Fiat's India strategy revealed

S_U_N · 1st August 2014, 12:46

What is the difference between the Fiat 500 and the Abarth 500 (shown above in black).
The Fiat 500 was around 20 lacs on road a few years ago. What is the expected pricing of the black car featured in post 1761 above?

nkrishnap · 1st August 2014, 12:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Naparajito

Correction, the one in Mysore road already started operating 2 months back. Got my 60K kms service done there! Wonderful job they did. :They Rule:

Yes. The service center opened 2 months back. I was talking about the sales outlet on Mysore road.

ant_vas · 1st August 2014, 15:10

Quote:

1.I hardly get to see any Fiat service centers. Wonder if they have one.

Are you really serious when you say: wonder if they have one?

Agreed fiat might not have a service stations like the maruti's and hyundai's but they do. In bangalore they have 4 of them + independent garages like hariprasad

Fiat have been saying in almost every press release that they are trying to increase the no of dealers to 100+ so obviously the no of service stations will also increase alongside.

Take a look at this link: http://www.fiat-india.com/find-a-dea...rviceOnly=true

riturajsharma19 · 1st August 2014, 15:16

I, for a fact, cannot see a single Fiat service center here in Assam. I have owned a Punto since May 2011 and have suffered at the hands of Fiat to the point where my car was reduced to being a garage queen for 2 years.

ant_vas · 1st August 2014, 17:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by riturajsharma19

I, for a fact, cannot see a single Fiat service center here in Assam. I have owned a Punto since May 2011 and have suffered at the hands of Fiat to the point where my car was reduced to being a garage queen for 2 years.

Rituraj,

Yes I understand that you might be having nightmares,with no service center in sight to take care of the car you bought by investing a good sum. I have seen several posts of your across different threads on this issue.

I hope that a Fiat dealership comes up quickly to address owners like you or you find a good local mechanic who can take care of your punto.

If you still have free service period left then i would recommend you to get in touch with fiat and ask them what are they doing to honour that commitment.

btw haven't you serviced the car since the tata-fiat partnership broke? if yes where did you do that?

riturajsharma19 · 1st August 2014, 18:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by ant_vas

Rituraj,
Yes I understand that you might be having nightmares,with no service center in sight to take care of the car you bought by investing a good sum. I have seen several posts of your across different threads on this issue.

I hope that a Fiat dealership comes up quickly to address owners like you or you find a good local mechanic who can take care of your punto.

If you still have free service period left then i would recommend you to get in touch with fiat and ask them what are they doing to honour that commitment.

btw haven't you serviced the car since the tata-fiat partnership broke? if yes where did you do that?

Yes, I have indeed had nightmares maintaining the car. What infuriates me even more is Fiat's automated responses to serious escalations. Further, if setting up new service points is something that takes time, I fail to understand what stops them from conducting service camps at strategic locations. I can go on and on but the idea behind all this rant is to document these things across forums and on social media as it is quite likely that their reps frequent these forums. Nothing will hurt them as much as negative publicity.
As to your other question, I had recently got my car serviced at a local garage. It was a much delayed service as Fiat was supposed to organise a few service camps that never saw the light of day and I had had enough of looking forward to that.

Sent from my iPad using Team-BHP

funkykar · 2nd August 2014, 01:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by funkykar

Forums are created not only for the love towards the brand or specific model of car. Its also because of issues. Service or spares issues. If everything is good with no issues am sure people would solely prefer forums like team-bhp than have xyz forums. I love my Maruti 800 and my RX 135, since its easy to maintain and niggle free, I don't look for any specific club/forums. To own and maintain a Fiat, many would need such forums

One area isn't highlighted in this thread. Why doesn't Fiat sell well with reasonably good products(Subjective, but I feel it is/was good enough to sell atleast 4-5k units a month)?

Answer: After Sales Service. Barring a few service centre's, rest are poor. It cant match even industry averages. Number of service centres are also less. Parts issues are not totally sorted out and one often has to wait for one or the other parts. The used car prices often is an indicator on how good spares and service of a brand is. Used Maruti 800s and Altos are more expensive than top end Palios of same age and condition, even though when new Palios costed atleast double. Even a person looking for a very cheap car wouldn't easily buy a Palio even if its dirt cheap prices. Similarly, don't we see a poorer resale for Punto and Linea? I am a beneficiary of this and brought a used Linea MJD top end emotion pack for cost lesser of used Swift VDI of same age.

Unless service and spares are improved, get the 1.5/1.6MJD, Avventura, face lifts, Abarths or 500's nothing will change. At max, it will give a temporary surge in Sales. In this aspect TJet is a good example. Even though its so fun to drive and adequate performance, it doesn't sell. Why would you expect a Punto TJet or a Linea 1.5/1.6MJD to set Sales charts on Fire?

