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Maruti Suzuki Swift’s customers do not look happy any more. The company’s customer relations have not been good, especially when the customers are facing problems with their cars. Most of the Swift customers have been complaining that the brakes are not functional at times. Now, this is indeed a serious problem. The problem was faced by not one or two or three customers but by hundreds of them. So how has been the company handling this issue? Well, the company had remained complacent and had not acknowledged the fact that there is indeed some problem with the braking system.
Hundreds of the customers have been complaining about the faulty braking system but little response did they get from the company officials. Emails upon emails have fetched nothing to the distressed customers. Many moved to the consumer courts but saw no success. How can the India’s biggest automobile brand not take any action? Customers have been waiting for weeks now to figure out the problem with their braking system. Even threats did not move the company an inch into action.
As explained by one of the owners of Swift, the problem being faced by them is something like this – In places like Bangalore, this bumper to bumper situation occurs a lot. One would drive in first gear, half clutch, below 1000 RPM. Now after two or three presses on the brake, the brake pedal becomes hard and there is no braking. The car would just not stop in bumper to bumper traffic. Obviously, it is a dangerous situation to be in. May be it would not cause much harm at such low speed; the point is if the driver applies brake, the car needs to stop.
Coming to what the company officials have to say, they have negated the complaint made against them. According to them, such a situation arises when the customer brakes at very low speeds of 5 km/h. He would be driving in half clutch and pressing the brake to control the speed, which results in engine RPM falling below ‘Idle RPM’ (the speed at which the engine generates enough power to operate smoothly). However, the correct technique is to press the brake and not crawl at half clutch. Perhaps, Maruti Suzuki does agree on the hardness of the pedals but believes that even in that condition the brakes are fully functional. But the customer swears the other way. According to them this problem has cropped up only in a few models. Will the company do something about this or leave the customers at their distress? Will there be a recall? Are the authorities listening? Time for the SIAM voluntary recall to come into play!
The braking problem persists with the LXi, LDi, VXi and VDi variants. The ZXi and ZDi variants have no brake issues
Source – Forbes India