The slow delivery of Proton X70 spare parts continue despite crisis meetings with China.
Proton has just reported a sales surge in February 2022 of an impressive 107 percent and this comes from the Proton X50 with 3,002 units and the Proton X70 with 1,119 units respectively.
Plus, the X50 has been a best seller for Geely with more than 100,000 bookings in just 16 months (all during this ongoing Covid-19 pandemic).
So, how will Proton and Geely look after all the previous customers and also this new batch of 100,000 plus customers?
We ask this question as the parts issues keep increasing month after month and the reasons given for the continuing delay is always Covid-19 and suppliers and vendors having to shut down their factories.
However, how come new car (Proton X70 and Proton X50) production continues at a steady pace and these new Malaysian produced Proton X70’s also need parts from Malaysian supplier and vendors, right?
They must be the SAME vendors that are needed to supply parts for after sales, repairs and maintenance as well. Body panels for accident damaged SUV’s and replacement parts for warranty claims and then there is even servicing and wear and tear parts like oil filters, air filters, brake pads and others that should be coming from the exact same vendors. Right?
Yes, it has been 20 plus months and with numerous lockdowns, production might have been halted in many vendor factories, however if new cars can be delivered, this means vendors are able to supply all parts to produce a NEW car, but why no parts for replacement?
As we read the latest report of Protons sales success for the month of January and February 2022 and how they have managed to assist over 1,200 flooded car owners, we wonder how long more can they continue to keep their loyal NEW customers?
Remember the big German auto manufacturer who did not look after their Malaysian customers years ago and today they have not risen back to their former sales numbers because of the same issue of not looking after their customers cars.
Then there was the French car brand that ignored their Malaysian customers and after having a ‘lion’s share of the market, today they are recovering very slowly because of bad after sales also.
It looks like Proton and Geely are not keen to look after their customers in the long term as all the effort that was put into branding and marketing for the re-launch of Proton with the arrival of the Proton X70 SUV at a hard to beat selling price and then the well equipped Proton X50 Crossover which is priced to ‘knock’ on the doors of brands like Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai, Kia, Mazda and even Perodua and capture part of their market share.
The focus seems to be more towards dealer expansion (they just opened a new dealer in the North of Malaysia) and to sell as many units as possible to ultimately take the TOP Spot in the country.
We have highlighted before that ‘after sales’ is important for every car brand to stay ahead in the long term. Maybe we were wrong, it might be ‘sales sales and more sales’ is more important to stay ahead in the long term!
