BE WARNED - ALFA WARRENTY AND BUILD ISSUES

[jamieboy]

Pwig said:

The Alfa UK warranty is unlimited milage ned.

When did that become official? I saw Christopher Nicoll said it in Auto Italia, but the alfaromeo.co.uk website still says 60,000 miles for the 3rd year.

[Pwig]

Start of the year I _think_ it's only a relatively new thing.

[Big Ned]

Well, Pwig you should know how long the dealer warranty is on an Alfa UK supplied car as you are a sales person at a UK franchised dealer.

It is my understanding that the manufactures warranty is 2 years unlimited mileage and the third year is limited 60k. This is what it says in the latest 2007 price book.

As you are a fully trained representative of Alfa UK I will take what you say as gospel.

I will check it out tomorrow, I hope your are right

Ned

Edited by Big Ned on Monday 28th May 22:44

[Pwig]

Me too

http://www.channel4.com/4car/rt/alfa+romeo/spider/...

Confirms it there.

[Big Ned]

Please tell me you get more training than this, they can’t expect you rely on channel 4 for your product knowledge

Would not surprise me.

Ned

[Pwig]

No but it's the only reference on google I could find.

[pdV6]

Bought my Alfa abroad and had no trouble at all getting my local dealer to do a few minor warranty jobs.

I can understand ARUK being upset at grey imports, but that's no reason not to honour the warranty - AR SpA will be reimburing the cost to them anyway.

"Refer to the vendor" is a stupid thing for them to say; what if you bought your car from one ARUK dealership and had it fixed by another insode of 2 years? Would the warranty be invalid then? Didn't think so.

[Pwig]

Deffo Unlimited milage.

[jamieboy]

pdV6 said:

Bought my Alfa abroad and had no trouble at all getting my local dealer to do a few minor warranty jobs.

I can understand ARUK being upset at grey imports, but that's no reason not to honour the warranty - AR SpA will be reimburing the cost to them anyway.

"Refer to the vendor" is a stupid thing for them to say; what if you bought your car from one ARUK dealership and had it fixed by another insode of 2 years? Would the warranty be invalid then? Didn't think so.

I guess it depends on what exactly is wrong. One of the damping 'bungs' on the hatch of our 147 wasn't aligned properly, so the hatch rattled a bit. Took it back to the dealer and they fixed it. The dealer should have picked it up in the PDI and fixed it before we saw the car, so I'm not sure they could claim that back from ARUK, could they? It's not really a warranty repair as such, so I guess there is a certain amount of goodwill work that the supplying dealer will carry out that another dealer might be reluctant to.

Or maybe I'm wrong and dealers can claim back time for that sort of thing - maybe pwig can let us know the official line?

[Big Ned]

I too would be interested to hear the official line as we are constantly doing work that we consider to be warranty work.

We used to take our cars to Perrys of Aylesbury body shop for paint defects or misaligned panels etc, the guy there showed me a memo that said they were to cut down warranty claims by 40%.

I have given up taking them in for body work warranty claims and do the work ourselves it is simply not worth the argument.

Ned

[Pwig]

There are some things that the dealer has to pay for. Misbuild issues not noticed when the car was delivered to the dealership/compound. Missing items mainly, or damaged bodywork. Obvisouly the issue is, with the OP's problem is that whether Alfa UK should pay for something Alfa Germany/Italy etc should be paying for. That's the issue I think.

So the answer is, some things Alfa pay, other things the dealer pays.

That helps things doesn't it?

[Kentish]

Surely Auto Lusso should resolve the issue with you (their customer) and Auto Lusso take it up with Alfa Italy direct for compensation?

I have an Alfa now and I don't think I'll be using the main dealer if they are anything like my local Fiat dealer.

I had a 2001 Punto with a known fault (electric steering rack and a safety issue). It had approx 5 months warranty remaining and I asked the main local dealer where the car was purchased to sort it under warranty and they straight away said it wouldn't be covered, I argued that of course it would and they said they'd look into it and it took them ..........5 months!

I'm sure you can guess what they ended up saying ....."sorry it's out of warranty". I had no correspondence to support the date of my claim as comm's had been face to face and by telephone

That kind of service is very poor and underhand, my impression of them after that was that they are a shower of sh.......

Obviously I don't wish to name and shame the Fiat Main Dealer in Canterbury publically .....so I won't here

Edited by Kentish on Tuesday 29th May 16:49

[odyssey2200]

Kentish said:

Surely Auto Lusso should resolve the issue with you (their customer) and Auto Lusso take it up with Alfa Italy direct for compensation?

I have an Alfa now and I don't think I'll be using the main dealer if they are anything like my local Fiat dealer.

I had a 2001 Punto with a known fault (electric steering rack and a safety issue). It had approx 5 months warranty remaining and I asked the main local dealer where the car was purchased to sort it under warranty and they straight away said it wouldn't be covered, I argued that of course it would and they said they'd look into it and it took them ..........5 months!

I'm sure you can guess what they ended up saying ....."sorry it's out of warranty". I had no correspondence to support the date of my claim as comm's had been face to face and by telephone

That kind of service is very poor and underhand, my impression of them after that was that they are a shower of sh.......

