My experience of booking & cancelling a VW Taigun

Spoiled by the reliability of Maruti Swift & Hyundai i20 which I owned before, I wasn't too sure if the Taigun would be able to offer a similar level of trouble-free ownership.

BHPian EmpyreanKnight recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

I visited the VW showroom a few times in the recent past and I did not even see 25 people checking out Taigun, let alone book one.

Since my Hyundai Elite i20 was sold at a good price, I had to let it go and I thought booking a Taigun might get me a car early, in spite of all the fears popping up in my head, I went ahead and did the booking by paying 25k, the manager then said he can give me Grey colour 1.0 Topline AT by end of October if I am ready with the payment. I discussed it at home and all wanted the colour to be Red, so had to let it go.

They also had a Yellow colour 1.5 GT plus readily available.

When I made the booking they told me they will provide the receipt the next morning and also the booking number. The manager assured me that he will try to see if they can get the red colour by the middle of November.

I came home and there were still thoughts looming in my head about the reliability and trouble-free ownership (spoiled by Swift and i20). When I went to bed at night I just couldn’t sleep thinking about all the negative things that can come to mind about owning a VW then to calm my mind I finally decided, if I don’t get a positive vibe by tomorrow I will cancel the booking.

After waking up in the morning I sent a Whatsapp message to SA asking him to share the receipt and booking number and as expected he didn’t send anything until I finally cancelled the booking.

I made him 3 calls that day and every time he said “sir will send you details in half-hour”.

To add fuel to the fire, the cancellation was also based on the following reasons:

• They insisted I buy insurance from them, they quoted approximately Rs 88k (0 dep) and I got a quote of Rs 35k (comprehensive) from ACKO. The insurance was a staggering Rs 53k expensive.
• They told me it is compulsory to buy the essentials accessories kit costing Rs 10.5k
• They were consistently pushing me to buy the SVP maintenance pack and Extended Warranty pack right at the time of vehicle purchase by instilling fear of price increase.
• Unprofessional behaviour by sales staff and casual/ overconfident attitude of manager (sir ek bar jo VW leta hai woh aur koi gadi nahi leta).

When I cancelled the booking I also realised that they do not even have a fixed process on what is required for cancellation. The manager told me to provide a physical request letter for cancellation and it will take 15 days for them to issue a cheque. When I enquired the same thing with the SA, he told me to send a cancellation request on Whatsapp and they will issue a cheque within 4 to 5 days.

I have worked with German people / German companies for almost 12 years and one thing I learned from them was strong documentation and a process-oriented approach. This VW dealer is the complete opposite of that.

I prepared a cancellation request letter, took two prints of it attached to the Google pay receipt, went to the showroom and gave them one copy and took a received signature on another copy for myself.

The SA told, “sir I will personally call you and give you the cheque within 4 to 5 days”. I don’t expect him to call me back even after a year.

Sorry for such a long post but I feel bad for VW, they make good products but are let down by such dealers.

I even thought I will ignore the salespeople and go ahead with the purchase but then the thought came to my mind, that I will have to deal with the same dealership for all the future maintenance & services and the city I belong to is not a Tier-I city, hence we do not have many other options for VW servicing and FNG’s.

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