Quoting my own post here. Don't know if I ever done that before LOL.

In the first paragraph, it is not meant that forums are created to take up service issues or spares issues or the forum owns up issues of members. Hope this was not how one perceived when it was read first. The very first sentence refers to loving the brand/model.

When FASS themselves cannot provide good service or stock adequate spares, how can any forum do it? You may get away with a Punto or Linea with service and spares for now. But, if you talk Palio or Uno, in my honest opinion, for many at some point of time turn to google and may end up getting info from some Fiat forum and they may also end up joining it.

My very own experience:

1) When I got my Padmini's and 118NE's in 2007ish, I needed help!!! I mean it. No garage I visited was ready to support this car, don't know how these classics work and apart from knowing how to drive, I was 0 in knowledge of cars. Through google, found an orkut group with similar people. The need of the hour was for me to jel up with them and get tips of maintenance like where to service, where to get parts and so on. Over a period of time, a bunch of 4 guys including me became close friends just by owning the 1100's. We created a club to impart the little knowledge we had. We may not have been help for many, but surely inspired many elderly owners to not scrap/sell it. There were many occasions where 70+ aged members invited us to their homes so that their family members get convinced and not pester them to scrap/sell their cars. We have had some other way instances too. Their children calling us and requesting us to tell the member to give up on their classic and move on to newer cars as the family saw driving a old car to be disrespectful.
2) Later on, I brought a used Palio. Palio had many niggles. I joined PUG as I felt again its a need of the hour. I bought Palio knowing pros and cons anyways. Slowly, I made many friends from here.
3) Later on I joined another forum TFI and was a silent member as I really did not have anything to infer from nor to contribute. Slowly I was bit active there and then left from there.
4) There is a MFW forum too, was part of that too for a while.
5) Now I am part of TFMC which is on facebook and very happy being there.

Do I need any of the Fiat forums at all? Hell yes! Is it just for love of Fiats? No way. I need it as I have many many friends and also I may need help in understanding my Fiat(I keep changing once a while, whatever is latest), discuss issues, read other member car issues, learn where and how to source parts, learn about alternate independent garages to service and so on.

This said, I re-iterate, for the other vehicles I love (I love my RX more than my Fiats), I don't look for any forums and don't even care if it exists.

rsidd · 2nd August 2014, 16:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by riturajsharma19

Yes, I have indeed had nightmares maintaining the car. What infuriates me even more is Fiat's automated responses to serious escalations. Further, if setting up new service points is something that takes time, I fail to understand what stops them from conducting service camps at strategic locations. I can go on and on but the idea behind all this rant is to document these things across forums and on social media as it is quite likely that their reps frequent these forums. Nothing will hurt them as much as negative publicity.

More constructive would be to go to the consumer court. There are consumer protection organizations that can help you with this. Unfortunately I don't know much about Assam or the north-east. But in our experience the mere threat has been enough to get action from recalcitrant corporations. If they can't provide a service centre in Guwahati, they should pick up your car, take it to Kolkata or wherever free of cost, service it and return it.

Noise on social media is overrated.

i74js · 4th August 2014, 09:23

It is not clear what FIAT is up to, they come out with some good print advertisements and the statement of their India head about taking some good positive moves for India bound operations and then even those commitments on record including:

- Opening of new dealerships
- Bringing new product range
- Improving customer experience

All went dud!

Dear Gurupratap, can you please suggest what is the present status of new dealerships in India (you went on record about it)? Leave aside that, what improvements have been carried out with respect to customer satisfaction?

I am also not sure why only two products for India, in all other markets where FIAT is operating, they have a generous product mix available for sale. Even if manufacturing new product line in India is a costly affair for them because of localization requirements, they can at the very least offer CKD / CBU units from their international product line for sale in India (obviously against demand / orders). This will provide them the necessary foot fall and the buyers (looking for international FIAT models / premium offerings) will get an assurance of product quality, proper paper work and after sales commitment.
Almost all premium segment players are offering CBU / CKD units in India, agreed they are costly as compared to India manufactured products but for sure FIAT will not incur losses as:

- These will be delivered against demand (no unsold inventory to be maintained)
- Will confirm FIATs commitment to India and will thus help in brand building
- Increase foot fall in the showroom will help introduce the mass market products to customer

Why is FIAT silent when the facelift product is about to hit the market? No print / electronic marketing. Uploading couple of videos on youtube is just now enough.

FIAT, please roll up your sleeves and get moving.

Cheers

dsunn · 4th August 2014, 23:06