Ola S1 side stand issue: My scooter falls & gets damaged

I parked my electric scooter & went to open the gate of my house. After 2-3 seconds, there was a loud 'thud'.

BHPian Sierra__foxtrot recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Hello fellow bhpians,

First thing first - the S1 is a gem to ride and to look at. It turns a lot of heads on the streets. The only gripe I have about the scooter is the frequent rattling sound coming from the headlight touchscreen unit, the absolute lack of any features presented, a few bugs and the shoddy after-sales.

Coming to the after-sales, last week I had an incident with the scooter wherein I had engaged the side stand and went to open my house gate. After 2 - 3 seconds, I turn back to a thud sound and to my horror, the scooter is on the ground. Once I picked it up, I noticed some deep paint scratches and marks on the body panel and the brake lever broken and a lot of panel gaps, which I fixed by using force. The culprit here is the poorly engineered side stand.

Once I calmed myself down to the fact that a 1-month unregistered scooter is damaged I tried calling customer care but hey "ALL OUR AGENTS ARE BUSY, PLEASE CALL AGAIN LATER" message popped up. The next day the same message and the same continues for the next 5 freaking days. Finally out of the blue an agent picked up the phone on the 6th day and registered the complaint. The follow up was quite quick and I was assigned a person who patiently listened to all my issues. However before proceeding, he wanted to have a look at the damage himself and the next day he did show up and fortunately for me the stand did collapse right in front of him again while he was present. Seemingly convinced, he told me they will have to change the entire back panel of the scooter since for some reason Ola decided to give the back panel as one single unit which stretches from one side and goes all the way to the other side and it even wraps around the tail lamps.

From my side, I clearly told him I would not pay a single rupee nor claim insurance since this is a result of a half baked product released into the market. He assured me he will try his level best to get these repaired at Ola's expense and he did mention that this issue is becoming common and that at least here in Chennai they have 4 to 5 units with the same issue, that the brake levers have been broken and that they have run out of stock for the same. This conversation took place 2 days back and there is still no light at the end of the tunnel.

Will keep you all posted on any developments.

Here's what BHPian neil.jericho had to say about the matter:

I'm sorry to hear about your bad experience with your faulty S1. Has the hard to reach support team managed to sort out the problem and replace the parts to your satisfaction? Do keep us updated on the progress of your incident resolution. Hopefully, Ola can iron out these issues quickly, both for customers who have taken delivery, as well as on the production line.

I see EV evangelists beaming with pride when they see high dispatch numbers but if Ola's own staff admit that there are multiple recurring issues that they are seeing on the ground, then it isn't very positive news.

Here's what BHPian fuzzydealhunter had to say about the matter:

Any way you can post a video of the side stand disengaging? Read your post and went to have a closer look at my side stand. It looked very solid so just curious to see how yours is disengaging with such ease.

Our scooter also took a small tumble but that was due to our mistake so got the brake lever fixed on our dime. But again, I would agree with you, the customer service is quite terrible. It takes a lot of follow up to get things done to our satisfaction.

To our other members using this as a chance to EV bash, please do keep in mind bad customer service is not because it's an EV, it's because Ola does not have its processes in place. Please do not confuse one for the other.

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