Normally, we use social media to complain about poor service. I am writing here about a good experience I had today with Maruti Suzuki 24 hour service.

Today evening I was in Thiruvanmiyur area, after visiting a relative, I returned to my car parked on the roadside. My bad luck, the car won’t start, the battery had died completely – it was strange as none of the lights or electricals was left running.  A good Samaritan and my son tried pushing the car from behind, but they couldn’t give it enough force for me to get it push-started. By this time, I had called my relative to come with his car to help me out.

I have been driving for the last 25 years, so this was NOT the first time for me. With this specific car a Maruti SX4, that I purchased in 2013, at least half-a-dozen times I had faced the same problem – most often, it would be due to my carelessness of running the headlight ON and walking away not paying attention to the warning beeps – in one case the battery had died due to age. When this happens, if it was during working hours, I will call a nearby battery shop, twice I have managed to push start with a friend propelling my car with his car from behind.

To easily handle these situations, recently I had bought a Car Jumping Cables for 2 Meters and 500 AMP rating from Amazon for Rs.750. Using that cable I tried to jump start my car after connecting to my relative’s car (Honda Amaze) – unfortunately, it didn’t work – later I was told the other car had to be accelerated fully for enough amperage. Then, we tried to push start with his car propelling mine, bumper to bumper, that too didn’t work.

Being a Sunday night none of the local repair shops would be open, so I called up Maruti Suzuki 24 Hours On Road Service at 1800 102 1800. To my pleasant surprise, the call centre answered it immediately – the lady who answered though she had difficulty understanding English was very helpful:

  1. She took my car number, looked up their database and reconfirmed the owner name
  2. She asked for my location (landmark) and looked it up in a map and then reconfirmed the road name
  3. She told me a local on-road team will contact me within 10-15 minutes and their visit will be charged at Rs.630 plus any repair charges
  4. The local team promptly called in the next few minutes, the Maruti call centre called again, to confirm that I have received a call from the local team
  5. The local team arrived in the next 15 minutes. Meanwhile, the Maruti call centre again called to ensure the technicians have arrived – this is excellent customer care

The local on-road team got my car jump started in a minute and they diagnosed the problem to be a faulty battery. They turned out to be from the same service centre I give the car for regular service, so instead of me driving home a car with a dead battery, I sent the vehicle with them, with instructions that I will collect it tomorrow after they have thoroughly checked the problem and had it fixed.

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