citronr said:

I live in Italy, near Venice, and bought my 500X new on 1 October 2016. UConnectLIVE has never worked. After six months of communicating with Fiat Customer Care through the Ciao FIAT app and by telephone, at least twice weekly, with both Fiat Customer Care Italy and Fiat Customer Care UK (because my native language is English) during which I was continuously told that the problem was incompatibility between my iPhone iOS and UConnectLIVE and that the problem was being worked on while we tried various work-arounds which never worked, I received the message I will paste in below stating that the actual problem is that the car I was sold here in Italy was actually produced for a Spanish rental car fleet and therefore had no UConnectLIVE ... even though it appears on my 5" Radio NAV screen. What's more they also told me then that problem CANNOT BE CORRECTED. In other words, I am stuck with a 500X that must be forever without UConnectLIVE. This makes no sense to me. Since this 500X was manufactured here in Italy at the same factory that normal 500Xs are built, whatever is done to the proper 500Xs can be done to mine. I suspect that Fiat is simply refusing to make this correction without saying as much by claiming it is "impossible". Then I read on this Forum, if I am read it correctly, that Fiat UK is providing a fix for this not-unusual problem in the UK. If so, Fiat is treating its Italian customers differently ... and badly ... compared to its UK customers. Fiat Customer Care always knew the VIN number of my 500X is ZFA3340000P473100. That number was included in every written communication with them. That means they knew all along what the problem was but failed to tell me. I first contacted Fiat Customer Care on Day 1, 1 October 2016, when my 500X had just 23 km on it (the distance to our home from the dealer.) If they had told me then that they could not or would not fix this problem, I would have gotten rid of this 500X then. I now have approx 4000 km on it. I rarely use it. It sits in our garage until my wife wants to use it. We have to use a plug-in Garmin GPS because without UConnectLIVE I cannot update the TomTom nor do I have any live connection services. I have reported this problem now to the National Consumers Union here and I will most probably have to soon initiate legal action ... but my preference is to fix this problem first, primarily because my wife likes driving the 500X. We, of course, will never buy another FCA car again if they fail to resolve this without legal action. I will not soon forget getting screwed by both the dealer, who never told us this was a "fleet car" without UNConnectLIVE as advertised and by Fiat Customer Care who did not tell us the truth about why UConnectLIVE did not work for over six months during regular communications with them until they they sent me these messages:
[email protected]
To: Richard Citron <[email protected]>
Reply from FIAT Customer Care - Ticket N 35096144

EMAIL 5th April 2017
Reference: 35096144
Subject: Fiat 500X telaio ZFA3340000P473100

Dear Mr Citron,

Thank you for contacting Fiat.

The vehicle was built according to the specifications requested by the first assignment customer (car rental company for the Spanish market) and therefore with different features compared to the standard equipment.

We are sorry to inform you that there is no procedure or kit for enabling UConnectLIVE aftermarket services.

In reference to your enquiry in relation to Uconnect Live services availability, as discussed in previous communications, please receive this email as confirmation of the fact that the Uconnect Live services are not enabled on your Fiat 500X VIN ZFA3340000P473100 and this feature can not be retro activated.

While we empathise with your situation and appreciate this was not the response you were initially expecting, we must confirm that we are not able to meet your expectation on this occasion.

Our Customer Service team remains available at your own convenience from Monday to Friday between 9:00 and 18:00 and Saturday from 08:00 until 17:00 on 00800 3428 0000 choosing option number 2.

Yours sincerely,
Dominic Wood
Customer Care Fiat

[email protected]
To: Richard Citron <[email protected]>
Reply from FIAT Customer Care - Ticket N 35120520

11th April 2017
Reference: 35120520
Subject: Fiat 500X


Dear Mr Citron,

We would like to acknowledge receipt of your emails and thank you for the time taken to contact Fiat.

We refer you to our previous response dated 5th of April 2017 which includes the results of the investigation carried out in collaboration with the Italian and Spanish Customer Services teams.

The response originally made by FCA UK remains unchanged. and we must advise you that we are unable to assist further.

Any authorised Fiat dealer would be able to tell through the vehicle’s chassis number what Country the vehicle was manufactured for, or originates from, whether or not it was produced for fleet use and all the equipment that came as standard or were fitted as an option.

We would invite you to take the issue further with the selling dealer.

Yours sincerely,

Dominic Wood
Customer Care Fiat UK

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robotdancer said:

citronr, can't speak for a Spanish spec car, however I'll just run through what happened with my UK Cross Plus with 5" nav.

Bought mine used as an ex fleet rental car with uConnect disabled.

Contacted FIAT and asked if it was simply a firmware issue not hardware? The answer was yes and they registered the VIN and did a software update.

UConnect went live... however... the licence for the Tom Tom and Tom Tom Live sits with the original owner. So as I'm the second owner I had to register a new account with Tom Tom and pay them for new maps and live services. The update and activation was downloaded to a USB stick on my PC and then transferred to the car via the dash USB port.

Given that the Tom Tom aspect was separate to uConnect live it should be possible to update maps etc. Though I'm not sure live traffic services would work.

To be honest, bar live traffic, the other features are pretty limited. The streaming radio and Deezer is very patchy and I can't imagine why you would ever need facebook.

So to be honest you're not really missing anything important. Also there is a wierd quirk in that if you connect an iPhone or iPod via the USB port uConnect is disabled anyway.

It's all a lot of fuss over something that is pretty rubbish anyway. It's like saying you're going to bin a £20k car because it's not compatible with your phone.

It's a car... for driving about in... go drive it... it's really good at that.

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Alanw47 said:

And unless I'm doing something wrong TomTom Live Speed Cameras are THE most annoying thing ever. How many beeps do you need for one camera? I do agree though, uConnect Live is a bit over-rated but on a £20k car it should work. End of. It should be your choice wether you use it or not, not Fiats.

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robotdancer said:

Totally agree with you on the beeping and bonging, I've been trying for weeks to calm it down. I have one stretch of road that I drive every day and in half a mile I get 20 warnings for four cameras!

Also does it take an age to boot up the Nav on everyone else's car? Never used Tom Tom before so don't know if it's a car or system thing.

I get your point, but ultimately it's a car not a smart phone. Car manufacturers are pretty shocking at tech... model lead times are so long that the world has passed them by before they even launch.

I did like the suggestion on here of a central dash mount and just plug in a smartphone to do all the work. That should actually be pretty straight forward and phones have big touch screens these days.

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