Hello from northern Italy. I bought a new 500X on 1 October 2016 with, among other options and equipment, the 5” Radio NAV. As soon as I got home I tried activating UConnectLIVE. It did not work. I immediately contacted Fiat Customer Care through my Ciao Fiat app. Thus began a more than six month odyssey that has produced nothing. We communicated regularly via the Ciao Fiat App, email and telephone. Fiat Customer Care opened two files on my case, one in the Fiat UK department and one in the Fiat Italia department. Together we tried to resolve this problem in various ways. I was told for six months that the problem was incompatibility between UConnectLIVE and Apple iOS which was “being worked on”and would “be resolved soon”. That never happened. In the meantime we would work on trying to find “a work around”. I was in regular touch not only with Fiat Customer Care UK and Fiat Customer Care Italia but also with their UConnect specialists. I spent countless hours sitting behind the wheel of the 500X in our garage trying to resolve this problem, occasionally with a Fiat Customer Care person on the telephone guiding me through the process. Nothing worked. Then on 3 April I heard from someone for the first time that the problem is that this 500X was made for the Spanish market and therefore did not have UConnectLIVE. However several days later, on 5 April 2017, well over six months after I bought the 500X I was then told that my 500X NEVER had UConnectLIVE and, because my 500X cannot be retrofitted with this missing capacity (for some inexplicable reason), it NEVER will. This was all because the car was built to be sold as a fleet car for a car rental company in Spain. This was the first time I had heard that, of course. It took Fiat more than six months to tell me this. Thus I now have to get rid of this car. The UConnectLIVE capacity was a deciding factor in us buying the car. There is no fixing it. The people at Fiat Customer Care and UConnect have always been very polite but obviously both un-informed … and un-informing. Due to this experience I would not recommend buying an FCA vehicle to anyone else and I will be unlikely to buy one myself again. I am now in discussions with the dealer that sold me the 500X to see about them providing me with another 500X to substitute for the faulty one that was sold to me. The BIG question is this: Is there a way to know from the VIN number if the car was produced for fleet use and will therefore be missing UConnectLIVE or possibly other equipment or capacities that everyone else gets on their new Fiat or other FCA cars? Does anyone have the answer to this? How does one read the VIN number for these potential problems? Or is it necessary to have FCA do the research to find the answer? If so, do not expect a timely answer. Mine took six months and five days.
