THE plight of a Proton X70 owner whose car is “sitting in the sun” at the uncovered backyard of Proton EON Glenmarie 3S in Shah Alam some 200 days after it was sent for repair following an accident is nothing short of amazing.
Furnishing a chronological account of his ordeal, Facebook user Aaron de Silva said he was informed by a person-in-charge (PIC) that his insurance provider has approved his claim on Dec 6. He had sent his car to the workshop on Nov 23 last year after it met with an accident two days prior.
As the repair process dragged on due to unavailability of nine parts which had yet to arrive, he wrote an e-mail to Proton’s customer care on March 21 to escalate the issue as proposed by the person he spoke to from the first national car company’s customer care hotline.
“So after writing into their customer care, I had not gotten a response for maybe like two to three weeks,” lamented de Silva on his FB posting.
“And within those time frame, I kept calling their customer care hotline and asked for an update on whether the issue had actually been escalated and brought up to their higher management or something.
“Spoke to probably two to three different customer care agents and honestly at this point, they were of no use because they had no authority (my own assumption).”
Giving up hope with the customer care route, de Silva decided to walk in into Proton Edar COSE along the Kesas highway to make an enquiry.
In between waiting for a response, he decided to contact the PIC at EON Glenmarie who passed his call to another person who was “in charge as a supervisor or something to handle all their customer complaints”.
‘Spoke to him and asked what was the problem with the parts and he explained that if they don’t receive the parts from HQ, they can’t do anything.
“He (later) got back to me saying that there was one more part that has not arrived and that they made an order for that particular part on the Dec 8 (two days after my insurance claim was approved and it still has not arrived).”
On April 26, de Silva personally dropped off a letter addressed to PROTON CEO Dr Li Chunrong to complain about the situation and asked for compensation for loss of usage or even a replacement car.
After a long wait, he received an e-mail from Proton on May 18 that the remaining spare parts will be delivered to EON Glenmarie by or before May 31. At the same time, he was also offered an RM300 e-service voucher that is redeemable at all Proton authorised outlets nationwide.
“Got really excited and happy to hear the news about the last remaining part arriving but the RM300 voucher … that deserves a slap,” related a furious de Silva.
“Who here wouldn’t be bloody insulted if you were offered an e-voucher? On top of that, I had to agree to the compensation within three days otherwise the offer would lapse. So I did what every person here would do, politely reject and demand more because it’s not justifiable for the time taken to repair my car.”
However, come June 8, de Silva had yet to hear any update on his car, prompting him to e-mail the senior executive who proposed that he should write to the CEO, only to receive a reply two days later (June 10) – to his disbelief – that Proton would check the status of the spare parts.
Completely clueless, de Silva headed to EON Glenmarie to have a look at his car, only to find it parked at an unshaded yard.
On June 20, he penned this: “It has been about 200 days since my insurance claim was approved and I have yet to receive my car. All I asked from Proton was compensation for loss of usage or a replacement car and I was denied that.
“These past few months have been tough. My family and I always support local brands but this is really hard to do when we do not even get the care we need. Nobody is accountable or even gives a shit about the well-being of my family.
“Eight months of installments are still being paid while my car just sits in the workshop. My father and I are the people that use a car daily.
“Having to fork out extra cash monthly for Grab rides as well as renting a car has not been the easiest. Constant planning on transportation on a daily basis is needed when my car isn’t ready.
“Yes, I agree that I should’ve been more careful but accidents happen and that’s the whole point of buying insurance, no? And I mean eight months is a bit much too, no? Our economy has now been open for a while and it isn’t in any MCO phase anymore.” – June 24, 2022
