I bought a VW Golf 1 year ago - along with a 'pay monthly' servicing & maintenance plan. The salesman sold me this plan on the basic that the £16/month payments would accrue to less than the total amount of the yearly/10,000 mile services (which ever comes first - you get the picture). The maths seemed quite straight forward - £16 * 36 months = £576 i.e. less than the normal £200 * 3 years which we were told it would cost if we were to pay for services as and when they were due...
Simple enough you might think - here comes the twist (say with me)... VW's 'long life servicing', a regime whereby the vehicle no longer necessarily comes in at the 1 year / 10,000 mile point, only when the newly developed long life oil is deemed to need changing via some engine management system. This apparently could take you all the way up to 20,000 miles/ 2 years if you are that type of driver (i.e. not the stop start stuff) - see: www.volkswagen.co.uk/services/servicing/longlife_s...e
Anyway, so at the one year point I get a letter from the dealer informing me that the car needed to be brought in for servicing (with some blurb stressing the importance of regular servicing in order to maintain safety, reliability and re-sale value), no problem I thought given I had already paid for it. Imagine my confusion after I had dropped off the car at the garage to return home to an answering machine message from the dealer informing me that the car wasn't due a service and I should come back and pick it up. When I returned to the garage I was then given this spiel about the long life servicing. Should I have known the whole plan pivoted on the risk of when this oil management system started to flash I wouldn't have touched it with a barge pole.
So now I find myself 1 year and £192 into this agreement only to find out that it may only pay for one extremely expensive service (i.e. if the car only needs a service once every two years the next one will be due 4 years down the line and well out of the scope of this 3 year plan). I could cancel the plan now and loose the £192, or continue probably for another year until I had paid £384 for 1 service (any which way I seem doomed to loose a fair amount of money).
I was more astounded to find out that a friend who also bought her car from the same dealer at around the same time (who didn't allow herself to get roped into this scam), had her 'long life' service facility disabled by the dealer, meaning she would have to go and have her car serviced annually (long life oil or not) !!!
It would appear to me that the dealer is using the good technology that has been developed by VW (which should be of benerfit to the buyer) to make considerable amounts of money off trusting customers like myself.
Is anyone else in the same predicament? Is there anything that can be done about this?
Bob.
(Edited by HJ to remove all refernce to the dealer's name.)
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This is about par for what you can expect from VW main agents.
On my Golf 1.8t(2000W) I understood that you could opt for either - annual service or the long life regime.
I opted for the annual service but the Service indicator was not disabled. It starts flashing 2,000 miles before the service is due - calculated under the long life regime. From memory the first time it did this coincided with the 10K service. On the 20k service it hadn't started flashing but did so soon after the service as the garage did not reset it!
Given the first couple of services are little more than oil changes - not even sparking plugs(assuming it is a petrol engine and not one of those nasty diesels!!)are changed - you have been conned.
I would write to VW and see their response.
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Did the dealer ask you how many miles you did annually? They "should" have calculated the cost of the plan based on the mileage and type of driving you do.
Does your £16 include repairs (e.g. brake pad replacement) & tyres?
I was quoted ~£12/month servicing alone. I didn't take it up though not because I thought it was a rip-off but I was a bit unsure on the terms if you decided to sell your car after 2 years or so.
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whiskey - variable servicing is one option. You can still have it serviced and tell them to refill with the oil which requires annual/10,000 mile servicing.
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Thanks for all your replies, It appears that I may be able to negotiate the long life feature to be turned off (I can't imagine why someone would want to have it on when they had taken out one of these types of agreements seen as it is designed to take you beyond the 10,000 mile / 1 year service period). The dealer sold me both service and maintenance (which did include pads - I was mildly relieved about this when I discovered the other day the dealer was quoting nearly £400 for the replacement of front and back pads !!!). The dealer did ask about the mileage (not the type of mileage) - I was quite low at 10,000 per year - I dread to think what it would have cost for a high mileage driver...
I'll let you know how I get on,
Many thanks,
Bob.
