On 16 June, I had set out for a weekend trip to Mussoorie from Meerut with my parents in our less than two-month old Ford Endeavour SUV.
We had just completed the first 1,000 kms when our car started giving jerks. We acknowledged that it was something unusual and then I saw that the powertrain malfunction indicator had turned on.
We looked it up in the car manual, which suggested to not drive the car without any immediate technical assistance. So we pulled over on the side of the road and I made the first call to FORD RSA (Road Side Assistance) Helpline at 7:30 am.
The series of incidents following that were as below:
16 June 2018
07:30 am
Location: 1km. Before Roorkee on the Delhi-Dehradun National Highway
We called up Ford RSA. Their response: process of tow and arranging a cab shall start soon.
07:45 am
Called up my dealer – Adiv Ford, Ghaziabad. The salesmen who was engaged with me at the time of purchase assures me that Ford RSA is good enough to report to the place of breakdown within 60 minutes with a cab and towing vehicle.
08:30 am
I got to know that the complaint has just been registered and the process is yet to start.
8.30-8.45 am
RSA people told me that the tow truck will report at the place of the breakdown in 1 hour and the cab will take some time to reach, but will be there by 10 am.
*These were commitments by Ford RSA*
08:45-09:30 am
After multiple calls to RSA and waiting on long holds to know the status, I learned that the tow truck from RK Breakdown Service has started from Roorkee but is getting delayed due to traffic.
09:30- 09:40 am
I managed to speak to the tow truck driver and got to know that he had started from somewhere near Patanjali, which is ahead of Roorkee and will take a good 30-45 minutes to reach, and is not stuck in traffic, as claimed earlier.
I had to find the status of the cab by myself, but still couldn’t get any clear information.
09:45-10:00 am
Ford RSA informed me that the cab is installed with a GPRS enabled device and the driver will notify us when he reaches.
10:00-10:30 am
I somehow managed to speak to the cab company, ‘Hum Tum Travel and Advertisers, and got to know that the cab was arranged from Haridwar, which was 35 km away, and not the nearest city Roorkee, again contrary to previously provided information.
10:30-10:45 am
The tow truck arrives at the place of breakdown and takes around 30 minutes for loading and paperwork.
This was going to be a nightmare for us that we didn’t know about.
11:00-11:15 am
I then get in touch with the cab company and he gives me a new estimate of cab arrival ie 12:15pm. Reason: unknown.
12:30 pm
Finally, after multiple calls and a lot of arguments, the Indigo cab with a driver called Kanhaiya arrived. The cab was neither equipped with any GPRS enabled device nor the driver had a smart phone.
The cab arrived after five hours and then started the worst part of our Ford experience.
12:30-1:00 pm
We asked the driver what will be the charges of dropping us to Dehradun from the place of pickup. (As per RSA conditions, the first 50 km of the cab ride is free, and the remaining distance is chargeable). The driver didn’t know about it, so he made us speak to his owner. The owner Kuldeep Grover (nickname Bunty), abhorrently, demanded Rs 3,000 for a one-way drop to Dehradun, which was 75 km from the place of the breakdown.
So, for 25 km he was charging us Rs 3,000 km, which is Rs 120 per km. This made us furious and the guy, shamelessly, did not budge from his demand. Hearing this, I made up mind and decided to drive back to our home in Meerut.
1:00-1:30 pm
When we started to drive towards Meerut, I got a call from the cab company from someone called Piyush, and not Bunty, telling me that he was in a temple and couldn’t receive my calls. I told him about what Kuldeep Grover had told me and to my surprise Piyush was not at all apologetic.
Later Kuldeep, who had the authorisation to speak to the driver, ordered him to stop the car on completing 50 km.
1:30 pm
The driver dropped us in the middle of the national highway with our luggage as ordered by his boss.
2:00 pm
We somehow started our journey back to Meerut, we had faced enough harassment and mental torture. But guess what? On our way back, we spotted our black Endeavour on the road side, but not on the tow-truck that had loaded our vehicle in front of us.
This was what FORD had to offer to us after five hours of mental torture and harassment.
2:00 pm
The driver and the assistant had called for another tow truck from another location without informing Ford or us. There was no communication.
2:00-2:30 pm
All this while there was no apology from any vendor. I, along with my parents, was mentally tortured for the whole day by Ford’s representatives and official service providers and not once did we feel there was any efforts made by any of them to make things better for us.
2:30-3:30 pm
After numerous complaint calls, I finally got a call from Ganesh, who apologised to me and requested for some time till Monday, 18 June, because RSA was busy with some other customers.
The company failed my family and me in all aspects!
18 June 2018
I waited for a response till Monday, but Ford failed to live up to its word. I didn’t receive any calls but I did receive a mail that they will get back to me by the end of the day, and that never happened.
19 June
Three days later, I receive a mail with false and fabricated details of the account of our incident.
Ford tremendously failed to offer any form of proper support and just ended up making our day a disaster with a barrage of painful experiences.
Sparsh Mittal, My Report
The Quint Reached out to Ford
The Quint did reach out to Ford on 26 June and received a response, saying that the company would take this issue up and contact the customer immediately.
Sparsh Mittal received a call from Ford on 27 June, and according to him, they maintained the same stand as they did 11 days earlier on 16 June.
The man on the phone told him that his team had already informed him about the details of the incidents.
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