When they can’t service their X70 in time due to lack of servicing parts.
In recent months there has been mounting complaints from Proton X70 owners on social media who have had their SUV’s stuck in Proton service outlets due to the lack of replacement parts. Vehicles with fender bender accidents and even more serious accidents have been stranded around the country without available parts and owners have had to resort to social media to look for answers or results.
Proton has not been quick to respond to their calls simply because of a number of reasons.
First, there was Covid-19 that struck the world early last year and put many factories in China on a lockdown. Yes, the Proton X70 is made in China and it is a rebadge Geely BoYue SUV so all its parts are made in China. Then there was the launch of the local assembled Proton X70 in late 2019. This version also had most of its parts coming from China and so accident damaged X70’s had to wait for factories in China to restart their operations.
Then more recently there has been a shortage of servicing parts, like oil filters and air filters which means scheduled service intervals cannot be met and X70 owners are worried that they will lose their warranty.
A Proton spokesperson has confirmed with us that there should be no loss of warranty if the Proton X70 and also X50 owner can show that they did make the service appointment and it was postponed by the service center (SA) due to lack of parts.
However, being late to service could also damage the vehicles engine parts in the long run if not sorted on time, especially with the Proton X50 and its turbocharged 3-cylinder engine which has shared technology with Volvo Cars.
When they did restart, these factories had to wait for shipping lines to start moving and this took time. With more than 31,000 units of the X70 has been sold and delivered to customers in a short time, Proton and their dealers were not ready for so many new customers and they could not cope with the demand and also the high number of fender bender accidents.
More parts needed to be ordered and more service technician were needed to look after customers. Plus, many older Proton dealers who had never looked at upgrading their service standards were letting customers wait and were not explaining properly to them what was involved.
In 2020 alone, Proton sold 110,000 plus vehicles and their dealers and after sales were just not ready for this. Geely acquired 49.9 percent of Proton from DRB-HICOM that owned 100 percent of Proton in 2017. The X70 was the first product of the Geely-Proton partnership and now we have the popular X50 Crossover which has more than 32,000 bookings to date.
Can Proton cope with this increased popularity?
Can Proton after sales improve faster than the rising anger from frustrated owners on social media?
Will Geely rise to the challenge and setup a proper parts warehouse for both the X50 and X70 to prevent a repeat of this?
Will middle and lower middle class Malaysians be able to drive a quality well priced car without after sales issues and failing cabin technology?
These are some of the questions that need answers and meanwhile there are a dozen or so Proton X70 and X50 Facebook fan pages which show rising unhappiness amongst owners.
