Rental car booking with Zoomcar was the most horrified and worst experience I ever had on any of the B2C e-commerce platform till now. The troubles I faced with the booked car give me all the rights to file “false advertisement and deceit” case according to section 89 of Indian code of false advertisement on host & Zoomcar. The service doesn’t even deserve half star.
I planned a personal trip with my family to Rameswaram from Bangalore. I booked XUV500(7-seater as per my need) 3 weeks prior my planned journey. Unfortunately, the host of XUV500 cancelled my booking one week before my trip stating the reason as – “technical issue with the car.”
With not many 7-seater options left at last moment, finally I ended up booking newly added Tata Safari Dicor 2016 model. No reviews were available as the car was new added.
Now here’s what I got after paying 22k.
• Car was in untidy condition, not washed, dust inside everywhere on dashboard, floor carpets and all grooves. Vacuum was not done properly.
• Odometer was not working.
• Indicator lever was not working. I need to keep it pressed until I turn complete right or left.
• Wipers blades were worn out getting stuck while moving.
• Only one headlamp was working.
• Windshield had scratches all over. Light from cars ahead was getting dispersed which reduced the visibility while driving.
• AC not cooling properly, door and rear vents not operational.
• Rear door hinge was completely corroded and broken.
• Power windows working only from driver side, but none of the other passenger able to operate his/her window glass from respective switch.
• Central locking wasn’t working, whenever I used to park, every time I had to lock all doors manually which was really irritating.
• Cars RC mentions the date of registration as 19-Mar-2008, but on Zoomcar portal they mentioned as 2016.
I had to cancel my trip in middle and return to Bangalore two days before the defined end date. Now somebody may question why I didn’t reach customer support after all this trouble, I did. They mention RSA in their portal, but when I tried calling the host, the calls were not answered. I tried reaching Zoomcar customer support, but I was failed there too.
I called the host to pickup the car exactly at defined end time, but my call wasn’t answered. Later the host came for pick up 4 hours late. I addressed all issues to host, and he admitted most of those. After submitting the car back, I received trip end notification from Zoomcar and I was surprised to see I was charged late fee.
Couple of days later, I just checked the Zoomcar portal out of curiosity if this bullshit still available for booking and I was shocked to see the misleading data they added for same car.
Here is the observation of their scam -
1. The actual odometer reading shows 1, 75, 000 km driven(that too not sure if that number is correct since the meter is not operational, the actual reading might be much more than this). But on website they mentioned 13, 700Km only.
2. The features they mentioned in ’About the Car’ segment, 90% of them are not available or not operational. What you will get with this car is one steering wheel, 5 tires, one engine and one shabby, worn-out rusted and crumbled car body.
3. When I booked the car there were no reviews as I already mentioned the car was newly added, but immediately after end of my trip, the next day itself the mentioned – “5 rides completed with 4 reviews.”
4. And lastly the most pathetic and distressful act they did was they wrote the review from my name on their own stating it’s very good car. This is very low standard behavior; how can they do this?
I have all the evidence – photos, videos of whatever I mentioned above.
My question to Zoomcar, who gave you rights to risk lives and money of their customers by renting out damaged condition vehicles without proper diagnosing, making false advertisement and unreliable customer support. This is completely unethical behavior.
My humble request to existing and new customers of Zoomcar, please don’t trust the reviews you read on their website, most of those are deliberately falsified.