So here goes another review after a long time from my side.
I am fascinated by automobiles and hence follow a lot of forums for advice and information. Once such good forum is the well known Team-BHP. WHY?
This site is very eye catching with the site navigations very intuitive and even newbie’s will find perusing very easy.
The topics are neatly categorized under the main “Forum” tab where much of the action happens (there are exclusive Test-drive, Classifieds, History, and Miscellaneous tabs too)
The overall content is very good and one can gain a lot of knowledge about the machines.
THE GOOD:
. The Test Drive sections are excellent which review the cars in depth and provide useful insight and help for purchasing decisions.
. The long term ownership reports are given by actual owners and encouraged to give unbiased ownership experiences. Here one can actually find out how the car runs and maintains from an end users perspective.
. The forum strongly promotes safe riding and features like seat belt, ABS, airbags, riding etiquette, anti road-rage, etc are widely discussed. Members who break the rules and flaunt them are given infractions and bans too.
. There is even a section for bikes, thought they are not as in-depth like the car forums but nevertheless give a good amount of info.
. Technical, Modifications sections are quite detailed and give good insight on how to do it, what to do, where to find it and contacts are shared too.
THE BAD:
Admission:-
In this cut throat completion where forums start up everywhere and targets are to get good amount of membership, the accolade of being India’s most popular auto forum has gone into the head of the forum owner and they are actually declining/restricting memberships. There is an elaborate form to fill up and even a “Why Team-BHP” field (and you just can’t write some 2 liners, an essay with complete perfect English is mandatory it seems!)
This is crazy as one has to tell something about the forum you are joining without even knowing the complete setup! I have read experiences about people applying multiple times and some even waiting for over a year. The moderators do not even have the courtesy to tell what went wrong and standard excuse is its too short. I too got in after the second attempt.
Tips from my side to get in:
1. Use a funky flashy English name (Bholenath, Badrinath, GanguTeli, etc will get you nowhere!)
2. Praise any of the moderator (GTO especially) and set him up to be your only idol in life.
3. Pretend you are a tycoon/rich entrepreneur (you live in 2 countries, have a villa in Europe, etc will get you a royal entry). Uploading pictures of Ferrari/Lamborghini will heighten the effect!
4. Pretend you are a female (any type will get you in guaranteed and you can get doing just about anything you please)
Rigid Moderation/Hypocrisy:-
1. There is a strict no-no of using SMS lingo, Slangs, Hinglish, Abuse, wrong/no punctuations, Swear words (good on that) and more than 2 smiley’s (sic!). This is so that the forum remains clean and readable by all. It’s a good move but I hate the way its implemented. I have seen instances on new members being banned and infracted for using 3 smiley’s, no full stops, many caps , etc!!! However older favored members sometimes do the same and escape in spite of others pointing at them.
2. If you go against moderator’s beliefs in discussion, you will have lotsa free time as you will be infracted/banned on the whims and fancies, and no real explanation given.
3. They proclaim that they do not get any funding from auto companies but there is a hint that they are actually getting paid to write reviews. Certain brands are favored and can be seen from some threads. (more in the section described below)
Selective Filtering/Biasing:-
1. I watched the forums for over a year before thinking of becoming a member and now realizing that your initial 25 posts will be moderated! Pray that you only say what is right according to the moderators. Otherwise your posts/threads will vanish sooner than you press the submit button.
2. This has recently come up and hence prompted me to write up this review. I read a lot about my Figo in the review section and it was highly praised there. However when it recently won the ICOTY 2011 award and a thread was started, within a day the same thread was pulled off without notice(competitors paying to remove it?). Even my post was deleted without any explanation. I raised a mail to the moderator but as expected no one has come back. See more in the attached pics.
When it’s all over the news and journals, I don’t think a popular site like this will miss out such info but that’s exactly what’s happening here.
3. Infact there is no info in the bike section too about Honda Twister winning the 2011 award.(again competitors money involved I guess)
4. Icing on the cake is that the Hero Honda breakup too is not being covered for the sake of negative publicity surrounding the Hero group.
MY TAKE on Team-BHP:
.Team BHP is good for reading only. (After the follies of membership and moderation processes, it’s out of my understanding as to why one would want to join the forum to get peanuts/mud thrown on his face)
. Surprisingly all the content hosted can be browsed and no membership is required for the same. (Probably they want to let everyone read only what is approved/paid to them and no one should question them)
. There is no Feedback/Complaint link (they think they are the ultimate and perfect bunch of guys running the only know forum in the world!)
. I strongly feel after my experiences that this forum is not really unbiased or unpaid as what is mentioned by them. They have come a long way from providing useful customer info to now running a profitable money oriented forum.
. I don’t care if they close/ban my account as anyway I am not able to be free in expressing my own views there, and this will only further prove my statements here.
I would like Mouth Shut to highlight this review so that customers do not blindly trust Team-BHP, but visit other open minded forums like MOUTHSHUT, GEARHEADS.IN , AUTOCARINDIA, etc in whole before coming to a conclusion.