Ola Served Show Cause Notice Due To Rising Customer Complaints

It seems woes for Ola Electric wouldn’t be easing off anytime soon. The brand has received a lot of flak for the harsh words used by its founder Bhavish Aggarwal during a public spat with comedian Kunal Kamra on X (formerly Twitter) where Kamra had pointed out the service issues faced by Ola scooter customers. It has come to our notice that Ola Electric has been served a  show cause notice by Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) and guess what the reason is? Service issues faced by customers. The CCPA notice points out deficiencies in service, violation of consumer rights, misleading advertisements and unfair trade practices.

The notice was sent on October 3 and the company has 15 days to respond to it. According to the Department of Consumer Affairs, it has received 10,644 complaints in the last one year and over 1/3rd of which were related to after sales services, followed by delay in deliveries and services which were promised but not offered. The major complaints were regarding manufacturing defects and battery issues.

In the past, an Ola scooter in Maharashtra had caught fire and many more had the front trailing link suspension collapsing unannounced, leading to many accidents. The company didn’t respond positively despite many customers filing complaints, Ola Electric never acknowledged any manufacturing defects and had silently replaced the trailing link suspension on many scooters which came for servicing. In fact, the Ola S1 Gen 2 featured a telescopic fork, but the company never accepted any issues with the trailing link suspension on its older models.

Ola Electric has confirmed that it has received the show cause notice and mentioned that it will be filing a response shortly. The poor after sales service has had a huge impact on the image of the brand as well. While Ola scooter sales have been good and it remains the market leader, its market share has been eroding at an alarming rate over the past few months. With legacy brands focusing on the EV segment, competition has been tougher than ever and for Ola to survive this onslaught, it needs to regain trust of its buyers sooner than later.