[LtStealthy]

Hi Team BHPians, while the title says it all, I would take this forum to warn everyone about GoMechanic car service. This happened after I was away from Bengaluru for couple of months, and my Ford Figo 2010 model was lying idle at home. Upon return to Bengaluru, my father suggested to get the Ford Figo serviced since it has been lying idle for sometime. The kms clocked are at 53k. Coming back, I took the car out to office for couple of days to identify the issues that may have cropped up in our family absence. The car ran well other than that rats had made the car engine bay their home and had filled it with paper, torn clothes, leaves and twigs. I was aghast on seeing the condition of engine bay and decided to book car servicing using GoMechanic. The customer care executive sold me their Myles package which included RSA, 1000km/1month warranty post car service completion. Paid for it happily and set up an appointment time for car pick up.
Now the timelines goes as below:

1. Early Morning I receive a call from Mr. Amith who is GoMechanic service incharge. He informed me that a local garage mechanic will come and pick my car up at a scheduled time

2. The Mechanic comes, takes photos and picks up the car.

3. In the afternoon, I receive a call from Mr. Amith stating that the mechanic have identified multiple issues with the car and they will require my approval for car part changes. They were planning to replace spark plugs, wheel cylinders, wipers, caliper pin sets etc. I informed Mr. Amith that I will require all the replaced parts to ascertain myself if those parts actually needed replacement and Mr Amith promised that those parts will be provided to me back along with the car. Based on trust, I gave the approval and they sent a bill of 12k

4. Around 9pm in the night, I receive the car back. My father is not happy since it's dark and we have no way of knowing what all things were replaced and to see the level of cleaning. None of the parts were returned and my father insisted on seeing the parts. The local mechanic said he will bring the parts first thing in the morning. And he went his way

5. Start of Nightmare: Come morning and we went to inspect the car. Opened up the engine bay and say that there was barely any cleaning done. Called the GoMechanic local service provider and he told that they cleaned as much as they can, but other areas they couldn't since their vaccum could reach those spots. We were dejected but had other plans for the day so I decided to clean the bay myself. Ended up spending couple of hours cleaning it all up.

6. Next day, my wife had gone to visit her parents and I told her I would pick her up once she wants to come back. She calls in the evening asking me to pick her up. I try to start the car and the car is dead. No cranking, no lights, nothing... Open up the bay and reconnected the batteries, but nothing. Asked my wife to take a cab and asked GoMechanic to send someone to take a look. They assign an escalation manager Ms Prabha, who assured me that someone from the local garage will visit in the morning and check. The mechanic came in morning, tried starting couple of times before giving up and asking us to replace the battery. We had bought this battery in August 2023 and knew that there is nothing wrong with it. My dad asked him to clean the battery terminal and try again. He cleans the terminal, tries and car starts. Father is annoyed at the level of incompetence and also at the fact that even the battery terminals were not cleaned during servicing nor the engine bay was cleaned. The mechanic apologises and asks us to pay 600 for his visit. Now we both get angry, I call up Mr. Amith and flat out tell him we are not paying a single penny for this, especially since we had warranty. Mr Amith agrees and he says he will take care of it. At this point, my father notices that the radiator fan is not running, something which was working when we gave the car for servicing, and he asks the mechanic about it. The mechanic says that it's working, and the weather is cold and car is not warmed up enough that's why the fan is not running. We thought we will take it out for a quick spin and see if it's running or not later and call him back so we let the matter rest.

7. The next day I take the car out to drop my wife to her office, completely forgetting that I had to check the radiator. On the way, the engine overheating symbol lights up and I stop the car to the side. I open up the engine bay and noticed that the radiator pipe has come off and the entire coolant has leaked out. Again ask my wife to take a cab to work while I attach the radiator pipe back and drive the car slowly to the nearest garage. The mechanic fills the coolant reservoir with water, refixes the radiator pipe in place making sure it won't come out again, and then tells me that it happened because the radiator fan is not working which built up pressure inside the coolant pipe, which caused it to burst out. My fear had come true, and I called Ms Prabha again, and she assured me that she will send someone to take a look and get the radiator fixed. And that was my last conversation with her. It's been couple of days since then and neither Ms. Prabha has sent someone to fix the car, nor is she receiving my call anymore. I am trying to find the next escalation manager above Ms Prabha, but this has been a cautionary tale of how GoMechanic partner service centers are pathetic, but also their Service Managers and Escalation Managers do not care.

I intend to get it fixed from outside if no one shows up from GoMechanic by tomorrow, but this is a cautionary tale of anyone looking to book car servicing from GoMechanic. Their Myles program is of no use and their service warranty does not exist

[jaysheth]

Originally Posted by LtStealthy

I would take this forum to warn everyone about GoMechanic car service.

... this is a cautionary tale of anyone looking to book car servicing from GoMechanic.

Thanks for sharing, and sorry to read about your ordeal. This is sheer incompetence, at its best! No other words to describe it!

I was about to consider giving my car to GoMechanic for some minor work, but thanks to the wisdom shared here in various threads, refrained from it!

Fake customer reviews (Fake reviews for the GoMechanic apps), followed by AC Service Fraud (Video: GoMechanic Review | AC Service Fraud), followed by Accounting Irregularities and 70% staff layoff (GoMechanic admits to financial misreporting; lays off 70% of its staff), followed by the disastrous service(!) reported by you above.

