beau said:

ooo thats cheap, bmw is £150 a hour here.

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mates rates as we have two mercs Blue one and a white one but i love the fiat the best i drive her the most

can somebody ready my post please ^^^^^^^

salvo's yellow punto said:

1) how much is for a 3 year service?
2) i read the 1st service is 18000 miles. is that true?
3) does it have 2 be serviced every year or???
4) my brothers clio 8 years ago stated it had 2 be serviced for the 1st time after 2 years from purchase. - however his new volvo c30 is abit different..its £1100 for 3 years servicing.(must be serviced at 12000 miles or atleast once a year) if this doesnt happen the warantee becomes invalid.
5) oh and my dads polo service is 18000 miles or 1st service at 3 years. which ever comes 1st.
6) what if at the end of the 1st year abarth owners have not done 18000 miles???

can somebody explain how the service applys for the abarth.cost and small print please and any restrictions.

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1. Not sure TBH. Arnold Clark will do you a three year service deal though which is way cheaper than doing it year by year....It is Arnold Clark though.

2. First service 18000 miles or 12 months. Servicing every 18000 miles or 12 months. whichever comes first. If you have done less than 18000 miles you can get a cheaper service done in the first year.

3. Yup, serviced every year or 18000 as above.

4. to keep your warranty going you'll need to adhere to the manufacturer service schedule.

5. er....ok

6. If you have not done 18000 miles as I mentioned you can get a cheaper service done in the first year. probably around half the price (roughly).

suzisue said:

so if you get crap work or service somewhere its fine to always go back there?

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you dont condem a whole garage on one individual, if BT take to long to fix my phone is the whole of BT crap?.....course not!

Chances are the garage was too busy and made up a excuse about why it took so long.

salvo's yellow punto said:

ok whats the deal with the servicing and cost for the abarth 500? i know you can shop around for cheaper but what is the price people have been quoted from the dealer they got there car from?

1) how much is for a 3 year service?
2) i read the 1st service is 18000 miles. is that true?
3) does it have 2 be serviced every year or???
4) my brothers clio 8 years ago stated it had 2 be serviced for the 1st time after 2 years from purchase. - however his new volvo c30 is abit different..its £1100 for 3 years servicing.(must be serviced at 12000 miles or atleast once a year) if this doesnt happen the warantee becomes invalid.
5) oh and my dads polo service is 18000 miles or 1st service at 3 years. which ever comes 1st.
6) what if at the end of the 1st year abarth owners have not done 18000 miles???

can somebody explain how the service applys for the abarth.cost and small print please and any restrictions.

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1. ask the dealer??
2. ask the dealer??
3. ask the dealer??
4. they are different cars, so will have different servicing requirements. every year/12k is normal.
5. i'd never trust any oil to last 18k miles, it'll have started breaking down by 8k-10k so change it then.
6. service it. every year/18k, which ever comes first

i service my hgt approx every 6-7k miles. the service interval is supposed to be 12k/annually, but with the driving i do (track days) the oil (high quality) starts breaking down at about 6k reducing performance and obviously no longer doing its job.

T14086 said:

you dont condem a whole garage on one individual, if BT take to long to fix my phone is the whole of BT crap?.....course not!

Chances are the garage was too busy and made up a excuse about why it took so long.

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Actually, speaking as someone with an 8 year professional relationship and exposure to many divisions of BT, I can confidently say that yes, the whole of BT is crap.

But that's off topic

Back to the topic at hand, no all dealers are not crap, as all independent garages are not crap. Some of both are. If you're troubled by a garage or a dealer, do what I do, don't use them again. Ask around for a recommendation. Find a garage or a company that has a history with someone you know and trust and use them. Mechanics welcome word of mouth as do dealers. If you're on to a good one, share it with others.

Actually on that point, do we have a good/bad experiences forum for this?

jnoiles said:

Actually, speaking as someone with an 8 year professional relationship and exposure to many divisions of BT, I can confidently say that yes, the whole of BT is crap.

in hindsight.............your right! (I used BT as a poor example)

Back to the topic at hand, no all dealers are not crap, as all independent garages are not crap. Some of both are. If you're troubled by a garage or a dealer, do what I do, don't use them again. Ask around for a recommendation. Find a garage or a company that has a history with someone you know and trust and use them. Mechanics welcome word of mouth as do dealers. If you're on to a good one, share it with others.

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Its more down to the individual IMO, the ATA is useful for this and currently the benchmark for technicians. There is the good garage guide but this has less strict criteria and its a easy list to get on and get good comments.

My Acronym Finder is failing me. ATA?

salvo's yellow punto said:

ok whats the deal with the servicing and cost for the abarth 500? i know you can shop around for cheaper but what is the price people have been quoted from the dealer they got there car from?

1) how much is for a 3 year service?
2) i read the 1st service is 18000 miles. is that true?
3) does it have 2 be serviced every year or???

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Can't answer all of your questions but to answer as best as I can -

Not sure about the 3yr service or even if they have worked out the cost for this yet as the oldest privately registered A500 is only now coming up to its first birthday next month.

First service is 18,000 miles or 1 year whichever comes first. The cost for this on the official menu price list is £318.

If you have a low mileage - and I'm not sure what the limit is on this 8-9000 miles? - you can go for a "Low Mileage Service" but Abarth don't seem to have a menu price for this.

Yes it has to be serviced every year.

