T-1000

My girlfriend has just ordered a new polo from the dealer in stourbridge west midlands. Anyone used these for servicing etc? They give us a good discount but did try it on a bit ie they had to correct the order form three times cause they kept overcharging.

[Edited by T-1000 - 12/1/2003 11:35:31 PM]

Neil Smalley

A friend of mine has had a VW polo for just 18 months, during that time it has had
2 major oil leaks
2 coil packs
air con problems

and is now flooding inside so badly the garage will have to strip the car down, just to find the leak. A job they can't do for 5 weeks.

My friend is now getting so miffed off with the car and dealer, she now wants rid or some kind of compensation as she no longer has any trust in the car or dealers.

Apart from the usual trading standards and VW customer service, what are her options.

I'm not sure she can reject the car as 'unfit for purpose' after 18 months and only 7500 miles, but any advice would be recieved with thanks

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

We havent been impressed with the customer service from VW, right upo your **** when you are buying but after that they treat you like dog dirt, apparently Smith Knight Fay in Stockport were quite nice to my wife and moderately efficient, therefore based on previous dealers we have used in the Manchester area this makes them worthy of high praise.

The Dash on our Sharan has cracked after 7000 miles, the rear wash wipe sounds like its eating itself, otherwise thus far its been reliable mechanically (considering its dismal showing in the reliability thing in Top Gear), however my parents have Rovers that never seem to miss a beat, considering most of middle class Britain buys VW and slags Rover off there is something wrong somewhere, perception and brand values versus the actual reality.

mynickers

And VW's pride themselves on build quality and reliability?

She has loads of rights under law, and if you start kicking up a fuss, and trying to get the media involved they'll soon start playing ball. If the constomer services are crap, go above their heads, find out the name of the MD, call or write letters. Also if I was her, I would write to http://www.bbc.co.uk/watchdog/, also get a few letters spun off to leading car mags.

Might also be worth a short trip to cit. advice, and also local trading standards making formal complaint to the TS. If especially if she CC's it to the dealer, that will soon make them sit up and pay attention.

I love a good punch up with this sort of thing, I wouldn't let them off the hook.

Gastro

My experience with VW with a new car is best summed up as awful...

I went through VW (useless), trading standards and a solicitor before eventually getting a brand new replacement after I rejected a Lupo GTi that developed a major engine oil leak after only 400 miles

The onus (?spelling) is on the garage - not VW. The garage in turn has to put a case forward to VW to get that money 'back'.

Good luck is all I can say - I'll *never* buy a new VW again.

Gastro


[Edited by Gastro - 11/30/2003 3:35:50 AM]

TAINTON

And heres me thinking im the only one.

Still got my VW Polo until January when its chopped in for Impreza ;-)

Have to say in the 3 years of ownership its been dreadful, not the car but the service side. Any1 in the Nottingham area avoid FOXs@West Bridgeford. Bunch of W@£KERS, problems encounted: overcharging, incompetent the list goes on.

Obviously sounds like your friend has just got a bad apple, get it fixed then sell it. Not sure on the legalities but im sure they have offered a car while its being repaired?

Best Of Luck

subevo

mate at work has a new beetle and has had several problems with replacement light clusters and 2 speedo pods due to dodgy electrics he is not impressed by the build and says he wont buy another vw product.dealer being incompetant at best.

rr_ww

Impartial reply time

Most of the problems that people get are NOTHING to do with the service department of your local VW dealer. The cars are built badly in the first place! Not that many are built in Germany anymore either! The eastern european countries that build them have no quality control facility (well they do its just not very good!) Same for anything built in South America like the new Beetles. Cars being Pdi'd were having to have subframes retightend!

The replacement parts sent by VAG around the world are said to be "optimised replacements" they are NOT. They are just the same! All this coil malarky that was on Watchdog. ALL those "new" ones fitted are failing too!

Know anyone with a Mk4 Golf? Bet he/shes had problems with window regulators breaking or door locks not working. VW only sent better ones to the US not anywhere else so VW technicians are fitting the exact same part KNOWING that its the same lump of plastic that will break on the new one!

Add on that security failure where you could break in without setting the alarm off!

High quality vehicles they are not. My advice? Buy a Mk2 or 3 Golf Gti. Actually very relaible cars compared to the current VW range.

Matt R

iTrader: (10)

My sister had a problem with hers leaking about 3 yrs ago when they facelifted the older S reg models, At the same time our dealer had two other cars in their workshop with the same problem, hers only had 1000 miles on it!
VW didn't want to know about rejecting the car as the dealer wouldn't back us up on it.

Could be the same problem with your friends car, I will see if she knows the reg number and perhaps they could qoute that to customer service, might help them rectify the fault, they had ours for 4 weeks trying to find it!

Matt

Kevin Mc

I've had my Passat for 2.5 years from new, and the car has been brilliant. Couple of problems fixed under warranty, but I've been more than pleased with the car.

Dealer is quite sh1te though - too busy to care.

ianc

With over 1000 users on Briskoda.net, we've not had any of the new type (J\L) coils fail. Version H (the failing one) was built in South America, before and after H are built elsewhere. It's a bosch part, blame bosch for trying to make em cheap!

Of course, we have heard of an Audi dealer that claimed to have replaced someone's H's and didn't.

VW customer service is nothing new, but then thats why I bought Skoda.

Just my thoughts...

Ian.

Bakerman

My bird has done 18k miles on her Bora V5 in 9 months and nothing has gone wrong. Service from Wantage was very good also.

