ahmett
Prominent member
well better than Fiat offering nothing on their ridiculously overpriced Fiat 500!
General 1st year service
- Thread starter Gordini
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General 1st year service
If you hate the car and everything about fiat why do you still own one? Why did you buy one in the first place?
I'm sorry but you complain about the car quite a lot on here and it's easy enough to put a car up for sale!
ahmett
Prominent member
not in bankrupt Greece my friend. if i sell the car it will be for peanuts. I will either keep this car or give it to a member of the family. I bought it for 17,900 EUR and would sell it for no more than 5,000 EUR. And you can forget trading in the car and getting a nice finance deal in GR, finance basically doesn't exist here at the moment.
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Could you not sell it in a neighbouring EU country?
ahmett
Prominent member
haha good luck with that! look for driving in the town i really don't mind the car so i will just keep it. i would only change car if it made financial sense. I am not going to lose stupid money over this that will mean Fiat is winning haha especially after i spent so much fixing this car!
Well stop using every post you make on here an opportunity to complain about the car. You've had a bad experience we get it, but there is some of us here with 2008 cars which have wanted nothing but the general maintenance every car needs!
ahmett
Prominent member
no its good for the forum to have a balanced opinion and are aware of facts. Fiat's service is ridiculously poor for the comptetition, and people need to know about this. No service plan, awful warranty, they need to know. If after that they still want the car because of its charm then that is fine but they need to be aware of the issues!
Also they need to know that they don't have to go and get ripped off at a main Fiat dealer to service their car, even under warranty"
Does this work the other way round - in other words, could you buy a decent replacement used car in Greece for peanuts?
If it's a bad time to sell, it might also be a good time to buy.
ahmett
Prominent member
It depends on how desperate the seller is. But used car prices are still more expensive than in the UK. Many dealers keep their cars parked for years in their used car dealerships. I mean the BMW 116d is 15,000 EUR here still, so you would have to get 3-4k off to be competetive with the UK. And then you would have an issue selling your car. Now if you have no car at all and are a cash buyer for a used car you don't want to trade in then yes you might get a cracking deal if you find someone desperate enough to knock off 5,000 EUR from the initial selling price.
But don't forget, used cars can be dangerous as they may be crashed and badly maintained, people in Greece can pass MOT's by simply bribing the examiner. There are many written off cars that are brought from Germany, fixed on the cheap and then sold on in Greece with Greek number plates. The 'written off' database would never have cars from Germany on it.
So I would only buy a used car here from a main dealer with a 1 year warranty, but BMW official dealer are selling their used 116d's for 17,000 EUR when a new one is 21,000 EUR or so.
If I were a new driver in Greece with no car as a young man, I would just buy a VW UP! new for like 9,000 EUR. Nicely low profile in this crisis environment, I would frankly be scared to drive a nice car these days.
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An important point, and something which I think most of us ouside Greece have forgotten. The papers here were full of headlines when all your banks were shut last year, but since the refinancing was agreed, we haven't seen much reported at all.
It's easy for the rest of us to forget that, for the ordinary Greek people, the pain goes on.
Stay safe, my friend.
Hi KtToni5,
Yeah....I would be inclined to say your dealer's "fixed price" story is maybe stretching the truth a bit
There are some very good threads on the Panda 2012 section which are applicable here:
https://www.fiatforum.com/panda-iii/433223-99-first-service.html
You can see here what is achievable from a Fiat dealer. Basically though, this first 9,000 mile service isn't supposed to be anything more than a check-over really; you will see in the thread above that some people have been quoted £59 for this bit. The original poster managed to secure the check and oil/filter change for £99 which isn't bad going in my opinion. So your £169 quote - I would be asking them what they plan to do!
This thread is also useful as it discusses the service intervals in the manual:
https://www.fiatforum.com/panda-iii/418439-panda-twinair-cross-short-service-intervals-2.html
You talk about facts ahmett, but I see very little facts in the first few replies to KtToni5's post.
All I see is opinions from the usual suspects
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2 years free servicing with my golf
I presume you purchased on a PCP to get the servicing deal
I bought mine privately and financed a portion by bank loan with a very low APR. The interest charges on the PCP were stupid money compared to the interest on the bank loan so I will still be quids in paying for servicing as I go. The crafty way around the problem I have since realised is to take the PCP route to get the manufacturer incentives and free servicing deals then pay it off straight away using your bank loan
Win. Win !! You still get the financial golden carrots but side step the high interest by paying off with a bank loan
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Oh, I had lots of fun with this. I used to regularly play off against each other three separate Fiat dealerships within a 25 mile radius of where I live. They all seemingly had their own charge rate. They also quoted me the 'Fixed price across Fiat' line as well until one admitted to me that they could pretty much charge what they wanted, in other words, I was being spun one! First price service on our first 1.2 Pop, low mileage service, £85, oil/filter change and car health check including diagnostics. Another dealer wanted £150 but claimed that included diagnostics. Second service, quoted £485!! with not much else other than plugs and pollen filter. Got that one done at a Fiat independent specialist for £169. Twin Air, well first service on that cost £150. All we got for that, was oil/filter change and healthcheck. First quote I got for the same work, was £285.
My advice, find a good independent Fiat specialist or be prepared to shop around Franchised Fiat dealerships, but whatever you do, don't accept their first quote. If they want your business, they'll do a deal and if they won't, just walk away.
No because it's not routinely included with the price of the car, I would say the gimmick was the "vat free" deal they were doing when I bought it which saved me about £6k
I presume you purchased on a PCP to get the servicing deal
The crafty way around the problem I have since realised is to take the PCP route to get the manufacturer incentives and free servicing deals then pay it off straight away using your bank loan
Win. Win !! You still get the financial golden carrots but side step the high interest by paying off with a bank loan
I did buy it on a PCP deal but brand new, so the interest rate is very low compared with the used car interest rate with VW, bank loan rates for the same sort of amount borrowed at the time were about 0.7% higher.