4. to keep your warranty going you'll need to adhere to the manufacturer service schedule.


does the 500 abarth manufacturer schedule state who carries out the service?? e.g. in order for the warantee to be valid..can a normal fiat dealer or an other servicing provider service it??or does it have to be done by an authorised abarth dealer?

i dont think thats a fair comparison.

its £140 for a BMW oil + filter change at my local dealer, obviously in this example they got some discount to allow for the filter to be fitted aswell for £161.

the Fiat service sounds like the inspection 1 equivilent, BMW charge around £300 for this according to a quick google.

i have my 55k inspection 2 approching and i have been quoted £415 for it from BMW.

also, keep in mind, Fiat dealers only charge £60/hour labour, BMW charge £120/hour!

Ry

salvo's yellow punto said:

4. to keep your warranty going you'll need to adhere to the manufacturer service schedule.


does the 500 abarth manufacturer schedule state who carries out the service?? e.g. in order for the warantee to be valid..can a normal fiat dealer or an other servicing provider service it??or does it have to be done by an authorised abarth dealer?

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It can to be done by a VAT registered garage using original manufacturer parts to maintain warranty. Its only warranty work that has to be done by an authorised dealer as warranty work is billed back to to the manufactuer and they are unlikely to cough up to any old garage that tries to bill them

Just noticed in Evo - March issue that even an Alpina D3 can have its first 20k service done at Sytners for £216.

Two points really - In my opinion Alpina's tend to be rather more specialised/mechanically bespoke than a NP Abarth and secondly I'm sure that Sytners labour rates are hefty to say the least but even with these two factors the servicing costs are still way under that of any Abarth dealer.

I just can't understand how Abarth are going to be able to continue with this rip-off.

simer said:

Can't answer all of your questions but to answer as best as I can -

Not sure about the 3yr service or even if they have worked out the cost for this yet as the oldest privately registered A500 is only now coming up to its first birthday next month.

First service is 18,000 miles or 1 year whichever comes first. The cost for this on the official menu price list is £318.

If you have a low mileage - and I'm not sure what the limit is on this 8-9000 miles? - you can go for a "Low Mileage Service" but Abarth don't seem to have a menu price for this.

Yes it has to be serviced every year.

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I had a low mileage service (under 10k) on my A500 last week.

It cost £161, how much are you getting quotes for?

simer said:

Just noticed in Evo - March issue that even an Alpina D3 can have its first 20k service done at Sytners for £216.

Two points really - In my opinion Alpina's tend to be rather more specialised/mechanically bespoke than a NP Abarth and secondly I'm sure that Sytners labour rates are hefty to say the least but even with these two factors the servicing costs are still way under that of any Abarth dealer.

I just can't understand how Abarth are going to be able to continue with this rip-off.

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You've got to remember that this is Evo who will search for a decent price and that smaller doesn't necessarily equal cheaper as there can quite often be more labour involved in servicing a small car due to space restrictions.

abarth_178 said:

I had a low mileage service (under 10k) on my A500 last week.

It cost £161, how much are you getting quotes for?

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Wessex Cardiff were quoting something like £175 so I'm going to Pewsham Fiat for £127.

My point however was the comparison for a full 18/20k service where the Abarth compares very unfavourably with both Alpina and BMW

As far as I am aware the BMW's don't need an annual oil change as it seems to be based on mileage and usage as determined by the black box and 20k seems to be a common service interval.

simer said:

Wessex Cardiff were quoting something like £175 so I'm going to Pewsham Fiat for £127.

My point however was the comparison for a full 18/20k service where the Abarth compares very unfavourably with both Alpina and BMW

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I don't think ~200 is scary bad for a service though. Plus you're possibly comparing a menu price with a non-menu price.

306maxi said:

smaller doesn't necessarily equal cheaper as there can quite often be more labour involved in servicing a small car due to space restrictions.

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TBH this is b******s but I might have known that you would come up with some less than helpful comment.

My point is that Fiat/Abarth come from the lower end of the market whilst BMW/Alpina are from the premium end.

Lower end generally lower cost, premium the opposite but this is not the case in Abarth world. The opposite is true.

Abarth servicing costs are way in excess of Fiat costs for little apparent reason other than they think/hope that they can get away with it.

We need to see these costs come down if the brand is not to become tainted before it even gets established.

simer said:

TBH this is b******s but I might have known that you would come up with some less than helpful comment.

My point is that Fiat/Abarth come from the lower end of the market whilst BMW/Alpina are from the premium end.

Lower end generally lower cost, premium the opposite but this is not the case in Abarth world. The opposite is true.

Abarth servicing costs are way in excess of Fiat costs for little apparent reason other than they think/hope that they can get away with it.

We need to see these costs come down if the brand is not to become tainted before it even gets established.

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WTF?

The costs involved in servicing a car are labour and parts. Now filters, plugs and lubricants will be a fairly consistent between BMW's, Fiat's Citroen's etc etc. It's labour where the costs will vary. For a Subaru for instance where the greasemonkey is going to have to skin his knuckles in a stupidly enclosed area to change the plus you're going to get done on labour whereas it's fairly easy on most other engines. On smaller cars quite often access will be restricted to serviceable components so to get to bits you have to take other bits off and this takes time and therefore more labour hence higher costs.

Why you felt the need to go off on one I don't know, I was only trying to help you understand why a cheap car isn't necessarily cheaper to service than a more expensive one. If you go off again I'll just report you because tbh I'm getting sick of people biting my head off when all I'm doing is trying to help them the best way I know how.