Maybe a one off !?!

BenjC

The doors on my Mk4 Golf needed to be re-hung 4 times. The bloody thing also used to cut out when going round corners above 40 mph, great fun as the power steering and brake servos stop working too.

I was told by the VW service dept that it was "non essential" work and they couldn't book me in for two weeks. Soon put them straight on a few things.

GTI

VW/Audi Smith Knight Fay in Stockport are very good (Y) Had 3 cars from them and can't fault any of the dealerships - whatever make it is. Biggest Independent Dealer in Europe or so I'm told

robby

i had a mk3 golf gti, perfect in every way and very economical as well, build quality better than bmw
i later had a mk4 golf for a few months, new power steering rack, track rod ends, ball joints but nothing cured the knocking through the steering. Must admit i am tempted to buy a later model gti though?

CrisPDuk

Another thumbs up here for Smith Knight & Fay in Stockport, but avoid at all costs Gilbert Lawton in Macclesfield


BTW the leak: The company where I used to work bought five golfs of various specs, three of them hadn't had the gasket fitted that seals the fusebox into the bulkhead, every time it rained all the water from the bonnet gutters ran straight through into the footwell

Stuart J

Ianc

Agree with your comments

We have had 2 Skoda Octavias since March & have covered about 45000 miles in total. Cars are fantastic & our dealer is good (used to be a VW dealer but ditched them in favour of Skoda)
So moral is sell the VW & buy a Skoda, same car just built properly & priced fairly

wilf

Not sure on the skoda build quality. On my Fabia bits used to fall off it with regularity -= window winders, rear view mirror, door mirror ajusters, seat adjustment.

Good car for the money but not as well built as my current clio (I kid ye not).

Doco

Clarkes stourbridge were useles when I use to have my passat serviced there. Very bad customer service, they evn blatently lied to me. Wolverhampton is supposed to be better tho.

Simon S3

Sorry mate, but Wolverhampton VW are dire. They put the wrong oil in my mate`s TDI Passat (If it`s on the long interval VSI servicing it needs special oil) and tried to charge him for replacing it with the proper stuff.

TBH though, I`ve had four or five VW`s (2 Mk 4 Golfs) and they`ve all been excellent, no coil pack or window regulator faults at all.

apjames

My experience :

Golf #1: (mk4 GTi T)
- Steering clunks
- C-pillar clunks
- Dash, door and rear panel rattles
- Exhaust rattles
- Brake failure - replacement master cylinder, ABS and servo (it was returned 3 times 'fixed' by 2 different dealers - pedal sank to the floor on braking. C'mon, it wasn't like it wasn't noticeable!)
- Engine cover, dash panels and turbo heat shield broken by dealer fixing above problems.
- Misfiring
- Turbo lag
- Rear washer failure (twice)
- Drivers seat squeaks and rattles

Golf #1: (mk4 GTi T) replacement after 1 year for above Golf.
- Faulty steering wheel
- mis-aligned doors (5 attempts to fix), bonnet and front wings.
- unbalanced wheels
- notchy gearchange
- faulty clutch - High bite point and pedal would sick to floor (replacement master cylinder eventually. Fobbed off more than 5 times with 'no fault found')
- faulty cd player (eventually. Again fobbed off more than 5 times with 'no fault found')
- cold start problem. (car in dealer around 10 times to sort)
- dealer lost keys when in for service (they replaced all lock barrels FOC)
- dealer replaced tyres and steering wheel was not aligned properly. Took 5 attempts to get wheel aligned!)
- coil pack failure
- numerous check engine lights due to turbo pipes coming adrift/valves failing
- changed bank account. Took 10 phone calls, 2 letters and 1 fax to change direct debit details with VW finance. Then every month for the last 4 months I would receive 'your account has not been paid this month' - yes "because you couldn't be arsed taking the money out of my account!"

Sold it a month ago.

In my experience, dealers have improved but the technicians doing the work don't get told the problems you report to the service desk, or carry out shoddy work with lack of attention to detail. C'mon, who takes FIVE attempts to fix a wheel alignment problem??!

I would arrive at the dealer to be told whatever fault it was in for had been fixed and the car was roadtested to be 100%. And the faults would be apparent before leaving their car park! Get the technician to experience the fault there and then. Take the car back the next day for the same thing to happen.

bloody useless.

[Edited by apjames - 12/4/2003 11:12:23 AM]

Torus

Had a MK 3 GTI 16v excelent car, crud dealers I'd but another and get it serviced else where

gareth

Always great to find a thread like this a couple of days before taking delivery of your new VW! Anyway, that was last weekend, and my 1 week old Touran goes back into the dealers tomorrow for the second attempt at stopping the alarm going off all night...

Have spoken to the lease company who have said that they allow three attempts at fixing a fault before rejecting the car, so it seems like they're on my side.

Saw a comment re Gilbert Lawson of Macclesfield and of course this is the dealer handling my problem .

Have to say that they have been pretty good in terms of looking at it at short notice and also sorting out a hire car when there was no courtesy car available. Depends who you deal with though - my missus had a big bust-up with one ar$ehole on the service desk but since then we have dealt with someone else much more helpful.

Anyone know of a VW-oriented bulletin board? Not expecting something for enthusiasts, just somewhere to discuss FAQs, known problems, tactics for dealing with sh!te dealers etc...

Cheers,
Gareth


[Edited by gareth - 12/8/2003 12:32:06 PM]