Long wait exasperating: For early delivery of the car, customers are booking many vehicles, flash sale trend also came in the auto sector

Posted on 16th Oct 2021 by rohit kumar

Indians are increasingly attracted to SUV vehicles with higher, longer, and higher ground clearance. Even they have no problem with the long waiting period. There is a waiting period of almost a year on Mahindra Thar. Thar has received more than 75 thousand bookings since its launch. The condition of the waiting period of some of its variants is that if the booking is done on today's date, then in any case delivery will be done only after half of next year. Something similar is happening with the recently launched Mahindra XUV700. The bookings for the VW Taigun, which was launched last month, have crossed 16,000. The waiting period on Hyundai Creta is up to 9 months. The special thing is that while the economy is under pressure due to the pandemic, the longest queues for booking SUVs are for the top variants.

 

Long wait for a test drive

The attraction for Mahindra's XUV700 was so great that when the SUV first arrived at the company's showrooms in early October, there was a huge crowd. Even inside the showroom, there was a long queue of prospective customers to see the features of the vehicle and were able to be seen only through the token system. After that, customers wishing to take a test drive had to wait for up to three hours, that too when 5-6 vehicles were available for a test drive at the showroom. At the same time, when the booking started on October 7, the number of bookings crossed 25 thousand within an hour in the first phase itself. There were also some people willing to book who delayed and had to pay more for booking later. The company had kept an amount of Rs 21,000 for the booking of the first 25 thousand vehicles, the next day 25 thousand vehicles were booked in just two hours with an amount of 50 thousand rupees. People say that it all seemed like a flash sale, those who could not get the booking on the first day, sat on the computer the next day at 9.30 am and booked the car as soon as the booking opened at 10 am.

 

It was similar to the Ford 150 Lighting and Tesla Cyber ​​Truck with the XUV700. People of many countries of the world were waiting for their launch and there was a lot of response for these vehicles in online booking. In the current situation, one has already reduced the production of vehicles due to chip shortage, while the waiting list has increased significantly due to record bookings. According to the data, at present more than five lakh bookings of new cars are pending, the estimated price of which is around Rs 35 thousand crores. Whereas it is taking 4-6 weeks for the dealers to come to the stop.

 

The disadvantages of booking more are also the customers of other companies

At the same time, this has not happened only in the case of SUVs, but something similar is being seen with two-wheelers as well. Recently, there was a tremendous response from the people regarding Ola's electric scooter. In just two days alone, Ola's electric scooter got orders worth 1100 crores. It was also booked like a flash sale. Market experts say that while the automobile sector is already reeling from chip shortages, such heavy bookings will further increase the demand for chips, which will have an impact on the waiting period, and customers of other companies will also have to bear the brunt. Generally, there are pending bookings of 2.30 to 2.50 lakhs in the market. While the current order book is more than double, channel stock is almost half that, bridging the gap between production cuts. According to experts, the long waiting list shows that the demand is strong, but due to chip shortfall, the supply is very less because of the festive season.

 

No deduction in the booking amount

At the same time, a new trend is also coming in the market that where customers used to book only one vehicle earlier, but now they are making multiple bookings due to a long waiting list. Even while the same vehicles are being booked at different dealers, some customers are also booking other brands for quick delivery. According to experts, the booking fee is refundable in most cases and it is also convenient for the customers. Except for Kia, almost all the companies refund the booking amount without any deduction. Some people are comparing the current situation with the time when Maruti launched its first vehicle in the country, it was delivered in two to five years.