B U Bhandari Car Care Centre at Wakad, Pune is the Service station for TATA cars and FIAT cars. Since I purchased a Fiat Palio Stile 1.6 Sport from B U Bhandari showroom at Pashan, Pune, I am getting the services done from their Wakad centre.
Good things:
1) Timely reminders about service schedule of your car - They will always send you SMS 2-3 weeks before expected service date. They also will call you up for booking an appointment.
2) Staff is fairly courteous.
3) They will tell expected budget in advance and in general don’t exceed that amount later at the time of actual billing.
4) Once the car is ready, they called me up (I have done 3 free services and 2 repairs out side the usual service schedule)
5) If a customer complains about a problem about a part of the car during warranty period, they replace it with new part without much hassles. Before second servicing, I heard some noise in one of the wheels and told them so. They found Brake Pads had a problem in left front wheel and replaced the same. Similarly, before 3rd service, the wiper motor started malfunctioning (instead of multi-speed, it started operating at same speed irrespective of the speed I chose). They replaced it without problems.
6) For general FIAT spare parts, the availability is not a big problem any more because of Ranjan Gaon factory. I busted one of the tail-lamp glass and had to get it repaired. However, they replaced entire unit (Tail Lamp cluster along with glass, reflector and lamps). Then I came to know that for almost all cars of any brand, this is the same procedure (they simply replace whole unit - there is no repair). My friend told that even for most of the Maruti cars (except M800 of course) it is the same thing so, I am not counting it against TATA/FIAT.
Now, coming to the problems:
1) When you are giving a FIAT car for servicing, it takes TOO MUCH TIME to create the Job Card. I think they have only 1-2 people for FIAT cars compared to a large number of people for TATA cars.
2) Cleaning is patchy at times. During 3rd service when taking delivery, we noticed quite a few greasy spots and had to get them cleaned.
3) Dent/Paint jobs are very costly. Not sure if all authorised showrooms are equally costly! Once I asked about making up a small scratch and their estimate was almost Rs 3000. Outside at a specialist paint shop, same thing got done for under Rs 1500.
4) During one of the long rides, one alloy wheel of my Fiat Palio got damaged. The replacement wheel took around 5 days to arrive. Also, they forgot to call me when the part arrived despite I paying Rs 5000 in advance for this. I kept calling them and finally found out that part had come and then I went to them and got it fitted. Total cost of one alloy wheel was Rs 7100 ) including Tubeless Tyre valve. So, I think FIAT spare parts which are not normally consumable items will take around 4-5 days to be delivered. Many parts come from Ranjangaon but some come from other countries (Alloy Wheel came from Brazil and hence took some time). I sincerely feel that they should have at least some inventory of even costly parts because one in thousand customers will always ask for something like this. Since there are limited number of FIAT care centres, they always have lots of Palios for servicing and should give sufficient importance to FIAT cars if not as much as TATA cars.
5) If customer doesn’t notice a small problem, it is unlikely that they will find it and do something about it. I think they are worried that if they have to replace something for a small reason, customers don’t want to hear about it and they expect all customers are having "CHALTA HAI" attitude about smaller problems. In first service they didn’t work on head lamp adjustment despite me telling them. Later they worked on it in 2nd service but it didn’t work as expected. Finally in 3rd service I got it done by personally being there with the service advisor. I am sure they would not have bothered about Wiper Motor problem unless I told them. I think that if they give free replacement of a lot of things to a lot of people for small faults, their Warranty statistics might get spoiled and hence they won’t do such things on their own. Customers should be vigilant about any problems in their car. I guess this would be valid for all dealers and not just B U Bhandari.
All in all, I would say that B U Bhandari Wakad Car Care centre is a decent service centre and my experience of 1 year had small issues here and there but nothing major yet. I will have to watch it for one or two more years to be able to say something as right now the car is just less than one year old and hence there are no major repairs yet.
Regards,
Jeevan