Tuesday, June 18, 2019
By Kamal Swami
Defective Horn Of Your Car Can Get You The Compensation of Rs. 1 Lakh
At first instance this news might surprise to most of the car owners because replacing a defective horn do not costs much that one would knock the doors of district consumer forum, especially when the car is under warranty period. But, surprisingly a decision of the district consumer forum of Hyderabad has fired a discussion among the Indian automobile industry. The forum has directed one of the dealers of Maruti Suzuki India Limited, Varun Motors to pay the sum of Rs. 1 lakh as compensation for not replacing the defective horn.
The complaint was filed by Mr. K Sudharshan Reddy , stating that he had purchased Maruti Suzuki Alto in July 2014 from Varun Motors and after six months of driving the car he noticed lots of problems like noise from engine, crack on the front windshield, broken lock on the right rear door and defective engine. When he contact the dealer for rectifying the issue he was asked to visit the company’s authorized service station, where instead of replacing the defective horn the technicians at the service centre tried to repair the horn.
According to Mr. Reddy, the problem continued even after rectifying the issue at the service centre, due to which he had drive the car low speed and had to face an accident because of this. He also said, that car did not even delivered the endorsed fuel efficiency, on the contrary due to driving at the low speed increased his expenses on fuel. As the dealer was not able to offer satisfactory service for all these problems he had to knock the doors of consumer forum for the compensation.
Replying the petition the sources of Maruti Suzuki India Limited said that Mr. Sudarshan had filed the complaint only against the defective horn and not for non-functioning of the horn and therefore the necessary repair was done accordingly. As far as accident due to defective horn is concerned this is a false statement. According to them company provided all the necessary services to Mr. Reddy that are offered to other customers during warranty period. The forum was not satisfied by the reply from the representatives of the MSIL and Varun Motors and said that “there’s always a risk of accident due to a faulty horn.”The forum said that this true reason due to heavy traffic and therefore Mr. Reddy should be compensated with the amount of Rs. 1 lakh.
Image Source: Rushlane
