Ola Electric Had An Angry Customer Set a Store on Fire, Is Getting Burned on Social

Customer service can be a thankless job, and I speak as someone who's done it.

But at the same time, if you're the one who's promised to provide goods and/or services to customers, then it's also on you to do your best to provide what you promised. That's your part of the bargain, right?

Not, say customers, if you're the two-wheeled EV company Ola Electric. The company is based in India, which is also where it's steadily been rolling out its fleet of electric scooters over the past few years. It's also promised to roll out its first-ever EV motorcycles later in 2024, and we've written about both of its two-wheeled EV types previously.

After months of building frustration among Ola Electric owners on social media, a disgruntled mechanic allegedly set an Ola Electric showroom located in Kalaburagi, Karnataka, India on fire on September 10, 2024. 

According to local news reports, he purchased an Ola Electric scooter last month, but was deeply dissatisfied with the service he'd received since then. He's a mechanic by trade. He reportedly tried getting help from his local Ola Electric showroom (the one he would later allegedly set on fire), but was repeatedly blown off. 

Finally, he brought gas canisters to the store and set fire to six bikes in the showroom. Thankfully, no people were injured. Over ₹ 800,000 in property damage was reportedly done, though, which equates to a little under US $10K. 

But that's not the end of the story. See, Ola Electric went on to make a post on its official Instagram page, talking about the incident and condemning this type of behavior.

The comments, I think it's safe to say, probably didn't go as Ola Electric expected.

At the time of writing, there are nearly 500 comments on this post, and the majority express sentiments like "If you provide proper service and timely responses then these things wouldn't happen" and "HE DID the wish of all OLA OWNERS." 

And while you don't necessarily expect that someone is going to take quite such drastic action to get your attention if you're a company, Ola Electric shouldn't be surprised at the comments it's getting on that post.

Take a look through any posts you like on Ola's various social media channels over the past months, and you'll see a seemingly never-ending string of service complaints. Ola has responded to some of them, usually using boilerplate responses that don't really say much. One can only hope that a private DM has also been sent by Ola in hopes of rectifying the issues with the customers who've tried to reach out this way.

But if you're a company, it's not enough to simply launch your products into the marketplace and then not follow up in offering appropriate support when things go wrong. Customers, especially in 2024, simply aren't going to take it.