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As a current Fiat owner i can confidently say that i cherish the ownership. Not only that the Linea is a solid car, i feel very safe while traveling in it, has nothing to complain about it given the VFM price tag, but i also feel that Fiat is very much customer friendly.

The recent good gesture i personally got was the free battery under goodwill warranty, even if the battery warranty was over.
Similarly my friend for free 2 tyres as goodwill warranty since goodyear was giving him tough time.
One more friend got a key barrel lock worth 10k as goodwill warranty, his car is not even in warranty.

I cant even imagine such a friendly customer service for my maruti or tata or VW car.

So going forward too i think FIAT will continue this i can debate and defute anyone saying " Fiat not serious about its customers"

I am really pleasantly surprised to come to know that such good incidents good occur as part of FIAT after sales services.These stand out as compared to the routine complains of non availability of spares .Fiat should continue with these goodwill gestures and ensure the availability of palio spares so that the goodwill is carried to old customers as well.
regards
praveen singh

It was 2009 when my father-in-law in kolkata was planning to buy a petrol hatchback within a budget of 4L. My FIL does not know driving and he said he would appoint a driver. He was about to buy a santro (because everybody told him so), i10 was out of his budget.

All my in-laws are quite heavy built, and seating at the back they did not feel comfortable at all over pot-hole ridden roads. Also, being heavy built and quite tall, they were gasping for space in the back seat of santro. It is at that time I asked him to try out Palio stile 1.1. I had a company leased Getz then back in Pune and at the time of Getz purchase I test drove a Stile 1.6 once. And that is the time I fell in love with the vehicle. Unfortunately, company lease policy did not allow me go with Fiat, so settled for a Getz. My FIL sat at the back of Palio stile 1.1 and immediately liked the ride and space. He was angry with me as he felt that I suggested him a vehicle much beyond his budget. He was shocked when I told him that the onroad price was 3.65L, lalmost same as the price of a santro at that time. He bought the stile 1.1 and thanked me every week for pointing me to that vehicle.

After a 1.5 years of purchase, there was problem in the steering column and Tata-Fiat service centre told that the whole steering column has to be replaced and it would be done free of cost. After repeated follow-ups, it took 3 months to source that part to Kolkata. It was a painful 3 months for him, and he repented for going with Fiat. I felt worse as I suggested the vehicle to him. And also during periodic service, he used to tell me the shoddy experience in Tata-Fiat. Recently there was a break-shoe failure, they quoted 4.5K, but could not source the component. Finally my brother-in-law got it from a local shop at Rs. 900/- only and it is working perfectly fine.

Then came the final death-nail. During last year in october, the Tata-Fiat dealer R.D.Motors in Kolkata even refused to do a regular servicing. My FIL requested all other dealers on Kolkata and everybody refused saying that Tata-Fiat partnership was gone. He was totally frustrated and called me and asked "what is the use of a vehicle, if I can't service it?". I though it is high time to step in. TBHP helped and I wrote a mail to Mr. Ashish Bhattacharya, (service@fiapl.com) head of customer services at that time. He personally replied me same day with a big apology and assured me that the problem will be solved in a day or two. The very next day I got a call from R.D.Motors to bring the vehicle for servicing.

My FIL still repents for buying palio stile purely due to after sales service. He tried to sell the vehicle and got a quote of 50K for a 25000 km run vehicle. As a silver lining, my 6.1ft brother-in-law has learned driving and he absolutely loves driving the vehicle. Whenever my wife goes to Kolkata, she absolutely loves the ride quality of Palio and told me to buy her a Punto in the next marriage anniversary :). On a serious note, when I replaced my Getz with a diesel Liva last year, I did not dare to shortlist Punto due to the above incidents. But after the purchase, when I drove a Punto sports, I was totally floored by the ride quality of Punto over bad roads and its over feel and stability. Punto sports is the best diesel hatch I have ever driven. But I did not have enough courage to own it even when I am sitting so close to Fiat's production facility in Ranjangaon. What a pity!

Please Fiat, come up with a better service, my marriage anniversary is not far away.

Just read through the discussions on Mr. Enrico's comment. :)

Pardon my ignorance. Whether any TASS's are comfortable to take Palios for servicing all these years (since 2009)? I guess not. Is anything going to change after his (Mr. Enrico) comment? I guess not. What ever he commented is just what was happening currently. Nothing new. When Fiat announced plans to setup independent sales and service, I too hoped that they will extend full support to the Palio owners. Now, it seems that nothing is going to change and the FASS in Chennai is reluctant to take Palio and they say that they do not have any engineers trained to work on Palio.

Palio owners will have a challenge as always.

I was present during the interaction. Enrico did not mince his words. He did not play the role of a diplomat. He was frank. One need not read between the lines. He wants the owners of the previous generation FIATs to upgrade to the new generation FIATs. Period. How far that will help FIAT in future, is a million dollar [or million Euro for Enrico!] question, the answer to which will be known only in the future!

Maybe its because i don't own a fiat but if i were in his shoes, i too would really turn the new leaf. Clean and clear once for all. The current levels of Fiat ownership are too few to worry. Especially given the number of new owners he is targeting to sell to.

For them, the future opportunity is where the growth lies and its simply too huge to complicate by worrying about existing owners of last generation cars. Can you imagine getting 5% of the sales that MSIL does today?

