Bengaluru: Repair cost unaffordable, owners mull selling vehicles ruined by rain

BENGALURU: Faced with the prospect of coughing up big money to fix their cars and bikes that sustained severe damage in last week’s rain havoc, many Bengalureans are contemplating selling or junking them.
IT professional Nethra Anand, who only last December fulfilled her dream to buy a car, wasn’t fortunate enough to drive it to her heart’s content, thanks to the pandemic and the consequent lockdown. Last week, her precious possession was submerged in rainwater. Her house and the roads around were under five feet water.
Service engineers told her she will have to shell out Rs 2 lakh to repair the vehicle and the insurer will foot only 40% of the bill. Nethra is now looking for buyers.
Nethra, a resident of Cauvery Nagar, near Horamavu, said the Hyundai Grand i10 had cost her Rs 10 lakh and she’d made a down payment of only Rs 1.4 lakh and raised the rest through loan.
“I plan to sell the vehicle to repay my loan. Even if I repair the car, it might again suffer damage in another downpour. We have already lost a lot of valuables due to the rain. It’s better that I sell it,” Nethra told TOI.
Ravi Kumar, 30, who lives in HBR Layout, near Sai Baba temple, had parked his Bajaj Platina bike at his residence only to find it submerged in rainwater. Ravi had lost his job with a grocery delivery firm in March following the lockdown. “I bought this bike three years ago. I checked with my service centre and they told me it’d cost more than Rs 7,000 to repair it as water had entered its engine too. There is no option but to send it to a scrapyard. Even if I were to sell it, I’ll first need money to repair it, which I don’t have,” he said.
To make ends meet, Ravi started selling tea at night. “But police started extorting money and took away my flask as well. Now, I work as a construction labourer,” he added. As operations manager, he earned about Rs 35,000 a month. Now his pay is down to Rs 12,000.
Not the first time
In some localities of the city, rain damage is a recurring story. Nilofer, a resident of Sai Baba Layout, near Horamavu, said, “A couple of years ago, I lost a Maruti Alto to rain havoc. The insurance company turned down the claim stating it was due to natural calamity. I had to sell the car off. I bought a Datsun recently and this vehicle too sustained damage during the recent downpour. This has been happening for the last five years,” she lamented.
“A lot depends on the kind of insurance cover. But whatever the case, customers will have to share the burden when damage is near total. A majority sell them as the problem with the vehicle can reoccur,” said Veeranna K, an employee with an automobile dealer in Wilson Garden.