DE-LINK VEHICLE WARANTTEE FROM MANDATORY SERVICING

I wrote the following post in reply to a specific request for suggessions on issues with vehicle servicing, on this site. But am also nppw posting it here independently for information of all members.

My request through this form is that servicing should be delinked from warrantee except for the first service at 1000 kms, which may be necessary to ensure break-in of the various moving parts for good life and performance. Subsequent mandatory servicing of vehicles during warrantee, is just a ploy devised by the manufacturers to collect the cost of warrantee, in installments. Servicing only aims at prolonging the life of defective parts by adjustments, till the warrantee expires. Please go through my personal experiences.
1) Servicing charges are exhorbitant. The rationale for subsequent servicing time, period and requirements are illogical and plain arm-twisting the customer, under covert threats of lapse of warrantee. Compulsory service is to be carried out, through their authorized workshops, at the end of a certain period or on covering of certain mileage, whichever is earlier. End of mileage is understandable, but end of certain-period-servicing, is illogical in normal cases, when the use of vehicle is limited. Expensive oil changes are enforced at the end of fixed periods/mileage. What is the need for oil change if the vehicle did not run for that much mileage ? Even the mileage criteria is purposely kept too low. When questioned, the mechanic will only point out the written rules without any explanation. One service engineer told me the oil deteriorates at the end of this period and therefore must be changed irrespective of mileage use of the vehicle.. He was not able to explain whether they throw away all the drums of oil which they have in stock after a certain period or whether the oil refineries ensure that only freshly extracted and blended oil is supplied to their workshops ? He was not able to explain what checks they have for other factors which will cause oil to deteriorate.
2) The servicing done is just name sake and mostly it is a simple washing and wiping exercise. Some technical check points are given in their work sheet. Each point is blindly ticked off by the service mechanic, without any work done.
3) Even if a technical fault is noticed or complained during servicing, the opportunity is taken by the service staff to make some adjustments and somehow prolong its life till the end of warrantee period. No prizes for guessing that after end of warrantee customer has to pay heavily to replace the already defective part. I have personally faced this scene and only after good deal of arguments at manufacturer’s level, the part (clutch) was replaced free of cost. Incidentally, its cost being demanded was around Rs.13500/- in 2008. I ended up paying nil when I asked for records of each service and what was condition of the clutch at that time, and how it was that the clutch gave way suddenly and immediately on expiry of warrantee ? Subsequently it was admitted by manufacturer’s engineer that the original clutch was inherently defective in design and had been discontinued.
4) Whenever I complained about the poor average given by the vehicle, the service engineer showed me an inflated figure on the meter. The displayed average did not come anywhere near to simple arithmetic used to divide mileage by number of litres put in. He was never able to answer how the meter was calibrated or at what frequency or mileage, the readings were recorded by the system, to calculate. Frequency of recording readings and the number of readings to calculate average is most important here. more