What he said (and i just read here) doesn't sound ethical. But hey, its a question of survival for them now. They been around for far too long to lose any more ground and just not do anything about it.

[quote=J.Ravi;3058056He wants the owners of the previous generation FIATs to upgrade to the new generation FIATs. Period.[/QUOTE]

That's the problem. Palio and Uno have poor resale value already. When everyone gets to know that Enrico said something like this, there will not even be any takers for these cars. They cannot expect someone to scrap his Palio and buy a Punto just because Palio's one tail lamp was broken by an irresponsible biker, and new one is not available.

If Fiat ensures that old cars get decent value (say, by buying them and reselling or scrapping for a loss or using them for spares of other old cars), I am sure most of the Uno/Palio drivers will buy Punto/Linea (including me).

Disclaimer: I am not a Fiat car owner, but I do admire (admiration guaranteed) the cars that Fiat makes. So hope you won't mind if I share my thoughts over here
The Fiat India head should be praised by being so outspoken (& not mincing the words, as you rightly said Ravi). However things always don't work that way. I think he should have taken Indian culture into consideration before airing his comments. For us Indians, car is perhaps the second biggest investment (after say a house or a flat), isn't it? We do so many rounds of due diligence before taking that first step towards buying a house or a car. Now if someone says you, hey why are you living in this pathetic house & don't shift to a posh locality/house, how would you feel? Mr Enrico's comments had the potential of arousing similar feelings (if not the same) for old time Fiat customers.

You have hit the nail right on the head :thumbs up. If Mr Enrico, had substantiated his earlier comments, with a concrete plan like what Rohan has mentioned above, this would have brought many laurels not just to him but the company as a whole. It would have inspired so much confidence in the existing Fiatians and given that much needed assurance, that they had done the right thing by going for a Fiat :)

Today morning came across this ad in the local newspaper.
I'm not very sure that the new exclusive showroom and service centre has been formally in-agurated.
I've already got some servicing done from them, so they are operational - both sales and service.
As per the last information given to me they were ready for in-aguration on 06th or 07th of March and were waiting for confirmation from Fiat.

Its one more customer lost to toyota by fiat ,and i dare say there would be thousands more unaccounted losses to maruti ,hyundai etc .All the potential customers are literally shooed away by the pathetic after sales services of fiat.They would gone for fiat without blinking eye s had there been even a modicum of good after sales services.FIAT are you listening one more prospective buyer is waiting in his wings just to buy you provided you guys put your house in order.
regards
praveen singh

That's very true. FIAT should understand that selling the car is just a beginning of a relationship and if the service and other stuff are not up-to the mark ,it's gonna be very difficult to even retain old customer forget about getting new customers.
I would have surely bought a punto when I bought my car but service was the only thing which made me move away from FIAT.
I hope next time when I'm in the market for a new ride FIAT's service should not be the deal breaker for me .

Cheers

Not sure why every one is after Fiat's service. From my personal experience after having owned 2 Fiat cars for the last 5.5 years I have no issues with the service or spare parts availability. But that being said the buying experience of both cars were not up to the mark. Now that FASS is being opened throughout India things should only get better.

I have seen people cribbing about Fiat cars and also the service without even experiencing them. Most of them just spread negative publicity on stories heard from friends or some remote person.

Due to this very fact we indians shyed away from a very mean machine which we indians hardly get to drive " The Linea TJET" a turbocharged jet right of the factory at just 9 odd lacs.

I can just imagine how long the queues would have been , had it been the Punto and Linea standing tall in a Maruti Suzuki showroom. Sadly Fiat partnered TATA for their Italian beauties.

The fact is " The people who really have problem with FIAT are the ones who have never Owned them"

I will give a simple example , here in Bangalore apart from a couple service centres no other service centres are able to take care of the fiat cars properly .
If this is the case in a city like Bangalore just imagine what would be the situation with other cities .
There is no doubt that FIAT cars are awesome but what is the point owning a car which needs to kept in service Center for ages when their is repair or something of that kind .
A friend of mine had to wait for some 70 days for a damaged part to arrive when his car meet with an accident .
My only concern is that .
Hopefully with the new centres openings up these things will be taken care.
Just buying a awesome car is not enough , FIAT has to make sure people buying those car also has a very good experience owning them also .
Cheers

I dont believe in this fact. Fact is that i was one of the early birds who trusted in FIAT in 2009 and brought home a Linea, 4 years laters and 41k kms down, i still love the car, the drive quality and suspension set up cant be matched, not even by my Vento TDi which i bought recently but a good car is nothing without good service levels.

No complaints with the car, she is awesome, no rattles or sqeaks, built like a tank and so many positives, even FIAT have been really helpful when ever they were contacted but the TATA service centres really ruin everything.

Just because 2 people experienced average or good service in their area doesnt mean others are cribbing for no reason, the Tata service centres around NCR are so poor that if i had to buy a car today i wont recommend FIAT to any one around my family until i personally experience the service in FIAT exclusive ASC. Tata guys are plain bad, can never solve an issue, in last 4 years the floor mats always came back with black grease shoe marks and so many other things.

Punto and Linea are good cars let down by poor service, i have a problem with FIAT and i own one and this problem would remain until i get good service - am not expecting Toyota service but atleast better than Tata.