GoMechanic is apparently earning good reputation from all sides!! Is this GoMechanic or GoAndPanic?

[LtStealthy]

Originally Posted by jaysheth

Thanks for sharing, and sorry to read about your ordeal. This is sheer incompetence, at its best! No other words to describe it!

I was about to consider giving my car to GoMechanic for some minor work, but thanks to the wisdom shared here in various threads, refrained from it!

Fake customer reviews (Fake reviews for the GoMechanic apps), followed by AC Service Fraud (Video: GoMechanic Review | AC Service Fraud), followed by Accounting Irregularities and 70% staff layoff (GoMechanic admits to financial misreporting; lays off 70% of its staff), followed by the disastrous service(!) reported by you above.

GoMechanic is apparently earning good reputation from all sides!! Is this GoMechanic or GoAndPanic?

I completely missed mentioning in the post, but we never received the replaced part. And we have a feeling that those parts were never replaced as well.

[SidTheChamp]

Thanks for your experience. It teaches us to be very careful with car servicing and repair and should be entrusted to reliable person or garage only. My experience says
- For bigger job such as full servicing, car damage, bigger issue viz. engine, balance, gearbox etc. go to authorized service centre for that vehicle. In most cases, they will do a proper job. They will also charge a premium.

- For smaller job eg. battery replacement, AC cooling, wipers etc. one can go to local garage and get the job done. I even recently replaced the sensors of the car keys at local garage. Here trust is very important. If you go regularly to a garage and the 'relationship' is built, they won't cheat you. Also one gets to know through word-of-mouth which are good garages and which are not.

So if one needs to have the trust to get the work done even from garages you know personally, imagine how much trust is required to use a online service like GoMechanic. They must have outsourced to local garages or mechanics who would be primarily interested for the money and not the quality. And from the original post, its clear the shoddy quality of their mechanics.

Anyway, i don't think all GoMechanic service across regions will be bad. There must be good ones also in the mix. One has to be well informed with their previous service quality to make a decision

[audioholic]

Time and again, it is proved that having an aggregator who creates a fancy app and only acts as a front end to establish business between the customer and an unknown entity is never going to work in the long run whichever business it may be. It all boils down to the final service provider ie the garage which has tied up with GoMechanic. Same way for cabs, hotels or whatever. So given this scenario, what is the point in going by the brand name of the aggregator who hardly has any control of the situation compared to doing our own research and heading to garages which have a good reputation? Most of these aggregators are only focussed on expanding footprint and gathering customers. Their acceptance standards go down this way just like how the quality of Uber/Ola cabs have deteriorated now compared to their initial days.

Also, I have another theory related to this aggregator businesses for service - The garages who are reputed and have a healthy inflow of customers dont even bother about tying up with such aggregators. They have enough reach already and cannot accomodate more. Its rather the garages who have had a shady reputation and are not able to retain customers that are happy to tie up, and they continue their shady practices due to the inflow of new customers who are only guided by the app. In addition to that, the aggregators try to pitch low service costs to customers which the garages are forced to cater to. So thats another issue compared to some independent garage which might even charge more for their quality of service. Case in example is Go mechanic offering very low painting cost per panel and listing offers on that. If a garage has to cater to those costs, how can we expect quality upto high standards.

Hence, there is no point in wasting time doing follow up of botched jobs with these companies who act as agents trying to cut a deal and then walking out. Their escalations hardly work and they also have little control over the garages who actually do the work.

[rajkir80]

GoMechanic is an absolute crap! I had issues with my Skoda Rapid AC. I ended up getting connected with some local roadside garage through a go mechanic. They had no expertise or clue about the issue and never repaired anything. But charged me for inspection cost. Their diagnosis was completely wrong where I was advised to replace the condenser. I tried getting the problem fixed by another garage called Car Smith at Koramangala whom I knew previously, but they never helped in anyway instead again connected me with a roadside AC repair guy who also diagnosed the problem as a one with condenser. All of them were wrong and the ASC fixed the issue by replacing the fan which was not working. That's all as simple as it was. Go Mechanic is just a fancy buisness model who just connects us with some road side incompetent mechanics who know mostly nothing but very basic stuff. Hence I will never trust them hereafter.

[carcrazeking]

Please avoid GoMechanic at all cost. They just point you to nearby road side mechanic shops. I remember once my brother booked a cleaning service and he went to the garage to monitor. They had some torn clothes and were preparing solution with clinic plus shampoo. He then strictly warned to not use such things for cleaning the car and provided micro fiber clothes and 3m car wash shampoo which he had in the trunk.

[ptaneja]

That's why I make it a point to get the servicing done in front of me - even if I have to take a leave for a day. I can't trust these maniacs with pick and drop service.

[Rasmo3689]

Go mechanic is the biggest scam of this century. I got my Linea's cylinder head overhauled since the timing belt broke while driving, premature failure at 50000kms, they charged me a huge amount provided the head was already overhauled by a different mechanic and he was just not able to get the timing right but had never cranked the engine, just hand turned it. They also charged me for a set of pistons ( 2 nos.), a gear pulley which they explained was part of gearbox. I'm attaching a bill here from 2019 of my car, back then the service advisor there called Rohit was even ready to thrash me when I questioned them about this. The address is GoMechanic - 3 Automotive, Sector 14 Gurgaon. You should avoid these goons at all costs especially if you own anything European, they will make sure that your does an early death.