Having used several car service stations for a decade in Chennai I wanted to try Carnation - I had high hopes just because of the name of Jagdish Khattar - a company from him must be of high standards.
Alas, how wrong I was!
I went to Carnation Guindy in Chennai on June 1 after taking an online appointment, followed by a phone call. The receptionist did not acknowledge any of that and asked me to fill in my details again which I did. The Service staff assigned to my car quickly noted down the maintenance work I wanted. I insisted several times that I wanted my car by evening and he assured that too me.
When I asked for a drop to a nearby location(Adyar) so that I could take a public transport to my office, they all started saying that they had no drivers at that time. I insisted that this was promised by the lady who had called me from Carnation while confirming the appointment, they stuck to their point of no driver. When I raised the voice, the manager showed up and he arranged for a driver to drop me to Adyar. Well, you need to raise your voice to get what you have been promised!
In the evening I took the long trip from my office to Carnation on a public transport and midway this guy called me saying the car would not be ready and asked me to not come on that day. I asked about when he could deliver and quick came his promise, "tomorrow, at 10." I again told him that I would like my car at the earliest and he said that he would definitely get it ready and the delay was because of the sudden shower(well, the quick shower could not be that disrupting, IMHO).
Next day, I showed up at 10AM and I had to wait nearly 1 hour to get my car. The Service staff billed a coupon book without even bothering to ask me. However he did not even offer to show me repairs or maintenance that he had done, forget about taking me for a test drive. The cleaning staff who was rubbing my car with a piece of cloth(without actually cleaning) was openly asking for tips.
I was so upset that I shot off a complaint at Carnation website while leaving - there was no point asking to see the manager as he was seeing all these.
After I drove off I realized that there was a rattling sound from the engine. Later I also saw that the beading work I had asked for on the sides of the car was coming off. And car wash was definitely not clean.
Yes, the manager acted on my complaint on website and called me and offered to look at my problems. I did not want to waste any further time and declined his offer. If he could not bother to solve my problem when I was there, I couldn’t believe in his sincerity or professionalism.
Final word: Poor customer service, lack of punctuality and poor quality of work.