Obviously I don't wish to name and shame the Fiat Main Dealer in Canterbury publically .....so I won't here

Edited by Kentish on Tuesday 29th May 16:49

This all sounds soooo familiar only in my case it was an Uno gearbox, whining for the 3rd time still just in warranty.

That day I vowed never to by an Italial vehicle again.

I even turned down the chance to buy a Ducati and from other colleagues expeiances of Italian 2 wheelers they are no better.

[jamieboy]

odyssey2200 said:

This all sounds soooo familiar only in my case it was an Uno gearbox, whining for the 3rd time still just in warranty.

That day I vowed never to by an Italial vehicle again.

Some would say that writing off every car produced by an entire nation on the basis of poor service from a dealer 15 years ago was an over-reaction.

[odyssey2200]

jamieboy said:

odyssey2200 said:

This all sounds soooo familiar only in my case it was an Uno gearbox, whining for the 3rd time still just in warranty.

That day I vowed never to by an Italial vehicle again.

Some would say that writing off every car produced by an entire nation on the basis of poor service from a dealer 15 years ago was an over-reaction.

Fiat/ Alfa =same company, same shite components and shite dealer/importer attitude.

Some colleagues have bought Ducati and Aprilia motor bikes with bad experiances.

I bought a brand new car and, had I been treated properly and had a reasonable experiance I would have bought another.
But

The whole experiance was a catalogue of disasters and when the 'box started whining for the 3rd time the dealer, who had done the first 2 rebuilds, stalled and delayed till the warranty expired then said sorry your out of warranty.

Result was a similar age and Mileage Honda Civic 1.6i-16 being bought, followed by about 70 othere Hondas since all of which have performed faultlessly.

Fiat group had their chance to retail an Italian car fan and the completely Fked it up.
They won't get a second chance, ever!

[Kentish]

jamieboy said:

odyssey2200 said:

This all sounds soooo familiar only in my case it was an Uno gearbox, whining for the 3rd time still just in warranty.

That day I vowed never to by an Italial vehicle again.

Some would say that writing off every car produced by an entire nation on the basis of poor service from a dealer 15 years ago was an over-reaction.

Unfortunately, my local Alfa dealer is the same company as the Fiat dealer who I now hold with very low regard (the Fiat side).

However, I have heard that the Rainham Alfa dealer is very good so may try there. I may give the local one the benefit of the doubt as well but if they don't impress at the first visit I won't return.

Having just said bad things about the Fiat dealership, I was impressed by one of their managers when I had a chat with him about Barchettas ....and the sales guy was pretty helpful when I almost bought a Grande Punto for my runabout last year.

[ettore]

My experiences with Alfa dealers have actually been fine. Both of the 147`s I had were bought new as "grey imports", one had absolutely no faults at all wheras the second had a few niggles (dodgy central locking and a localised paint problem). I did take the precaution of having them serviced by a franchised dealership and had no problems at all with the warranty work from Alfa UK.

I do think it`s worth building a decent relationship with the supplier but surely there is something else amiss here?

[Big Ned]

Can I just make it clear, we are not a franchise dealer, we are an independent importer of new Alfa Romeos and we also have an Alfa Romeo service centre.

We are and have always been willing to do whatever we can to help out this particular customer. We have not had the opportunity to view the car and comment on the complaint by the customer.

As I have said before, just because the customer saved a lot of money does not mean the car should be anything other than perfect

[r1ch1e_uk]

Wow.

I have clearly touched upon a sore point here, I only wish I have the opportunity to send a link to the chap at Alfa UK with whom I spent the past 5 weeks arguing with.

I can confirm the following result
1. Alfa UK have stated they will not pay for the bodywork repair
2. Alfa UK have paid a gesture of good will as a result of the delay in managing the issue and as a gesture to a new and potential repeat Alfa (Auto Lusso only) customer
3. The dealer the car is currently at has offered to repair the car at a discount to resolve the issue ASAP and get me back in my car.

All sorted.

Appols to Ned for not following the 'correct' route, although I had actually taken the car for a warrenty issue with an indicator as well, things just mushroomed from there! sorry mate

To the guy who has issues with anything Italian - move on with life, and in any case, why on earth are you visiting this forum in any case!!

Looking forward to enjoying the GT this weekend!

Final thought - directed to the Alfa Ltd guys out there.


The simple solution for all of this is for you guys to make sure your colleagues in Italy produce cars to the same standard as any other car manufacturer. The fact that this posting has generated such a responce shows that there is an issue that requires an urgent internal review. I'm under the impression that Alfa is trying to rebuild it's image in the UK, with a plan to break into the US market. Issues as simple as body panel fitment simple should not happen!


Please prove all the skeptics wrong (trust me there are plenty out there), and make sure the quality checks are in place to make the Alfa Romero marque the one ALL of us want it to be. Is that too much to ask for?

Edited by r1ch1e_uk on Tuesday 29th May 19:00

Edited by r1ch1e_uk on Tuesday 29th May 19:02

[Pwig]

Also all UK supplied cars get PDI'd at a main service centre now who have a crack quality control squad operating, this would mean that your problem would not normally have slipped through the net.