dealers warned!

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dealers warned!

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Industry: Fiat dealers warned
10 Feb 06 15:59


Fiat UK has issued its franchised dealers with a firm warning that they could lose their franchise if they do not improve their customer service.

Fiat's new aftersales director Rob Calver said that he was recruited six months ago to tackle customer complaints over poor service and warranty issues; he is said to have found a backlog of complaints from over 1,000 Fiat owners who had not been dealt with, and to have been concerned over how dealers were 'inflexible with the warranty'.

Calver told ITV Motoring that he was instigating extra training programmes for dealership staff and said: 'I'm more interested in how good the people are, rather than how many there are. We have some good dealers and perhaps we haven't managed them very well, but they've got to get a lot better - and yes, if they don't improve, we may have to terminate some dealers.'

Fiat has consistently scored poorly in surveys of reliability and customer satisfaction in recent years and improving the standard of service at dealership is crucial to the success of the new Grande Punto and upcoming new Stilo, due this autumn.
 
Hopefully all the dealers that have consistantly been a pain in the A and underacheived on customer relations and techs that have a poor standard of workmanship these should automatically loose their franchise and this would be a warning to those who dont come up to scratch the unfortunate result of this could be that a Fait dealership will become a thing of the past and therefor become as rare as rocking horse droppings:D
 
Rightly so! i had afew problems with a local dealer,so my boss had a lovely chat to a nice guy (shall be nameless) who works for fiat which dealers should not messed with.He was asked to sort out some sales people at my local dealer only when he left he was annoyed at the way they dealed with things and how they spoke to him too!
So he gave them a warning!
From wot i heard he had a chat higher up the chain.:)
This type of stuff has been happening for a while so ive heard.
Well one thing for sure the car aint going there for its servicing -Power to the people!!!!!-
 
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I think I have spoken to this guy, or one similar who was very interested to know about my two only usages and dissapointments of a certain cumbrian fiat dealership. He took all the details and got back to me with a response along the lines of the fact he was stockpiling all the complaints he coult to try and crack down on the worse ones!

The problem is the dealers just aren't interested in the cars
 
ive had no problems with my local dealer caledonia warrington .
the parts dept knows what you want ,the service dept can be a little slow but they get there. shows all dealers are not that bad
 
It's all a lie:rolleyes:

Seriously though it's not just Fiat dealers alot of manufactures are having the same problems.
It's not a case of dealers 'are just not interested in the cars',it's a business & alot of dealers are finding it hard under Fiat.You know how much diagnostic time dealers get from Fiat warranty time....f*ck all,dealer warranty departments often have to literally beg for time.Add this to the poor tech back up dealers get from Fiat,poor online manuals(that are often offline!),poor parts backup and outdated diagnostic equipment & it's no wonder alot of dealers are struggling.Fiat must take their fair share of the blame!
I reckon we will see less dealers in the future,hopefully they will be better but customers might have to travel further as a result.
 
faster4_tec said:
I think I have spoken to this guy, or one similar who was very interested to know about my two only usages and dissapointments of a certain cumbrian fiat dealership. He took all the details and got back to me with a response along the lines of the fact he was stockpiling all the complaints he coult to try and crack down on the worse ones!

The problem is the dealers just aren't interested in the cars

County Motors? God love 'em :rolleyes:
 
Wow i never thought they was that bad...i must use a good one then!
 
Now that is interesting. I bought an 11 month old Doblo ex Demo model about 7 months ago. Two months ago the gearbox started playing up. Took it back and the dealer couldn't have been more helpful. One new gearbox coming up, fresh from FIAT in Italy. Now that's about a £1000 worth of kit (including fitting etc) that frankly they didn't have to do. After all they could have claimed wear and tear and wanted me to contribute towards it. As FIAT in Italy authorised this it seems they are making an effort here (either that or the service and repair manager is a very persuasive guy).

As it is despite the problems I'd buy another FIAT because of the excellent service.
 
got to say when we had our fiat the dealer we used which was in bury near blackford bridge was great. had our wing mirror ripped off by a chav paid for the mirror fitted free and numerous other things they just did.

Always gave us good service and the guys always remembered us first name terms etc even thoguh we were only in there around 4 times in 3 years.
 
