After many incidents of Ola scooter owners setting their scooters on fire. Now comes the turn for Ather owners.
A frustrated owner of Ather 450x set his scooter on fire for billing him over 5000 for every service.
Frustrated Scooter Owner Sets E-Bike on Fire Amid Repair Woes | Chennai News - Times of India.
This should be a wake-up call for Ather to improve their loot in service centres.
Yeah Parveen, They should control the Service Centers. SCs getting Out of Hands of Ather.
Recent Incident of Goa’s Margao SC 
I totally agree. The product is great, but the service by the dealerships & SC is pretty bad.
Ather please look into this while there is time to make things right. If you also turn out to be like Ola, trust me, you will start losing all the customers who have trusted the brand.
Our Ather scooter is a fantastic product, but the service center in my city is ruining its reputation.
Post the closure of their own company-operated service centers, service quality has plummeted. I’ve had to take my Apex thrice to get a rattling noise from the dashboard fixed. At least it was free. If they can’t fix such basic issues in one go, I can’t imagine how they’d drag on for major issues. Day by day, this doesn’t seem to be a premium experience; it’s just expenditure is premium to maintain.
Yep. Product is really good.
I already had a horrible experience with my delivery and yet it continues.
So, I paid on the 26th of Spetember, in full at BU Bhandari, Bhandarkar road, Pune. I was told delivery will be done within 10 working days at first. I was happy to see that it will be around 17 to 18 days, but after 15 days or so, I called my rep. and she said, RTO work is still pending so it’s taking longer. Knowing the state of government affairs in our country, I thought that yeah, that is very much possible and waited for another week. Called her again, no update and she said RTO work is still pending.
Fast forward to 30th October or so, I got a call from her saying that they can deliver the vehicle on the 2nd if I can come then. I was like, finally I will be able to do my daily college commute using my own vehicle, but seems life had other plans.
We went to the showroom on the 2nd at around 11:30 or so. A guy near the entrance noted down my details and put me in the queue for delivery. We sat there for a hour but no-one came to assist us. Losing patience, we asked the executives about what the status is and how much more time will it take. They said that should get wrapped up in about a hour or so.
Waited for around 1.5hrs and then my rep. came to me and handed over the documents, helmet & the charger. This was when she asked me if I need the vehicle to be charged, I was like, how much charge does it have ? She said it is at 9%, I was beyond furious now. Like, if you know that you are delivering some vehicles tomorrow, why the fuck would you not charge the vehicles the previous day itself ?
I atleast needed around 30 to 40% of charge as we had to go to a few temples and just wanted to ride the scooter. They kept it on charge at around 14:00 hrs. After charging it for 30 to 35 mins, it had charged more than enough for my travel that day.
Went outside and saw that my bike is not even cleaned. It had a lot of dust and some leaves on it. It was around 14:30 hrs when they started cleaning the vehicle.
Now, my mom was very angry as we started seeing people who came ‘AFTER US’ getting their vehicles in like 30 to 45 mins. Only after shouting at the rep. did they start the cleaning of the vehicle.
After cleaning, they started to install the mirrors & the backrest. In all, this took around 30 to 40 mins again. We were then thinking that finally, our vehicle is ready to go and that they will be installing the number plate shortly, oh but what a twist!
We were then told that the plate hasn’t arrived yet. This made us feel like a fool. We were not at all informed about this at any point on the date of delivery or on the delivery date confirmation call. They told us we can ride the scooter to take it home and if any police personnel stops us, we can tell them that we just received delivery and that the plates are gonna be coming soon enough.
After all this drama that day, we were very tired so unfortunately, we did not check the insurance papers. Went home after taking the scooter.
The next day, I was just checking our invoices & insurance and was dumbstruck when I saw that my model was written as Rizta Z 2.9KWh when I purchased the 3.7KWh variant. I immediately messaged my rep. (didn’t call as it was a Sunday and didn’t wanna contact them on their leave day) to which they replied in the evening saying mine is 2.9KWh one.
I was confused, I told her that payment was made for the 3.7KWh one so why will I get the 2.9 one ? She said that she will change the invoice and refund.
It was not the matter of money for me, rather that I wanted the higher range variant. Mainly cause, I plan to use it for a long time, so with degradation in mind, even if there is a 40% degradation, I will still get more range compared to 2.9KWh one (if assume 40% degradation in both battery packs).
Later that day, I started doubting my rep. as I was getting range which the 3.7KWh one, so I charged it to 100% that night and got 125KM TR on my dashboard the other day which confirmed mine is the 3.7KWh and that rep. was confused.
I posted about this on X (Twitter) and Ather HQ contacted me the next day and raised an internal ticket to get it resolved. I also got a call from the manager assuring that they will send me a corrected insurance.