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£400 for a pad change??? Is it an 18 wheeler?
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£400 for a pad change??? Is it an 18 wheeler?
No, but it is a Volkswagen ;)
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this is rather interesting - from HJ's Top Car Auction Today (right)
......in the other halls it was interesting to see that Leaseplan doesn?t seem to go with VAG?s Longlife service regime....
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Eventually managed to get this thing resolved - after much twoing and frowing between the dealer and VW's service admin department it turns out that my car can be transferred from long life to the standard servicing plan.
A word of warning to future buyers though - VW's will not have the facility to turn off this long life plan after Sept '05 (or not until the first service is due at the least). Presumably the dealers will still be trying to push these types of service plans, trying to pull the wool so far over your eyes you might find people start calling you Larry.
Bob.
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When I queried it with my dealer, I was told that Leaseplan specify the 10k service regime (with cheap(er) oil). I can guess at why:
many drivers now seem to think that opening the bonnet is not necessary between services, yet the multitude of postings to the BR regarding heavy oil consumption of many new cars (especially the VAG TDis) show that 10k is pushing it before running too low on oil, let alone 20k...,
also that brake pads would get changed more often on a variable scheme - pads that would last 10k+ miles would be left alone, but might be changed under the variable scheme if it was thought that the car would not be back for another 20k.
JohnM
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When I queried it with my dealer, I was told that Leaseplan specify the 10k service regime (with cheap(er) oil). I can guess at why: many drivers now seem to think that opening the bonnet is not necessary between services, yet the multitude of postings to the BR regarding heavy oil consumption of many new cars (especially the VAG TDis) show that 10k is pushing it before running too low on oil, let alone 20k..., also that brake pads would get changed more often on a variable scheme - pads that would last 10k+ miles would be left alone, but might be changed under the variable scheme if it was thought that the car would not be back for another 20k. JohnM
This may well be related to Duty of Care rules/laws which employers giving company cars are subject to. So, if necessary, Leaseplan (on behalf of the employer) can show Health & Safety people that the car has been regularly inspected. 20K miles may be considered too great.
At my wife's place, the AA come around every week to check the pool cars as no one would responsibility for doing it.
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My daughter bought a new Seat Ibiza (VW Polo in a different body) recently and I wasn't sure about the maint package but she wanted to go for it.
It was something like £21/mth for 12K/yr for 3 yrs, for service, maint & tyres. The extra for the tyres was £2/mth which seems ridiculous as (based on other small FWD cars we've had) it's likely to need a set of tyres in that time.
The dealer told us the car needed an annual service, and there's a service reminder sticker in the car.
So how can you tell if it's on variable or fixed servicing?
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The dealer told us the car needed an annual service, and there's a service reminder sticker in the car. So how can you tell if it's on variable or fixed servicing?
Read the manual :-)
If it is like my golf there is a way to interrogate the car to tell you how many miles/days estimated to service.
If Seats are like VW then it is either 10kmiles/1 year fixed or variable mileage but no more than 2 years between services.
From the sticker it sounds like fixed servicing.
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My 1999 VW Bora (2000 model year) has oil and filter changes done by National (much cheaper than VW dealerships), so I reset the service interval indicator myself.
The Haynes Golf/Bora manual states that for models manufactured from model year 2000, if the owner resets the service interval indicator, it will automatically be for the 10k mile interval.
To set the variable service interval VW dealership technicians use a special dedicated instrument and should then place a printout in the vehicle's service history; therefore, if you wish to continue with the variable service interval, which takes into account number of starts, journey lengths, vehicle speeds, brake pad wear, fuel consumption etc then you have to have it set by a dealership.
To reset the display yourself, switich off the ignition. Press and hold down the trip reset button at the bottom of the speedometer.
Switch on the ignition and release the reset button, noting that the service will appear in the display.
Turn the digital clock reset knob clockwise and the display will return to normal; switch off the ignition to complete the resetting procedure.
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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PS
Once there are 2,000 miles to go to a fixed interval service there will be a warning, repeated at each 100 mile countdown.
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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