UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

Separate subjects.

As far as I can make sense of the manual & coding, my 2015 1.2 110 TSI is on a variable service schedule. What doesn't seem to make sense is that a new engine can apparently run for up to two years before an oil change, but then must have one annually thereafter. Other cars I've had have maintained the variable oil servicing for the life of the car, not just the first service.

Anyone have any recommendations for third party warranty extension? I wasn't going to bother but ever since the dealer performed the first service, I've had a couple of faults, almost certainly introduced by the dealer. Don't fancy picking up the tab for these after the warranty expires next year.

Go for the VW direct extended warranty. I had it on my Tiguan and it paid for itself

If I decide to get an extended warranty, I'll also be buying the VW warranty.

I don't understand what you mean about a car being on variable servicing until its first service. There are VWG guidelines on which service regime should be suitable for cars, typically if you only clock up 6K>10K a year, then fixed ie miles/time servicing is the one to go for.
My wife's previous 2002 Polo came (imported if that makes any difference) set for variable servicing and it asked to be serviced at about 18 months - maybe 15K miles.
My current car, a 2011 Audi S4 also seems to have come set for variable servicing, I bought it at 2.25 years old and 12.5K miles and it was still set on variable servicing, which I found strange as its use up to that time suited fixed miles/time, ie annual servicing, but as it came with an extended Audi warranty, I left it on that, changed the year at the inbetween times and only ever paid for 2 Audi services before it ran out of warranty - so I did keep within the servicing requirements if I had needed to use the warranty.
My wife's current car an August 2015 Polo 1.2TSI 110PS, came set for fixed servicing, which suited the use that car is being put to, ie roughly 7.5>8.0K miles a year, but I considered that it was set up this way by the dealer to fit in with the 3 years pre paid service plan?
As these cars tend to be the property of the person handing it in for servicing, I would expect that you would be asked and advised as to how it would get set up, either at PDI if you indicated that your annual mileage would be low, or at first variable service time as they could see that your current annual mileage was low - though I would expect that the final say would be in your hands.

So, what sort of issues have you had with that car that needed you to use the warranty?

Wish email notification of replies worked for this site...

Digging a bit deeper it seems that the dealer took it upon themselves to switch to annual servicing after the first variable service. Apparently it's more "convenient" for me. I'm still struggling to get my head around inspections vs oil service & the service schedule booklet isn't helping. I've raised it with VW & got a call back from someone who didn't understand it either, so I'm hopefully now getting an explanation from technical.

I don't understand this notion of a car/engine designed for variable servicing benefitting from annual servicing if the mileage is low. I can however see the benefit to the dealer in changing the oil twice as often as it appears the manufcaturr intended. Maybe I'm just being thick but it looks like the dealer has some explaining to do.

As for warranty, immediately after the first service I started getting a random error pop up on the display together with a warning bong. But it was only fleeting & too fast to actually read. After many of these incidences I managed to piece enough of it together. It was warning not to leave the vehicle unless the gear lever was in park. This was loged in as a fault code & the diagnosis was a new ECU. Two days after that was fitted the airbag warning lit permanently. After diags on that today I'm told that there were many stored errors, mostly meaningless. They've reset everything so I now need to run it & see what happens next. My concern is that we go through a succession of "no fault found" exercises until the day after the warranty runs out, when magically the source of these problems is accurately diagnosed to something very expensive.

rbz5416 wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 9:16 pm Wish email notification of replies worked for this site

They work fine for me. You should receive an email for a PM or a topic reply you’ve commented in or started

Have you checked your junk/spam folders? Who is your email hosted by?

alexperkins wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 9:27 pm Have you checked your junk/spam folders? Who is your email hosted by?

Gmail & nothing in spam. It's never worked for this site for some reason.

If I click on Topic Tools it shows me as subscibed to this thread. If I got to CP it tells me I have no subsciptions.

alexperkins wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 12:02 am Go for the VW direct extended warranty. I had it on my Tiguan and it paid for itself

That's deeply disconcerting. IIRC when I bought the car they wanted £500 for a one year extension. Add that to oil, inspection, aircon, DSG & "shake you by the ankles in case we missed a quid" services & it may well be time to look elsewhere.

It was 240 for an additional year I think for full cover. That was with it at 5 years old too

PM me your email address. I’ll check the server logs to see what’s going on with your notifications

alexperkins wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 10:57 pm It was 240 for an additional year I think for full cover. That was with it at 5 years old too

That's more realistic. I've just tried to get a quote from VW's site but it won't play as my warranty is still current.

alexperkins wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 10:57 pmPM me your email address. I’ll check the server logs to see what’s going on with your notifications

Done.

Thanks Steve. I’ll look into it for you

So going back to servicing.

After some more Googling it seems I'm by no means the only one baffled by this seemingly bizarre notion of separating out oil changes from inspections. But at the heart of the variable vs fixed service schedule seems to be VW's inabilility to come up with a meaningful variable service schedule. The whole point of a variable schedule is for the car's hardware/software to determine the need for servicing based on driving patterns. If your mileage & typical use requires a more frequent service, then the car should determine that. That VW have created cars designed for variable servicing that then have to be manually over-riddden to annual is bonkers.

