I have a 2.5 year old 500 Twinair - I bought it 10 months ago. At the time, the salesman told me Fiat only give a 2 year warranty, so convinced me I needed to pay extra for one of their warranties as well.
Only problems I had initially were the car wasn't valeted when I collected it, and one of the front windscreen washer nozzles was missing. I did report it to the dealer, but bought another nozzle online and just cleaned it myself. I read online that the nozzles can pop out, it's quite common and the replacement was cheap.
The car has always seemed to go through screenwash quite quickly - now we know why. The rear passenger footwell is soaking wet and smelling of screenwash. The rear seats are rarely used, so we hadn't spotted this before.
I rang the local branch of the dealer to see if this was covered by the additional warranty I'd bought. They told me the car is covered by the 3rd year dealer warranty, and told me to call their Fiat dealer in another town.
The Fiat dealer's service department told me that splitting washer pipes are a known issue with the 500, but warned me that Fiat may or may not contribute to the cost of repair as a goodwill gesture. First thing to do is diagnose the issue.
Except diagnosis involves so much work - removing seats and carpet and rear bumper, etc. - that it could easily cost over £400 just to take it to pieces. And there is no guarantee that Fiat will contribute a penny. On top of that fixing it and putting it all back together could easily cost more than that on top.
So apparently, I could be facing a bill of over £800 to repair this. ("Or even more than that," said the service dept.)
I'm shocked that if I want what's apparently a known issue repaired, I may have to end up paying a small fortune. For a car that's less than 3 years old, is covered by the 3rd year of the warranty and has a warranty purchased from the dealer on top.
The branch that sold me the car have given me the number of Fiat customer service, and I'm going to call them, but I'm now seeing stories online of how useless and generally unhelpful they are - are they really this bad? Are they likely to help?
Can we simply disconnect the rear washer pump?
Is it really so costly to fix?
And is there any risk that the bottom of the car body has been damaged by the soaking carpet?
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Only problems I had initially were the car wasn't valeted when I collected it, and one of the front windscreen washer nozzles was missing. I did report it to the dealer, but bought another nozzle online and just cleaned it myself. I read online that the nozzles can pop out, it's quite common and the replacement was cheap.
The car has always seemed to go through screenwash quite quickly - now we know why. The rear passenger footwell is soaking wet and smelling of screenwash. The rear seats are rarely used, so we hadn't spotted this before.
I rang the local branch of the dealer to see if this was covered by the additional warranty I'd bought. They told me the car is covered by the 3rd year dealer warranty, and told me to call their Fiat dealer in another town.
The Fiat dealer's service department told me that splitting washer pipes are a known issue with the 500, but warned me that Fiat may or may not contribute to the cost of repair as a goodwill gesture. First thing to do is diagnose the issue.
Except diagnosis involves so much work - removing seats and carpet and rear bumper, etc. - that it could easily cost over £400 just to take it to pieces. And there is no guarantee that Fiat will contribute a penny. On top of that fixing it and putting it all back together could easily cost more than that on top.
So apparently, I could be facing a bill of over £800 to repair this. ("Or even more than that," said the service dept.)
I'm shocked that if I want what's apparently a known issue repaired, I may have to end up paying a small fortune. For a car that's less than 3 years old, is covered by the 3rd year of the warranty and has a warranty purchased from the dealer on top.
The branch that sold me the car have given me the number of Fiat customer service, and I'm going to call them, but I'm now seeing stories online of how useless and generally unhelpful they are - are they really this bad? Are they likely to help?
Can we simply disconnect the rear washer pump?
Is it really so costly to fix?
And is there any risk that the bottom of the car body has been damaged by the soaking carpet?
Any advice would be much appreciated.