Pars Khodro Makes a Mess of Online Sales of Stepway

EghtesadOnline: Local auto producer Pars Khodro started presales of Renault Sandero Stepway but the company’s website crashed minutes after launch, leaving customers in limbo.

News ID: ۷۷۹۳۸۰

23 September 2017

The company launched the online sales on September 17, but the site crashed mid-stream, local automotive website Persian Khodro reported.

Pars Khodro is the third largest carmaker in Iran, producing a jumble of cars already manufactured by SAIPA and Iran Khodro. SAIPA is the main shareholder of the company with over 51% of the stake.

According to Financial Tribune, Reza Taqizadeh, SAIPA deputy sales manager said, “The website outage was due to traffic overload.”

According to the company’s IT department, more than 50,000 users visited Pars Khodro website in the first minutes after the presale was launched.

The company produces two Renault models, Logan (locally known as L90 or Tondar90) and Sandero. The models have sold well in the local market and saw growth in production -- Logan 19,842 units, 85% Y/Y increase and Sandero 19,116 units 100% Y/Y increase.

The Stepway has the standard Sandero body with a 1.6 liter KM4 A6 or C6 engine, depending on customers’ choice.

It is priced at 557 million rials ($14,300) by the company. Buyers can find the car on the market at 625 million rials ($16,000).

Despite the website’s supposedly unavoidable crash, some dealerships with links to the company were able to purchase the car and charged customers 10-20 million rials ($260-520) extra for transferring the registered vehicles.

This is not the first time that local car producers’ websites face such problems  due to reportedly ‘overwhelming’ traffic from customers and middlemen.

In August, the website of IKCO crashed an hour after the company started the online sales of Peugeot 207. The website suffered similar problems during presales of its Peugeot 2008 in January.