They did send me the corrected insurance on 13th of Nov. Still, I was not gonna be able to ride my vehicle due to no number plate.
Finally got the NP on 19th post which I am able to use my vehicle now. Still, another twist. I haven’t received the accessories yet (Bodyguard & sidestep), and no updates about the same.
I am really hoping that I get some accessory or somethibg for free at this point. This has been completely horrible tbh.
This experience has really left a sour taste in my mouth. See, the product is good and I really like it, but if service was on par, I would have had a far better experience and a lot more confidence in suggesting Ather to people.
Oh, not to mention, they have been looking into a ticket I raised on the 19th about changing my registered mobile number with no further updates. I raised a similar ticket on 11th Nov. too but they wanted a copy of RC that time which I did not have at the time so was told to raise a ticket later on. Also, weird enough, the vehicle’s registration number I have on my app & dashboard is one registered to someone else and is for a Honda Activa, LMAO!! Even that has to be updated.
Sorry for the really long reply but wanted to let people & Ather people (if they even are active on here at all) know about how bad the service and customer satisfaction has been.
See, this could also be a one-off case with me, and I really hope so that it is.
Wow.
The most baffling thing for me is that they were going to handover the bike to you with a 9% charge and even asking whether you want it charged!! 
Maybe they thought you weren’t planning on riding the bike, but instead push it till your home.
Exactly. Don’t know what those idiots had in mind.
Also, got charged for using the grid, lol. Felt weird that I got charged for a basic necessity
See Its not a Fanboy thing here but I also feel like It maybe a Paid Action of hOLA
I felt the same as I haven’t faced or heard fundamentally vehicle bricking issues that totally couldn’t be resolved hence the question if it was really a PR stunt by the competitor or is it a genuine customer grievance redressal issue.
Even if that is true, we all know how bad Ather’s service has been lately.
Anyways, the top comment on the Reddit post is hilarious tho
Atleast in my case, I have been utterly disappointed with how things are being handled. Don’t get me wrong, Ather is still ahead of the competition when you compare the product’s quality, but that edge is not gonna stand out for long if service & customer satisfaction continues going down the drain.
Ather needs a service aggregator like how the nippon group have been doing it for Toyota or even Luxon Tata (similar to how Tata has a reputation for bad service in the rest of India except for the few service centres run by luxon a subsidiary of nippon group in Kerala). I remember Ather had something going on with Jubliant motor works but don’t exactly see any positive change that came from it.
They need to start putting up more brand-owned exp. & SC. The 3rd parties are the ones causing issues.
Brand owned ones cannot be a solution as it takes to much resources which could’ve gone towards improving the product and no company has yet been successful at expanding good services doing that. They need to find a good service aggregator. Or atleast have routine and more stringent checks of the service provided by 3rd party service centres.
Yeah Man, Even I have had tons of Issues literally
Even I faced a Rude Behaviour and Abuse from Coimbatore RP 1 but Never went this hard
Who knows whats the issue
Yep, I get it now. I think your solution should work.
Yeah, seems that the guy was just doing it for PR or is really dumb. Like, if you were actually facing issues, I think better take it to consumer court and fight it. You will get some resolution as well as some compensation. That way, it would have been a win - win for us all, as even Ather would take more steps to ensure that 3rd parties do a better job.
I second to all of you. Ather seriously requires to make strict policies for their service centers. The SCs in Ahmedabad are not taking online appointments at all. The offline appointments are always on waiting and when I went and spent a few hours at the workshop I saw people playing PUBG. This is completely not acceptable. I even informed the workshop manager but no actions taken.
I have Ather 450x gen 3.1. and i drive it daily. We all know Ather gen 3 has belt issue my primary factory fitted needed replacement at 11000 km then again at 16000km. During my 1st belt Change they kept my scooter for 20 days due to stock issue even castomar care cant help.
My 2nd belt broke during my morning shift at arround 6 am i have RSA so i called them they said they can’t confirm my pickup now i have to wait for showroom to open. At 10 am i called them again this time they booked my booking and said my pickup van will come in 90 mins but it came at 4pm took my vehicle and kept at his home next morning they took it to SC. I got a call form SC that my scooter need another belt replacement and they don’t have belt right now so i have to wait for 2 days. 2days later i got call and they said my scooter is ready and i can pick it now. My house is 60 km away from SC so next day i went to pickup my scooter but to my surprise they didn’t even touched my scooter i have to wait another full day. They are like sarkari babu their behaviour is very rude. Thanks to experience centre manager i got my scooter that day. Ather SILIGURI needs serious update interms of their service and behaviour. I have my job i can’t take 2days of sudden leave only for my scooter.