I bought a new Nissan Sunny and to celebrate the purchase, took my family and went off on a holiday. When I removed the car from the hotel parking, my wife pointed to what appeared to be a small puddle of engine oil. I took a look under the car and sure enough this car was leaking oil. Obviously I was very concerned as this should not be happening in a new 10-lakh rupee car.
Four days later I deposited the car at Nissan service center, Verna, Goa. I was told it would be ready same evening. Just before going over I decided to call them and confirm. Good thing I did - car was not ready. I was told "maybe tomorrow sir". This "maybe" is a very dicey word. The next day I called three times but Nissan service advisory would just not commit to any sort of delivery schedule. All he kept saying was "lot of oil leakage it needs to be attended".
After 6 days they found out that the oil was leaking from a small hose pipe due to a bad "O" ring. And no, they do not have it in stock. Technically, any quality "O" ring of same size from the neighborhood hardware store would have fixed the fault(the kind of O-ring you fix inside a pressure hose pipe).
I told them I will take the car and fix the damn thing myself but no, that isn’t acceptable to them. I wrote to customer care at Nissan who, apart from smsing me with a complaint number took no further action.
Update: Subsequently I found out that customer care merely forwards the emails to the service center where the car was delivered for servicing. I was under the misguided impression that there is some sort of quality monitoring done at the head office. No such thing happens.
My other cars are all Maruti and I service them at the local Sai Service which is top-notch! Even when my wife crashed one of the cars it was repaired, repainted and delivered in exactly 11 days. Nissan on the other hand, cannot fix an oil leak even after 6 days and with no spares, I might have to wait another 10 days or so!
Update 2: On 30th May I got a call saying the spare will arrive on 15th June. If they stick to that deadline it will mean the company took 1 full month to replace a tiny "O" ring. Nissan was clearly not geared to providing any kind of after sales service to their customers.
Subsequently, I’ve been looking at Nissan service elsewhere in India and yup, it ain’t too good anywhere in India. My mistake - I should have checked before I bought Nissan. Anyone want a used Nissan?