Friday, March 26, 2010

Wrong answers

Your company introduces a car priced at Rs 1 lakh (US$ 2500) and becomes internationally famous. A few months after production starts, a customer's brand-new car goes up in flames on the way home from the dealer. The family is too traumatised to consider buying another car. How do you react?

"We regret the inconvenience" -- hm, seems a bit inadequate.

"I fell off a bicycle when I was a kid, but later rode it, overcoming my fear" -- not an improvement.

I'm waiting to see where it goes from here. For me, the good name of the Tatas -- and it was a very good name at one time -- has been permanently tarnished by Tata Indicom (I'm a former customer) and Tata Motors (I'm not a customer but never seem to hear good things about their vehicles); and especially by their antics in Singur and Ratan Tata's subsequent cosying up to the butcher of Gujarat.

6 comments:

km said...

Well, if it's any consolation, Toyota, that shining beacon of reliability and customer-centric-ness, chose to ignore the complaints about "unintended acceleration" in Japan. But in the US, they basically soiled their pants and promptly ordered recalls and offered an (unprecedented) apology from the CEO.

Funny how the fear of lawsuits makes companies customer-centric.

Shame on the Tatas for turning so heartless and crass. They used to be the "good guys".

Space Bar said...

i can't help wondering how they knew it was on fire - what with the engine being at the back and all. it sounds really scary and could have been much worse than it was.

tata totally sucks.

Rahul Siddharthan said...

km - well, Toyota took its time too, as I remember, and then blamed floor mats, and then did some mechanical fix, but continues to refuse to admit the possibility of a software problem -- even though everyone knows that it is impossible to certify software of such complexity as bug-free.

sb - I think they smelled the smoke first (and perhaps heard strange noises). And no doubt the driver noticed a problem too.

I guess if it is an isolated incident it will be forgotten, but if it happens again Tata is in deep trouble.

Anonymous said...

You seems to hate Gujrat. What about Butchers of 1984 Delhi? Now they are holy power of secularism.

Rahul Siddharthan said...

Anonymous: I didn't say I hate Gujarat. What about 1984 Delhi? This is what I wrote a couple of months ago. How does that justify what Modi's government did? You tell me.

Anonymous said...

Yes! I have read what you say about 1984 riot. No one is supporting gujrat riot. But, your language is abusing towards people of Gujrat. You claim you condone 1984 riot too. Then how come no strong word for rajiv gandhi. By no token, he was a less butcher... You never cry when industry leader meet butcher of 1984 or bhagalpur or more recently of barely