Experiencing careless behaviour from the dealerships towards customers is never good for the brand image
A strange case has emerged where a lady was scammed around Rs 14 lakh while trying to purchase a Skoda Slavia. Skoda has been witnessing incredible success in our market for the past few years. After its MQB A0 IN-based products were launched in India (Slavia and Kushaq), the Indians embraced the brand more than ever. In fact, India is now Skoda’s biggest market outside Europe. These two cars have been instrumental in that. For now, let us take a look at the details of this shocking case.
Lady Scammed While Buying Skoda Slavia
The specifics of this incident stem from Baiju N Nair on YouTube. He interacts with the victim, Deepika Susheelam, in a detailed video. After talking to her, he came to know that she booked the Slavia in April 2022 via the Skoda website for Rs 25,000. Since she hails from Trivandrum, Kerala, the Malayalam Motors was given this order. The premium mid-size sedan would cost her approximately Rs 16 lakh. Deepika paid Rs 8 lakh as a down payment and financed the other Rs 8 lakh with an EMI amount of Rs 12,000. Weirdly, the dealership told her that even those people who had paid the full amount are having to wait for a long time for the delivery and asked her to pay more. She paid an additional Rs 3 lakh.
Despite all this, there was no timeline from the dealer. After a few weeks, an executive from Malayalam Skoda called her and advised her to cancel the booking and take her money due to the rising waiting period. By this time, even the EMI of the car had started. To clear the confusion, she wrote to the Skoda personnel who assured her that the dealer partner would sort things out. Even after all this, the dealer did nothing. So she decided to cancel the booking in August. However, the dealership was shut down without any worry for the customers in July 2022. That is when she understood that she had been duped.
In February 2023, she had to approach the consumer court and the case is still going on. Surprisingly, since the transaction was done ‘principle-to-principle’, Skoda wouldn’t be able to issue a refund. By this time, she had already paid Rs 2 lakh in EMIs. This takes the total to a whopping Rs 14 lakh for which she never received the car. This is as bizarre and disappointing as it gets. Understandably, Deepika questions the brand’s attitude towards their customers. Let us see how things pan out going forward.
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