Dear Signers,
Thank you so much for your support. Ola has quietly acknowledged the safety lapse associated with the front fork of its electric scooter, as highlighted in this petition, by doing a recall under the cloak of a “free upgrade”. A couple of news reports took notice of our campaign and investigated the issue.
Click here to share this petition over WhatsApp. Help this petition get to 10,000 signatures so that Ola provides timely support to its customers, rather than burying their complaints on social media through paid tweets. Click here to share this petition on Twitter.
According to report in the Mint, Ola wilfully “endangered its riders” by not acting against the problem with the front fork when very few of its scooters were on the roads.
“When the first incident surfaced on social media, Ola had fewer than 50,000 scooters on the road. It had the opportunity to get ahead of the problem. The company, however, put off redesigning the part, which would have involved big changes. Instead, it continued to ramp up production, people familiar with Ola’s supply chain and procurement operations told Mint,” reads the report.
As incidents of Ola S1 riders suffering serious accidents because of the front fork breaking out of the suspension, kept cropping up on social media, the company was forced to take remedial measures.
On 14 March, Ola Electric released a statement offering its customers the “option” to “upgrade” to its new front fork design, free-of-cost. Most automobile manufacturers would have called this a recall, a standard exercise undertaken when the automaker aims to mitigate the risks associated with a certain part of the vehicle.
The Mint report also highlights how the original front fork arm in Ola S1 came from a Dutch design and was only suitable for Europe’s smooth roads.
The Morning Context and CarBlog India also took notice of our online petition and reported about this issue.
Ola, however, doesn’t want to acknowledge that there was any fault with its scooter’s original design, and its founder Bhavish Aggarwal has dismissed all of these well-intentioned news reports and OUR GRIEVANCES as “cheap sensationalism” and “mud-slinging”.
Whether Ola was endangering its riders’ safety, or if the concerns about its scooter were indeed “unfounded”, I’ll leave it for you to judge.