Cancelled my Ducati booking after a harrowing buying experience

If there is a reasonable explanation for the delay I don't have a problem but it needs to be effectively communicated with me on a regular basis.

BHPian 7.83hz recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Here's a report of a harrowing experience I've had in dealing with Ducati India.

On the 8th of November, more than a month before the official India launch I'd already done all my research about the bike and happily put money down to pre-order the Dx with the Kolkata dealer. I live in Guwahati, Assam and that's the closest Ducati POS for me, far from ideal, but that's the deal the devil made and I ran with it.

On the 8th of December, days before the launch they asked me to confirm my booking by making another partial payment so they can really lock the order in. Fair enough, assuming this bike had a lot of interest around the country, and they promised a delivery in the first lot of bikes, I agreed.

On the 28th of December I get a hurried call from the dealership asking me to clear the entire ex-showroom amount of 17.91L, this would allow them to invoice the bike as a high-seas order allowing them to save some taxes, it would land in India in the coming days I should have the delivery by mid January (exactly when the deliveries began in India). They also mentioned the price of all Ducati bikes are to increase in January so if we billed it in Jan I'd need to pay the hike etc. I was super hesitant at this point but given that mid Jan was only 2 weeks away I didn't bother creating too much of an issue out of it and with a lot of joy and anticipation paid up the remainder of the ex-showroom amount to the dealership.

This is when things began to go south. Around the mid of Jan I started enquiring about the date of delivery and the sales person sounded a little dodgy about the specifics. He said there's been a delay in the import process and maybe by the end of Jan the bike should be here - this is when the first lot of bikes had already begun getting delivered across the country. A few days later, upon no further contact from the dealership I enquired again and the dealer had a series of excuses ready for the delay none of which seemed genuine. I looped Ducati India into the conversation at the point to get clarity on where exactly was the delay happening.

For the next two weeks, after daily calls and emails all I got back from either side was, "there is a delay in delivery your bike will arrive by Feb end or March." This became their standard response to every single question I asked.

My concerns to them were:

• If there is a reasonable explanation for the delay I don't have a problem but it needs to be effectively communicated with me on a regular basis. Especially if I'm dealing with you entirely over calls and emails and don't have an option to just walk in to the dealership to have a chat.
• If you've taken 100% payment from me, you further have a responsibility and accountability towards the amount that you've received from me and the lack of communication was not helping matters at all. At this point there was no trust in the business ethics of Ducati India.
• If the order was taken as a high-seas shipment and all the bikes from the first 25 bikes that came into India had already been delivered, where did my bike go?

After many calls and emails that lead to no proper response or resolution, I chose to cancel the order with Ducati and after another 10 days I finally got the full payment refunded. The salesperson I'd been dealing with all this while called me back and explained that the bike that was allocated for me was instead delivered to some high-profile person in NCR by Ducati India at the last minute which caused all the problems.

I asked a few long time Ducati owners and someone did mention that Ducati India is basically a bunch of 5-6 guys in Delhi that function as independent importers and run it like a cartel. Make of it what you will.

I adore the motorcycle, and I'm sure it'd be all that it promises, but I'm not touching Ducati in India with a 10ft pole if this is how they conduct themselves.

The quest for the perfect middleweight begins all over again.

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