42k km old Tata Nexon's horror tale: Extended warranty coverage denied

My friend is not very automotively inclined. He went and bought Tata for his first car due to his love for the Tata brand and mystique. To say he is disappointed would be an understatement.

BHPian ImmortalZ recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

A close friend of mine from Kochi, Kerala, has a 2021 Nexon Petrol. It has run 42K.

He started hearing some noises under the hood and took the car in to the dealership (Luxon Tata, Cheranallur). The car is under extended warranty, so it was a no brainer. Or, so he thought.

This was diagnosed to a belt tensioner and was going to be changed under warranty. However, the dealership called back and told him that his coolant is now milkshake - which happens when oil and coolant mix. This is bad juju, as you can imagine. He was sent an estimate of 55k. Shockingly, the work wouldn't be covered entirely by warranty.

The failure was traced to the oil cooler (which is covered under warranty), but to properly fix this failure, you need to flush everywhere the coolant and oil would go, and replace a ton of parts. The radiator and heater core (the heat exchanger inside the dash) would also need to be replaced. No matter how much flushing you do, the milkshake from hell can't be removed fully from the narrow passages from the radiator or heat exchanger.

I've attached the estimate here. Only the items marked in red are covered in warranty. The excuse is that only these parts are covered under extended warranty. My friend was given no information about what is covered and what isn't when he paid for the extended warranty (Gokulam Tata in Aluva - absolute disgrace of a dealership). He was told it would no different from the factory warranty.

Even so, this would be understandable if the failure point is not covered under warranty. Here, a part that is covered under warranty made this work required. But only the parts covered under extended warranty would be covered? Its not like my friend crashed his car or did something to make the heater core fail. A warrantied Tata OEM part failed and caused this failure. Makes no sense!

To make things even worse, the SA told us that these oil cooler failures are becoming more and more common and Tata has demanded them flush and reuse the radiator for a previous warranty job. It obviously did not work as expected, so the dealership has asked Tata to cover the radiator replacement on warranty for my friend's case.

Now, I don't expect this post to do anything for this case. Even very senior journos have escalated things to Tata for their own family cars and the Tata after sales team does not care.

My friend is not very automotively inclined. He went and bought Tata for his first car due to his love for the Tata brand and mystique. To say he is disappointed would be an understatement. After he completely understood what this failure is and the fix, he now plans to dispose of the car as soon as financially possible.

If you buy Tata, caveat emptor!

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