VW customer service - frustrating

[Umai Naa!!]

Long parts ETAs are normal.

We currently have a customer waiting til the end of December for a low pressure air conditioning hose from the compressor to the condensor. It's completely out of our hands, and believe me, we've tried pulling all possible strings with VW, as well as ringing all the bigger dealers to see if they had one. Obviously, VW are waiting for the next batch of them to come through from the manufacturer.

Two days to fit a DSG is a bit of a stretch, but then again there's no harm in being that extra bit thorough.

[Tommy]

Tommy, can I ask which dealer you bought from? I'm pretty sure my dealer would come to the party with loan cars, but they have a good reputation and a huge pool of cars from which to supply a loaner.

hi there

i bought the car from osborne park volkswagen who refused to help in anyway. wouldn't even respond to emails or phone calls. john hughes ended up doing the work and helped me to get a loan car from VW australia. VW australia threatened to sue me if i contacted them anymore and said they would even involve my employer because i was contacting them during what must be my work hours.

i ended up dumping the car at 3 months of ownership. total and utter lemons these so called world cars of the year...

[Tommy]

You had the DSG replaced OR the mechatronics replaced?

the whole DSG was replaced. they supposedly took one from a brand new car and stuck it in mine. would have been easier for them to just give me the new car... the second one was failing too after only a couple of weeks. slipping out of gear...scary....

[Maverick]

i bought the car from osborne park volkswagen who refused to help in anyway. wouldn't even respond to emails or phone calls. john hughes ended up doing the work and helped me to get a loan car from VW australia. VW australia threatened to sue me if i contacted them anymore and said they would even involve my employer because i was contacting them during what must be my work hours.

Unless you were making threats and ranting and raving Volkswagen wouldn't have made threats to sue you and to contact your employer.

Volkswagen aren't going to go out of their way to help anyone in that situation and treating the staff with some respect goes a long way.

i ended up dumping the car at 3 months of ownership. total and utter lemons these so called world cars of the year...

They wouldn't be as popular as they and win all these awards if they were all lemons like you're making out. There are always going to be a few that have problems and that's why you have a warranty. Unfortunately you had a car that had a problem with the dsg.

[Umai Naa!!]

A lot of it comes down to the owner's expectations of what the car should and shouldn't do. The DSG is a very misunderstood piece of gear. Since it's often sold as an 'automatic' people freak out when it goes about doing things that a typical automatic transmisson doesn't do.

I dare say, a lot of DSGs have been replaced for no reason at all.

[Brendan_A]

the whole DSG was replaced. they supposedly took one from a brand new car and stuck it in mine. would have been easier for them to just give me the new car... the second one was failing too after only a couple of weeks. slipping out of gear...scary....

Do you still own the car? If not can you please stop bagging out VW! I'm sure a lot of others are sick of hearing your story. Just because your car is a lemon doesn't mean all VW are. Go buy a $100,000 car and i bet you'll still have problems.

[Umai Naa!!]

Agreed.

Last report I read on warranty concerns in the Australian market, had Mercedes Benz out in front by some margin.

Besides, having one particular problem doesn't mean the car is a lemon. By a Daewoo-engineered VE Commodore and tell me how great they aren't.

[Dubya]

If the car was trouble free for 3 years for everyone VW wouldn't bother offering a warranty.

Wouldn't the warranty a manufacturer is prepared to offer be longer the more reliable the car?

The manufacturer of a really reliable car wouldn't say "Trust me - our cars will be fault free for the first three years!" which would beg the question, they would say "We will rectify any defect in manufacture that occurs within three years." And if they knew their cars would be defect-free for longer, they might even offer a longer warrranty for the competitive advantage such a statement about the reliability of their cars would give them.

Imagine what customers would think, Maverick, if you said "My workmanship is so good I don't guarantee it!"

[Dubya]

Unless you were making threats and ranting and raving Volkswagen wouldn't have made threats to sue you and to contact your employer.

I cannot think of any circumstances short of outright criminality in which it would not be as reprehensible as it is inappropriate and unprofessional for a company to threaten consequences for a customer's livelihood and, even then, it would be the police and not the employer that should be contacted. I am surprised anyone would condone VGA behaving in this way to a customer who, it is quite understandable, would be prone to getting a little hot under the collar - not that I know that they did.

They wouldn't be as popular as they and win all these awards if they were all lemons like you're making out. There are always going to be a few that have problems and that's why you have a warranty. Unfortunately you had a car that had a problem with the dsg.

Most of the car of the year awards have limited scope to assess reliability, so it is quite possible for a lemon to receive a COTY award, take the Leyland P76 for example, Wheels Magazine's 1973 COTY recipient.

[Tommy]

I cannot think of any circumstances short of outright criminality in which it would not be as reprehensible as it is inappropriate and unprofessional for a company to threaten consequences for a customer's livelihood and, even then, it would be the police and not the employer that should be contacted. I am surprised anyone would condone VGA behaving in this way to a customer who, it is quite understandable, would be prone to getting a little hot under the collar - not that I know that they did.



Most of the car of the year awards have limited scope to assess reliability, so it is quite possible for a lemon to receive a COTY award, take the Leyland P76 for example, Wheels Magazine's 1973 COTY recipient.

quite simply i was trying to get some answers about what was happening to my car. it got to the point where I was begging them to replace the car. It had more than $30 000 of repairs done to it in the space of a couple of months. it was hard to live with. at no point in time was i abusive, even after their customer service people sent me the very threatening email. their customer service, or lackof, was disgusting... this was my third VW and I guess i felt i was entitled to better treatment...