My name is Kia Picanto. I have been under the care and and also a driving pleasure of a gorgeous Mummy (hehe) since the past 8 months or so. This is my photo..
One fine Saturday afternoon, a small clan consisted of Ayah Lan, Mummy Dura and Baby Daniel wanted to go back to Ayah Lan's hometown in Jasin for a weekend gateaway (chewwah!) After loading everything inside the Samba Green Picca, they wanted to start the journey. To everyone's dismay, the cute Picca refused to budge from the parking space. Aiseh!! What's wrong? After a few tries, it was confirmed that the Picca was 'sick'. The journey was continued using the 'Hero' instead.
Picca had to be towed to the Authorized Service Centre (ASC) first thing on Monday morning. An 'operation' ensued, and after the engine was taken out, the ASC found out that the culprit was the gearbox. Turned out that there were 2 cracks on the flat plate of one of the torque converter, causing the auto transmission oil inside the gearbox to be nearly emptied.
Since the ASC claimed that it was the first case of such problem they had ever encountered, they were questioned by the HQ SC on the possible cause of the problem. It could be the misalignment of the converter, causing the intense pressure inside and with due time, caused the cracks. Or it was due to parts failure that was overlooked by their QC department. No oil leak were found outside of the engine, thus it was impossible to detect the leakage of the AT oil until it was almost empty. It was fortunate however, that the gearbox chose to malfunction before the oil went completely empty, else it might case the gearbox to be burnt beyond repair!
No sparepart was available at that time, so the Picca had to be grounded inside the workshop until the part arrived. A fortnight passed by, with no news of when the Picca would be well again.
Meanwhile, Mummy was left without a vehicle to be used for work or play. She had to ride in Ayah's car everyday to work. It would either be Ayah dropping Mummy at her Subang office if she did not need to work outside, and then Ayah had to pick her up from the office to go home in the evenings. Or Mummy had to drop Ayah at his Putrajaya office and make a big turn back to her Subang office if she had appointments with clients and needed to use the car. In the evenings, Mummy had to go to Putrajaya first to pickup Ayah before making a BIG turn again to go back home in Port Klang. It was no help that it was Ramadhan, when fatigue was always the king, and left Mummy too tired to play with baby Daniel everytime she reached home during that period. Terawikh prayers were often missed (which made Mummy very sad), not to mention the RM spent for trips back and forth for tolls and petrol. Sometimes, when Ayah needed to work overtime at nights for various testings, he had to pickup Mummy first, send her home, and then returned to Putrajaya. And he needed to be home by 8am the next morning to enable Mummy to use the car to work (Ayah's testing hours could be very insane and odd!)
Tired and angry, Mummy demanded that the ASC changed the whole gearbox instead of waiting for the torque converter to arrive (which by that time, they couldn't even confirm that it could arrive in Malaysia from Korea before the Raya holidays). It was a week before Raya and Mummy had become very, very agitated. With all the problems listed above, and the possibility that she couldn't get the car back before Raya, she began to 'haunt' the ASC. She thought of lodging a complaint to the Consumer Tribunal or whomever could help her to settle her problem. Her concerns:
1) The car was relatively new, how could it have a severe problem like that? Is it due to very low quality parts being used? Or was it due to problems overlooked during assembly?
2) Why did the parts take so long to reach Malaysia? Why must they consolidate all parts shipment when there were cases like this that needed immediate parts replacement?
3) Mummy was told that she needed to pay for the consumables (in this case the AT oil) because it was stipulated in the warranty booklet for the car. The AT oil for Picca (and also Sorento), indeed are special AT oil and cost a bomb! Picca needed about 5.2 litres of AT oil if the gearbox is completely empty and a litre of the oil costed RM45. Meaning Mummy had to pay for 6 bottles of the AT oil for RM270. Why should she pay for it when it was caused by the parts failure? Does that mean if the problem arises again later, Mummy had to pay another RM270 for the oil when the real culprit is the part failure?
4) Who was going to be charged for Mummy's depression caused by the problems (as listed above) and also the RM spent? Could Mummy claim them back from the HQ SC? After all, they caused Mummy those problems!!
Mummy had a verbal confirmation from the ASC that it was not her fault that she did not realize that the problem was forthcoming. After all, the cracks were inside the torque converter, which is inside (or was is attached) to the gearbox, which was located WAY below the whole engine. Even the ASC needed to take out the whole engine before they were able to take out the gearbox and the torque converter. And how was Mummy supposed to do that? If it was because of negligence, no traces of oil were leaking from the gearbox- it was all inside!
ADA KES KE?
To be continued..
