

I don't remember the last time I went into a Maruti service center, as I mostly use an FNG, but if this happening, it's good news. One major reason of switching to an FNG were the unnecessary extras forced on by these pesky dealers. Have to applaud them for taking the lead and showing the way.

Some bean counters must have crunched numbers and proposed the next wave of profits can come from servicing the record number of cars they now have on roads. How can you make sure service centers don't do any hanky panky in between without the knowledge of mothership? Track everything online! Just goes to show the incredible leverage MUL has over its dealers. Inspite of their (dealers') huge numbers, I doubt they can dictate anything to Maruti. Customer benefits and is happy, so who will complain?

[AMG Power]

The impact of this initiative is going to be a lot more far reaching than it appears now. While as a first cut, Maruti owners would benefit from increased transparency, this will soon spread to other manufacturers.

If it doesn't Maruti would use this as their USP and other manufacturers would not allow that to happen.

The greater impact will be when this spreads to Skoda and other similar German brands who have already jumped onto similar bandwagons.

And that's when other customers will really appreciate Maruti for this initiative.

[scorpian]

I think one of the reasons this is being implemented is due to high costs of servicing by maruti which a lot of maruti owners have realized. Maruti service being cheap is a myth that has been discussed aplenty on this forum.

People who own other brands have been able to directly compare, like for example my neighbor who owns a maruti dzire petrol and a ford figo diesel, almost every-time he says he has paid almost double for the dzire in terms of service.After a while people realize and that's when the brand loyalty starts to change. I also know of someone who keeps complaining that the cost of service for his alto is way too high in comparison to his mobilio.

Another factor for driving the service cost high,was linking commission to service adviser's based on bill amount, i think this was a blunder that eventually if not stopped is going to cost maruti quite a bit in terms of people buying other brands.

I would say its a great move my maruti to enable this transparency, i just hope the service advisers don't turn out to be cunning by making some false claims and then asking customers to agree to additional work, why do i say so? I have seen personally a lady client being told that if she doesn't do alignment and balancing there is a possibility that the car can suddenly pull in one direction leading to a accident.

[GTO]

Mod Note: Please avoid off-topic posts. A lot of posts on this thread have just been deleted. Kindly stay on topic!

[nishsingh]

I encountered this online approval system back in September when I had the misfortune of burning the clutchplate on my SX4.

There was a double billing of one of the items in the online approval, which I promptly declined after speaking with the service adviser. So I guess this system helps indeed!

However, I was more impressed by the assistance from Maruti in providing towing services. The customer care provided an online link for payment of the towing truck, which I could make via credit card on the SMS link. I checked a few local towing companies, and they were all charging about the same. Once the payment was done, the towing truck, which was equipped with hydraulic towing was at my location in an hour. (Pics below)



A bill for the towing was promptly sent later, along with a follow-up call from Customer care asking if everything was to my satisfaction.
Impressed!

[hp52_vishy]

Fellow BHPians, please use the following link and simply replace the last 8 digits with your actual job card number (seen on job card physical copy JC No: JC12345678)

http://customerapproval.nexaexperien...ber=JC12345678

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