This is so simple to put right, at present after buying your car the dealer becomes dis-interested in you personally, so the answer is to put in a service receptionist that actually listens and cares about your problem. Then ditto with the service manager, workshop manager etc. If Fiat are at fault, explain it to the customer and tell them exactly whats being done, instead of now just saying... cars ready, thanks! Lastly, explain to your workshop staff that the customer wants their car back properly serviced, ALL items done not just the easily spotted ones, they dont want broken parts from ham fisted, non caring mechanics, they dont want grease all over their trim and paint. Its not rocket science and non of the above even costs anything, it can be done as there are a lot of other franchised dealers that do it already. As for Fiats comments about taking franchises away, several years ago in the mid 90s I think they said similar, they wanted all new clean and big dealers... all the little independant dealers were discarded and big corporate franchises put in their place. The result is the load of money grabbing idiots that look after your Fiat nowadays, instead of the old family run dealers that knew and loved Fiats for years, RIP! It wont happen, Alfa Romeo dealers had the same message a few years back at the 156 launch, they are still pants!
 
Helz said:
County Motors? God love 'em :rolleyes:

I bought a Brava 1.8 ELX of Ebay just before Xmas, 60k miles, perfect body work, no leaks, all electrics working; cost £350 :) I was very busy at work so didn't have time to change the cambelt myself (I always change the belt on any car I buy no matter what the service history says) and was struggling to find a garage willing to do the job as most didn't want to buy the cam clamps; so phoned County Motors, Penrith for a quote: £425 + vat:eek: :eek: as they said the job takes 6 hours :mad: and parts would be over £100 :mad:

In the end I waited a couple of weeks until I had a spare evening, bought the clamps online, belt and tensioner from local motor factor, and did the job from start to finish in 1 1/4 hours, total cost £55 :)

Gotta say the tensioner design is excellent, totally foolproof :)
 
Regarding technicians abilities. Fiat and Alfa Romeo are one of the first manufacturers to push all their dealer staff to become licensced technicians by the ATA. This is a push by the motor industry to promote good standards, like the corgi gas engineers licence and the new electrical licencing. Fiat and Alfa are at the forefront of this independant licencing system. Rob is a nice guy and I am sure he will get things done, as for me I am now a fully ATA licenced Master Technician, thanks to Fiat.
 
Fiat offer big discounts off list, so the margin is pretty small on new car sales. This means that there is not a huge amount of money for warranty work. They should look at the factory first as a decent build quality there would result in far fewer problems at the customers end. If you look at BMW they have a fantastic reputation for quality of service, this is down to two main things, the cars from the factory are well built to a good standard and the second thing is the BMW dealers approach to the customer. They take just as long to fix a problem (I have had 5 new BMW's), but they seem to be better at communicating with the customer and making them feel as though something is being done and they are concerned your problem.

The good thing is that Fiat made a profit in the last quarter, the first time they have made a profit in years. Unfortunately they still lost millions over the whole year, but if they can keep up the sales of the last quarter they will make profit.

No offence to many technicians, but a lot of them are fitters not mechanics and don't understand the cars (especially electrics). They use the diagnostic systems, but often you need to look beyond what the computer is telling you. I have fixed problems on our Ulysse, which our local dealer has been unable to do after several attempts.
 
poggy said:
No offence to many technicians, but a lot of them are fitters not mechanics and don't understand the cars (especially electrics). They use the diagnostic systems, but often you need to look beyond what the computer is telling you. I have fixed problems on our Ulysse, which our local dealer has been unable to do after several attempts.
Sounds like my current situation - TWO fault codes eventually gleaned off the car via Examiner [only taken them 2 and a half years to get these codes, up until now, nothing stored in memory] - the DET at the dealership had no idea what they meant, so faxed across to Fiat to get an answer...

...and they sent out a specialist to fix it!!! And 4 days later, same problem :bang:
 
poggy said:
They should look at the factory first as a decent build quality there would result in far fewer problems at the customers end. If you look at BMW they have a fantastic reputation for quality of service, this is down to two main things, the cars from the factory are well built to a good standard and the second thing is the BMW dealers approach to the customer.

No comparison,BM's cost 2 or 3 times price of most fiats,of course build quality will be better.

poggy said:
They take just as long to fix a problem (I have had 5 new BMW's), but they seem to be better at communicating with the customer and making them feel as though something is being done and they are concerned your problem.

I'm honest with my customers,if I don't know the fault i'll say so! Honesty gains respect from the customer & when it is sorted they are thankful.Add this to the fact at my garage will al;ways phone customer to let them know the stage of repairs/diagnostic...I know cause I do it & often phone customer weeks later to check everything is ok.

poggy said:
No offence to many technicians, but a lot of them are fitters not mechanics and don't understand the cars (especially electrics). They use the diagnostic systems, but often you need to look beyond what the computer is telling you.

All Fiat techs are given a training plan,this always includes electrics/engine management & examiner operations which they have to do like it or not.If they dont come up to scratch they have to do it again!

Stuart....cant remember if I asked you already but what were the codes obtained for your ulysse?
 
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