After the initial experience of driving into some god-forsaken industrial area in Okhla, I decided to give my wife’s new Honda Dio at Parkash(sic) Automobiles in Noida Sector 11 for its next few rounds of free servicing. This decision was more for the sake of convenience - my parents stay in Noida, and a scooter servicing at close range is a good excuse to visit!
I should have known better. First, the fact that it was Noida. And second, the fact that Parkash appears to be the ONLY Honda service centre in Noida. Which means it has a monopoly over the entire region. And we all know what monopolies can do.
I arrived at the workshop at its opening time, only to find that I was number 42 on the list! An hour-and-a-half later, my turn came(future visits started with my arrival a half-hour before opening time). The person taking the service history seemed to lose interest in taking down the defects the moment he realised that this was a’paid’ service. Sure enough, a complaint about the self-starter that I had registered remained unresolved.
The next time around, I re-registered the complaint, but it stayed unresolved yet again. After the servicing, I wrote an email to HMS&CI and got a very prompt reply from them to show the vehicle at their service station. The response from Parkash auto was somewhat muted and irritable. When I took the scooter to them, they changed the starter switch(charging me for it) and topped up the battery. We noticed later that the scooter was vibrating a little more than usual, but put it down to its slow and inevitable ageing.
The scooter became somewhat lethargic thereafter and remained that way over the next nearly two years. Starting problems became the norm and kick-starting the preferred mode, especially early in the morning when the scooter is at its most reluctant. After the free servicings, we had had enough of Parkash auto; since the warranty too had expired, we took the scooter to a local shop in Naoroji Nagar for servicing. The shop’s advice was simple: the battery had outlived its life and needed replacement.
I took the scooter for battery replacement a few days ago, and the reason for vibrations became amply clear. It turned out that two of the four screws holding the front headlamp panel were missing! I can only assume that some impatient maintainer at Parkash Honda removed the screws to access the battery but did not bother to put them back.
What is amply clear to me is that Parkash Auto is a cash cow for the owner, who couldn’t really be bothered about the quality of product coming through its doors. Servicing is assembly-line at best and slipshod; warranties are something nice to read in the booklet, since honouring them involves too much paperwork with HMSCI. It appears that no real effort was paid to checking the battery electrolyte levels during routine servicing, and symptoms of a failing battery were ignored to avoid warranty replacement issues; the switch probably did not need changing, and even if it did, it should have been free of cost, being a warranty replacement.
All-in-all, the experience with Parkash auto was extremely disappointing.