As much as I love TVS for their bikes and all the stuff they’re doing, their service centres have been a mess for far too long.
BHPian ManualMaestro recently shared this with other enthusiasts:
Hello everyone!
I’m a proud owner of TVS Apache 160 4V HP since 2021. This is my first bike and I have put relatively low kms on it (around 9k). Still, the bike has been an absolute joy to ride. The exhaust is bassy, happy, high revving engine, great looks (love the side profile) and more than enough performance for a new rider. There have been no major issues, other than a simple recent suspension leak, and it has completely changed my decision to upgrade to the bigger sibling RTR310 in near future. I’ve laid out the events below:
1. Had been facing suspension leak issue since a month. Got time on 13-10-24 and visited Litra TVS to get bike serviced. Job card was made for the issue, waited from 9:30 AM to around 5:00 PM (6-7hrs) just to know that they forgot to do the repair job.
Promised me to do it on priority a week later on priority.
2. Visited Litra TVS again on 20-10-24 for the suspension job. Reminded and urged them about their promise. Still had to wait from 9:30AM to around 2:00 PM (5hrs), so much for their priority service. Was not satisfied with the end result, but thought must be due to new parts.
This whole ordeal was off the records.
3. Issue still persisted after a month, so raised a complaint with TVS on their mail:
Got a call from the manager requesting to visit again.
4. Visited again on my holiday 15-10-24 (Guru Nanak Jayanti holiday). First the floor manager Mr. Ganesh flat out refused any problem after test riding my bike. On urging him and after talking with manager, he accepted to check once. While I was waiting for my “priority service”, some fellow customers showed interest in my issue. While showing them, I noticed that the same suspension leg had leaked again, which went unnoticed by Mr. Ganesh on his test ride:
Told him the same and he took the bike in within minutes now.
5. While checking for oil quantity, it was found out to be 120ml in both legs. The floor manager asked around different engineers and he told that it must be 150ml.
I was not satisfied with the answer of engineer so I pulled the Owner’s manual from TVS’s official website and to my horror, there it was mentioned 240ml for each leg!
When I confronted the engineer, he said “We always put 150ml only and it fixes this issue. We follow the board over there”.
The board in question:
The board looked legit, but it had data for “Apache 160” while mine was “Apache 160 4V”. Then it clicked in my mind that the 4V redesign was introduced later in the Apache lineup, the Apache 160 2V is simply called the Apache 160. Pulling up the Owner’s manual for Apache 160 2V confirmed my hypothesis. Shocking that a customer could figure it out while the technicians working there for years couldn’t..
The worst part is, even after showing all this evidence, the fact that their information board was outdated, was not acknowledged by ANYONE in the service centre, not the engineer, the floor manager, nor the service centre manager. They just had one response, “The technicians working from years wont be wrong right?”. It really felt like talking to a wall. The engineer also had the audacity to say that “Company has printed wrong info”.
Two important takeaways from this:
- I was charged cost of oil and labour for both suspension legs, but only one was leaking, so they took out oil from the healthy one??
- Every Apache 160 4V owner who faced the similar issue and came to this service centre is going about with half as much oil in their front suspension? In my experience, my bike has been unstable at highway speeds, so others might also be experiencing the same? No wonder I don’t see many Apaches on the road.. The owners must have gotten fed up and sold them off.
I was really done with them at this point and asked the manager to give me in writing, what is being done to my bike. She denied, but after some argument, she agreed.
Once the work was done, I took a test ride and the issue was still there. The suspension simply compresses too much causing higher load on front tyre. I’ve experience slight wobbles when going through minor road irregularities.
When I asked for the written acknowledgement, they flat out denied, saying since the bill amount is 0, we cant give anything. I asked the manager to give in writing and she also denied. The service advisors came in the room and asked “What happened?”. I told the issue and he said, “You should have come to me na? Why didn’t you come?” and tried to push the blame on me. I was like, “If your engineers, the floor manager and even the service center manager is not listening to me, will I get a dream that YOU will make things happen?”, which was followed by a silence. Then they started saying, “Pull in the bike, we’ll put as much as he’s saying” and this time I denied since I didn’t had confidence in them, and I was not willing to waste anymore than the 5 hours already spent. After a bit more argument, I left.
6. After reaching home, I sent a new mail to TVS customer care, explaining the whole ordeal:
This time, I specifically mentioned 3 points I wanted action on:
1. Confirmation from an official TVS engineer on the correct oil amount for the front suspension of the TVS Apache 160 4V, as per the manual (240ml or 150ml).
2. A referral to a trusted and reliable TVS service centre to resolve my bike’s issue urgently. I have already spent three days dealing with this unprofessionalism at Litra TVS.
3. A thorough investigation and proper training for the engineers at Litra TVS, as the entire management, including the Floor Manager and Service Centre Manager, appear utterly incompetent.
Now I’m awaiting their reply. If this simple issue is not resolved, I’m seriously considering going through Consumer Forum. As much as I love TVS for their bikes and all the stuff they’re doing, their service centres have been a mess for far too long. I was seriously considering upgrading to the RTR310, but after my exerience with their service centre on this simple issue, I cannot imagine what will happen if something went wrong with a much more expensive, tech loaded bike.
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