To then fill the car with expensive, fully synthetic, long-life oil only to throw it away after 12 months is even more bonkers.

First "email alerts" I'm the opposite, when my email service was dropped by EE, I needed to get myself another, so went to gmail, only problem was my iPhone was always alerting me to forum thread updates, so I stopped all of that, though not so successfully on some site - not this one though!

Servicing variable and fixed and inspections, hum, yes, that plan is not really fit for purpose for most private car owners!
Nowadays I think that you should be finding that for fixed servicing you are getting a cheaper oil used and it should now be back to 5W-40 instead of 5W-30 LL oil, I don't know what the difference in price is!
Inspections, they are other checks that will get carried out as well as an oil change, I think that the service documentation used to indicate that a car, on fixed servicing would have an oil change on "odd numbered" years and an inspection service at "even numbered" years - which in reality sounded okay as you had just an oil change and kick of the tyres at odd numbered years and at even numbered years you had an oil change + extended tasks + maybe extra tasks at later years, like air filter and plugs etc.
If you own your car and plan to keep it for maybe 6/8/10/12 years, then fixed servicing for lowish annual mileage should work better for that car's engine, which could translate into lower repair bills. Extended servicing in reality was only meant to work for companies who's cars tended to run high annual mileages, allowing for fewer trips to the garage, okay they did forget about "inspections which are always on fixed time/miles" - also, maybe new company cars were only ever run for 2 years so that would mean no garage visits.
One thing about extending warranty is you also need to extend your commitment to your local dealer's workshop for servicing, I found that fixed price servicing might not be as cheap as it is made out to be as it seems that if you are firm in your approach to what you are willing to pay for an official by the VW book service, then you would probably end up paying a bit less - don't accept their menu pricing, ask for their best price for your business, this will cause much confusion and despair for them - but it is your money to argue over, not their right to empty your wallet!

I have an Audi S4, a 2011 car, I bought it at 2.25 years old and 12.5K miles, it was an Audi Approved Used Car so it came with an extra one or two years Audi warranty. That car had been left on variable servicing, I can't think of why with that low annual mileage, and it was given an oil change just prior to being sold, which I think is standard practice, so that left Audi annoying me a lot asking me to book it in for inspections at its birthdays, which I ignored, now, I was lucky as that car never ever needed any warranty work, but if it did, I think that I stupidly had allowed it to "fall out of" the required inspection visits, although it is not used often so mileage is still low. I have now left the dealership servicing loop and do all my own services annually and plan to keep that car for a few more years.

My wife's August 2015 Polo 1.2TSI 110PS, I will stop using my local dealer when it has reached its 4th birthday - and I will carry out that service though I could either opt for paying for a bodywork inspection, are try staying lucky as far as rusting is concerned as it seems that few people get a good result from bodywork claims, yes VW Group will offer a contribution, but only if you agree to them carrying out the repair work, which tends to cost maybe twice as much as a proper bodyshop would charge.

A true story:- I imported a VW Passat 4Motion back in 2000 from one of the usual sources, in this case, Intercar in Brunnsum(sp?) Holland. That car came with fixed mileage servicing, ie every 12 months 10K miles. As this was a new car, I replaced the oil and filter at 6 months using VW sourced parts. At just under a year old ( as standard VW only gives cars 12 month warranty, in UK VWUK add the second year as a dealer warranty), I booked it in and for some stupid reason, I told them that I had already replaced the engine oil and filter at the 6 months time - this caused serious upset as I, in my ignorance, had missed out that the oils nowadays are programed to change into "scrubbers" round about the 10K mile period and so when the garage drops the oil out the entire inside of the engine gets cleaned out, what would now happen as I had changed the oil at 6 months would be that the engine would not get cleaned out as intended! When challenged, this tale was reinforced by a tech or master tech, now that just made me a bit angry and when I asked about cars that only ran very low mileages, they did not have an answer, I think that I stopped myself from using naughty words, but I did call them a bunch of clowns which did not go down well! Strangely, about 6 years later, when I booked that car in to get its cam belt etc replaced, I was told that it did not have a belt, but a chain, when challenged, this was firmly backed up by a tech/master tech - until I pointed out that the B5 Passat used the same engines as the B5 Audi A4, so they reluctantly accepted my booking! Again this same dealership, when I requested that they recode the dashboard to report brake wear and low washer fluid level warnings, they said as it was an import, they could only replace the dashboard instruments at £300 to remove fit and check, and £350 for a new dash instrument pod!! I just bought VAG-COM as it was back then for about £185 and made these changes my self - idiots!

My only other experience of variable servicing is with BMW, which was based on 15k-ish.

15k Oil
30k Minor Inspection
45k Oil
60k Major Inspection
Repeat.

The car calculated the actual mileage when the service was due. No intermediate inspections & certainly no suggestion that the long-life oil should be changed annually, regardless of mileage. That worked well enough for the 120k I put on the car over 15 years where annual mileage used to vary enormously. These modern schedules seem to be more geared towards paying for tiled & polished workshops, coffee machines & wifi rather than anything to do with the requirements of the car...