I doubt that the VW head office will give a rat's rear end how a customer who owned an eleven-year-old car was treated by a dealer. VW dealers, in my own experience, are incredibly short sighted in respect of wanting to provide decent service to older vehicles. They stay in business by selling you the next new thing, like an $80,000 Phaeton, not by giving you nickle & dime repairs on your old car... particularly when you bring your own parts in, so they can't even charge the usual dealer parts markup!
These days, you can't even talk directly to the mechanic who works on your car at a VW dealership. You talk to a "service advisor" instead, who is nothing more or less than a salesman. The last time I seriously considered getting my vehicle VW-dealer-serviced, the questions I asked the service advisor were obviously well beyond his own mechanical knowledge & ability, and he had to take a message and act as go-between to ask the mechanic directly. The answer he eventually gave me was a garbled mess, as you might expect would result from a grade-school game of "telephone". So I eventually managed to get the mechanic on the phone directly, much to the irritation of the service advisor. After I had my correct answer from the horse's mouth, the service advisor got back on the line and told me in no uncertain terms that Vanagons were too old to be of any interest for the dealership to service, and he suggested I check the yellow pages for an independant European car mechanic for future service work.
So, from that experience, I have determined that VW dealership service departments are run by a$$holes. I distinguish the service advisors & managers from the mechanics themselves, who IMHO are not to blame for this sorry bean-counting mess. (The mechanic I spoke with on the phone said as much to me, which must have embarassed the hell out of the service advisor if he was in ear-shot). This is a chain-of-command issue, from the top down, which is why I so seriously doubt you'll get any joy from VW of Canada head office for the way you were treated with a 1994 car.
However, the VW service advisors are not hypocrites at least, which I suppose is a point in their favour. That service advisor I'm writing about more or less said, in all honesty: "I'm going to be an a$$hole to anyone with an older car who isn't going to generate the kind of money a newer vehicle will generate, because you frankly are not worth my time."
Moral of the story - find an indy VW mechanic who you trust, or buy a Volvo, where the dealerships provide excellent service to older cars (in my experience). Volvos are (or at least, used to be) sold on their longevity, while VWs never have been. The Volvo dealer treats (or used to treat) the older-model car owner with respect, as the dealer knows that owner (and frequently his whole family) will probably stick with Volvos over the long haul, and will doubtless buy a new vehicle (or several) at some point. Volvo dealers take a much longer-term view to profit-making than VW dealers, in my experience. The VW dealer needs the quick-hit cash infusion NOW NOW NOW!
(By the way, for comparison's sake, anyone know what a VW dealer charges to de-coke the intake on a new-ish TDi? I'm betting it's $1000 for that job alone. If you think $1200 spent at the VW service department is a big investment and they should pay attention to you for it, from the dealership's perspective, and probably head office's, too, you have another think coming.)
Topic: PLEASE HELP - GREENBELT VW IS SCREWING ME OVER!!! (Read 13807 times)
