Trusted the product from Day 1, but little did I know what was about to happen a few months later.
BHPian soumobakshi recently shared this with other enthusiasts.
Well, I was one of the very few who believed in Bhavesh’s pitch and trusted the product even before it was launched. Did the booking on the first day and completed all formalities once the windows opened up gradually till the final payment. Everything was completed on the very first day. I was excited to own this product and lead the EV revolution. Little did I know what was in store for me a few months later.
I met with this accident on the 10th of November while I was ferrying my daughter back from school and was almost near my home in Bangalore. I normally avoid main roads to avoid traffic and I was riding through a road which you can call by lanes, not much traffic and normally used by localities only. But then it’s a proper tar road with of course few potholes here and there (Well it’s Bangalore!)
I was at about 35 km/h speed (This was validated by Ola Telemetry Team) and suddenly I felt a bit off-balance then the front wheel buckled in and I lost complete control of the scooter. Due to the sudden nature of the incident, my upper body hit the handlebar area and my daughter crashed onto me from behind. As a ritual, I ensure to wear a proper helmet while riding a 2 wheeler and it proved its mettle even though both of us were thrown on the road. Luckily for my daughter, my back acted as a collision damper and she was by god’s grace without any impact other than the mental trauma. I felt like something heavy crashed on my chest and took a few seconds to start breathing normally, but the blunt force trauma was just too much to recover from. I sat on the road and dialled my wife asking her to come with the car and pick us up, without divulging any further details.
Called Ola Customer Care and explained the situation and got the vehicle scheduled for a pickup from the accident spot. Even though there were a few hiccups created by Ola CC Team, once I reached out to the Ola Bangalore Group, the news reached the Ola Service Head and Sr. Management. I would give it to Ola on the way they responded to the situation thereafter and ensure that the vehicle was fixed and delivered back to me the very next day (Actually within 24 hours of the incident taking place). The Service Manager made a courtesy visit along with the vehicle. Full marks to the team who handled the post-accident phase till delivering the vehicle back to me.
My ask to the Ola Team was to find out what caused the incident and what were they going to do about it in order to ensure that there are no such incidents in future. I decided to give them the time for doing proper research and get back. I was out of Bangalore for a month so the vehicle remained parked without any usage.
Back in January 2023, tried reaching out to the Ola Service Manager to enquire about their findings (if any), but then I found out that he has left Ola for good and even after almost 2 months I didn’t hear anything from Team Ola and that’s when the other incident involving the lady came into light. I decided to come to social media in order to bring this issue to light and hopefully some concrete and corrective measures leading to a possible product recall for all 1L plus Ola S1 users.
See the area marked in Green, well that was an addition later from the original design which came with the scooter to me in Jan’22.
Now, I am told that the extra beefed up joint support is the new design for the front fork (Pointed by Green Arrow)
Keyword: My Ola S1 Pro's suspension broke while going over a pothole: Experience