09 Passat - Turbo Diaphragm Went Today

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flossie

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I have a 09 Passat, on drive down to Cork today i was coming along country road when a shudder occurred in the car, engine warning light came on (the coil one) and i lost power. Scary as i was going uphill at the time, but lucky as it was 06:30 this morning so nobody behind me. Called breakdown assistance, get recovery out to me and end up getting towed to VW garage - lucklily i wasn't too far from home so managed my local one.

After diagnostic check (which they said would be 'goodwill', turns out the diaphragm on the turbo pressure sensing line (please correct any of this if it's wrong - not technical savvy with cars!). Luckily only this sealed unit needed replacing, not the whole turbo. The car is a UK import so was sold with 3 year warranty and this is a grey area over here according to the garage. They spoke with VW who replied that they would NOT goodwill the part i needed (was around €200 excluding labour), but they WOULD goodwill a new turbo for me, if i contribut 30% and pay for labout myself - way more expensive. I wenty for the part to be fitted instead, luckily was done by the end of business today and i managed to get a service done as well.

I pointed out that the service (minor one, 70K km) included a diagnostic check, so where was my 'goodwill diagnostic' they had promised me to which i got the response 'we knocked €20 off the service'. Pah!

I am struggling to understand whhy VW would offer to goodwill a €1200 turbo to me, but not a part for €200? Is it worth going to them and pushing this further in the hope that i could get something back form them? For repair and serviice today i paid €550, could have been a lot worse i know, but still a nasty surprise.....
 
Perhaps they know of an underlying design issue in which repacing some part may put pressure on another. I know you don't want to hear it but I have heard from several friends and colleagues that some Passats don't cut the mustard when it comes to the reliability which you expect from VW. I would directly ask VW why they were prepared to make such an offer in favour of simply replacing a cheaper part.
 
Thanks Woodie, i am going to be calling them later on and asking that. I thought i had been lucky in my Passat being fairly OK so far, hope it isn't the start of a bad run! :(
 
That sounds bad well if its UK model you are entitled for 3 yrs warranty push for it if you can as that warranty is Europe wide. You might have to push hard but its worth trying
 
Get onto vw ireland. car has 3 year warranty from uk. something similar happened to a friend of mine with a saab bought in uk. 2 yr warranty here & 3 yr in uk, had a problem after 2 years and got onto saab ireland and they agreed to fix it free of charge. good luck with it.
 
In the UK the 3rd year of the warranty is actually paid for by the dealers if I recall correctly and not directly by VW. If the car was brought into the country by a VW dealer they will honour the 3rd year of the warranty whereby if it was a private import you may find it difficult to get them to homour the 3rd year.
 
Petermack said:
In the UK the 3rd year of the warranty is actually paid for by the dealers if I recall correctly and not directly by VW. If the car was brought into the country by a VW dealer they will honour the 3rd year of the warranty whereby if it was a private import you may find it difficult to get them to homour the 3rd year.
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It was bought in by a dealer (not VW, a generic used car dealer). The 3rd year is paid by dealers in UK to some insurance policy for the extra year, so need to look at the T&Cs of it all. There was a Passat my age in the garage with €9.5k worth of work done on it (don't ask!) and had a NI plate, but there were issues with the owner claiming it was covered by the 3rd year, and VW saying no, so garage wouldn't release the car until they got paid - a couple of months it has been sat there!

I had to pay to get mine fixed there and then as i needed it for work, and whilst €400 isn't the worst amount, it's an unexpected expenditure that i would prefer not to have spent. I was on the Irish VW site, and sent them a 'contact me' request outlining the basics, but heard nothing form them as yet. Coudln't find a phone number to call direct. Will keep you updated on the situation.....
 
Update on this......

Sent a 'contact us' message to VW after the car was repaired, received email saying we would call within 24 hours. That didn't happen. Sent another one on Saturday asking the same, and had an email from them instead asking for the chasis number (I gave my reg number initially, thought this would all be linked). Am overseas till next week so will update when i hear something back....
 
Just had a phone call to discuss. VW acknowledged that the part should not have failed but couldn't explain why i wasn't offered the part goodwill, if i had been offered the whole turbo unit. They are to call the garage that did the repairs and try to figure things out. However, the person on the phone did wonder out loud "it may be that replacing the individual gives it a higher chance of failure in future, that could be why".....something i certainly wasn't told at the time!

Anyhows, update when i hear more....
 
Update:

Spoke with VW again yesterday. Apparently the garage didn't actually ask them to goodwill the part i needed (was this to get more money out of me?) and VW cannot retrospectively give me money back for a goodwill. However, they are going to give me my next service free - i made sure they agreed that this was the next major service!

I'm happy enough with that, anything is better than nothing i guess :)
 
It's depressing to see that VW aloof 'customer service' hasn't changed much since my time dealing with them. I had a lemon VW Vento (which eventually did me a favour and went on fire ... by itself) and it couldn't be fixed in the months prior to this by 2 VW dealerships. They did fleece me of £2,000 for zero result though.

The car had an intermittant stalling problem. I ended up writing to VW in Wolfsburg about the poor service I got, and these letters were simply passed back to VW Ireland, who could only say "we sold a lot of beetles, we must be doing something right". I would never buy a VW ever again. Not because of the cars (which incidentally are of average reliability) but because the people who made mine 'couldn't' fix it.
 
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