Customers of the Triumph Street Triple are quite angry after finding out their bikes are 25% down on power. The company needs to compensate them.
We all are aware of the issue that is going on with Triumph India. If you don’t, then here is a quick look. Triumph entered India late last year with most of its guns blazing. Sales charts looked promising which encouraged the British maker to introduce few more models. Sales were cruising for Triumph and the charts were green everywhere. Recently they updated their website where all the locally assembled bikes (CKD) had lower power ratings when compared to those of the ones sold in Europe (which is normal except on the Street Triple). It’s not new that Indian oriented vehicles are tuned for poor fuel; Triumph committed a grave mistake by not prompting its customers that Indian bikes were de-tuned. They neither updated their website nor did their brochures speak about Indian specs. Frankly speaking the customers were uninformed of the changes. The below table indicates the difference in performance characteristics of the locally assembled bikes.
There have been plenty of rumors across the web that “Why did Triumph update their website now?” “Why did the brochures in the showrooms have European specs and not Indian?” Certainly customers who paid huge chunk of money to buy the British bike started asking questions about the irregularities. Triumph later clarified that they clearly specified that the specs were European and not Indian; all the bikes were registered with ARAI results only.
We have a couple of questions for the Triumph India management –
1) Do you really think that the owners will sit down and do the power conversions from kW to PS after getting the RC Book?
2) When you had all ARAI ratings with you before the bikes were rolled out; why didn’t you update your website and brochure till a couple of weeks back?
We have been closely following multiple forums and consolidated a small customer feedback. The biggest beating was taken up by the naked Street Triple where the power rating came down by as much as 25%. Well Triumph the most cribbing customers are the ones who bought this one. Almost all of them admitted that the salesmen didn’t inform that their bike was generating 79 PS not 106 PS. Some of them said that they would have bought the Kawasaki Z800 (which generates 113 PS and costs about Rs. 25,000/- more) had they knew the rating, while some said they would still stick to the Triple. The least bothered owners were the ones of Bonneville where almost everyone said that the power drop didn’t matter. It has come to our notice that some of the owners were considering taking legal actions against the company, as they felt cheated by the false numbers.
Whatever happened has happened. So as an International brand, what should Triumph be doing to retain its brand value? The company certainly is in damage control mode and hence we figured out three possible options that the British maker should/can offer.
1) Payback – The company can offer some payback mechanism to its customers, at least Rs. 30,000/- or that much worth service. Agreed that amount is not a deal for Triumph customers; they have paid 20-30 times of that to get the bike anyways. Certainly not a great option but this can be the last resort.
2) Accessories – Triumph can minimize the damage by offering accessories; probably free flow exhaust systems from Arrow / Akrapovic. This should pump up the power by 5-8%; looks very realistic.
3) Re-Tuning – Perhaps the company can retune the engines and place it between the current Indian and European spec; agreed that retuning the engine and getting certified by ARAI and then making a call back will be very hectic; but keeping the low volume in mind, the company can do it if they really want to.
There is a saying “Not telling the truth is a lie but making a lie look true is cheating”.
So what do you think? Did Triumph India lie or cheat?
Write down your views in the comment box below.
