Kia dealer fraud caught on cam; swaps headunit with democar's

His service center indulged in gross malpractice, such as replacing a fully functioning display with a faulty one, and scratching the insides in the process.

DeathPig recently shared this with other BHPians.

The below content was sent to me by Tariq Umar. He requested me to post this here in his stead, as he does not have an account here. We are members of a Kia Sonet group on Facebook. He wanted to let more people know about what had happened to his new Kia Sonet during service.

His service center indulged in gross malpractice, such as replacing a fully functioning display with a faulty one, and scratching the insides in the process. Fortunately, his DVR was running, and it recorded every second of the conversation and other audio.

Dear Sir,

It is to bring to your kind notice the malpractices, fraudulent work, cheating happening at authorized kia service centre. This service centre guy's conversation is evident to the fact the malpractices and forgery happening at service centres. I am extremely disappointed and enraged after listening to this.

Location of video: My Kia Sonet GTX+ Car taken on test drive from service centre to do a basic check

Video Shot by : Dashcam recorder on 04.01.21.

People in video: Service centre staff

Explanation of the conversation: My car's infotainment has been replaced with a broken infotainment system from a test drive car. At 0045 sec of the video, they are talking about what they have done in my swapping with the broken infotainment system of the test drive car with my car. In 02:20 of the video, they are discussing how I will react and how they have cheated me.

Background of why my car went to the service centre:

From the day 1 of delivery, my infotainment system was hanging and lagging during long rides I complained about this to Safdarjung Kia (Dealership) and they asked me to visit their service center at Okhla.

I visited Kia Service centre, as my infotainment system used to stop responding every now and then. For this, the service centre people kept my car for 4 days as their expert couldn't figure out the problem. After receiving my car back, I noticed they had broken my AC vent surface and there were scratches all over the surface of the dashboard.

After using the car for a few days since the infotainment system was working fine, in order to replace my AC vent I had left my car in the service centre on 03.01.21, till 05.01.21. I did not receive any update regarding my car so on the evening of 05.01.21, I went to the service center just to check what is actually happening to my car. The AGM service called me and said the screen got broken during installation of the AC Vent and asked me to give him a month to arrange a new infotainment system as it is not available with them in stock and it might take 30 days to procure it from Mobis, they requested me to wait till then. I took my car back to my home as there was no point of leaving the car with them for 30 days. When I checked my Dashcam footage I was shocked to see in the video the guy clearly saying how he changed my screen with the broken one of their own test drive car. This is thefraudulent practice being done at the service center. I am really saddened to see the ill condition of my car now which is just 35 days old. They promised me that they will replace it with a new unit within 10 days. After waiting for another 10 days, I went to their service center where they installed another Infotainment unit stating that its a brand new unit. When I was coming back to my house, I found that there were 10 mobile phones already paired with the system. Also in the maps, location was already fed by someone else. How could a brand new unit have all this customer data? I immediately called the service center that they have again installed an old unit into my car. They again started making excuses and asking for another 10 days for a brand new unit. This is how they are cheating customers and I am one of them.

My brand new car is compromised. I have invested my hard earned money, more than Rs. 14 lakhs to Kia, and this fraudulent service center is now fooling customers.

Vid6639 summarises the entire incident for us:

Sequence of events from the thread:

1. Customer complained of head unit lagging and hanging.

2. Kia fixed the problem by changing the head unit. While fixing the head unit, they damaged the AC vents.

3. Car goes back to fix the AC vents. When changing the AC vents, it appears that the guys have changed the head unit once again with their demo car head unit which was broken. However, they tell the customer that the head unit screen broke when fixing the new AC vents.

4. They order a new head unit, but it takes 1 month. Customer takes the car back and checks the dashcam footage and there is some chatter on replacing the head unit & nobody will know.

I'm wondering why it was needed since all cars are still under warranty, so not like the scam yielded any monetary benefit, unless the demo car is not a warranty car.

GTO comments that:

My best guess & the most plausible reason = the dealer wanted a new head-unit for his demo car and conveniently picked it up from this customer's car. Maybe the demo car's head-unit was damaged in some way and not eligible for warranty replacement, or the dealer just wanted a quick fix.

IMHO, the dealer has attempted to cheat both, the customer & Kia.

Thanks to DeathPig once again! Check out BHPian comments for more insights & information.