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barefoot
16-11-2007, 10:46 PM
I think all of us here like/love our V-dubs. I personally think the t'reg is a particularly good package but poorly marketed and VERY VERY poorly supported. Reading the story below, I'd assert that if VGA gave t'reg owners as much support, there would be a heck of a lot more t'reg on the road today. You know about the one unhappy customer who tells eight other people not to buy the product......


http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22731645-5010800,00.html

"It's a story Toyota loves to retell: a dozen of the first FJ25 models were imported to the Snowy Mountains hydro-electric project. Like all the other 4WDs, they broke down. "But it was Toyota's response to these problems that set the company apart from its rivals," sales and marketing executive vice-president Dave Buttner related this week. "Toyota flew out engineers from Japan who lived on-site to study and rectify the problems. They also flew out parts and sent the broken bits back to Japan -- to analyse them and fix the problems at the source."

Suitably impressed, construction magnate Sir Leslie Theiss began importing Toyotas in Queensland and NSW, and LandCruisers were increasingly used by resource companies and farmers opening up the bush. Half a million -- 10 per cent of all the LandCruisers ever made -- have been bought by Australians. Australia buys more LandCruisers than any market outside the Middle East."

This is my take on a somewhat phriday influenced post.

The year is 2020....at a gathering of V-dubs faithfuls .....

"It's a story VGA loves to retell: a few dozen of the first MY03 models touareg were imported to Australia to VW faithfuls. Unlike all the other 4WDs, they have quality problems, they had poor engineering problems and they showed VW never tested the car properly. Problems such as condensating windscreen could have been picked up and fixed had VW tested the car in tropical climate for just '1 minute', then there's the chattering windscreen wipers and other simple things like electronic tailgate mechanism that ruined entire holidays.

But it was VGA's response to these problems that set the company apart from its rivals. Sales and marketing executive vice-president Hans Solo related to the faithful. VGA implemented "enhanced dealership/customer relation programs" instead of sending out engineers to fix problems. The program ruled that dealers has to pay for incorrect diagnosis of warranty repairs resulting in most dealership trying to deny any problem exists at all, for fear of incorrectly diagnosing a problem. It achieved fantastic results, warranty claims reduced to '0' overnight, it worked!!!

Also instead of sending engineers to investigate, we trained our dealership on cognitive behavioral therapy and negative psychology, for examples .....and remembering that cars in 2003 ran on tyres (a form of traction pad sourced from a primitive tree called rubber) ....when a customer complaints that their tyres wore out too quickly our dealers would tell them they must be very good/fast/racing drivers and drove so quick that tyres wear out quicker or another examples, when a customer complain that something is unusual like 2 + 2 doesn't add up to 4 in the onboard computer, our dealerships would say it's a feature. These "specialised dealership 'customer enhancement' training" also paid dividends, warranty claims also reduces to '0' overnight.

We also made sure parts wasn't available in the country so that our customer would benefit from our "enhanced parts waiting program", this program also worked a treat, after waiting so long for the parts to arrive, imagine the elation when the parts finally arrive, we conducted focus groups and our 'worm' (a kind of primitive emotion-detectoronometer) jumped 400% compared to our nearest rival Toyota's 'oh what a feeling' benchmark for customer satisfaction.

Suitably impressed, most would be customers bought other brand 4wds leaving a band of very loyal VW customers feeling quite special and unique. This uniqueness is the essence of the touareg ownership story, that is why a touareg in 2020 is a very special car, a very unique car, and a very rare car"

audience claps .....

bobzed57
19-11-2007, 06:29 PM
barefoot

Gold and oh, so true.

Maybe mine'll be the one still going in 2020?

Bob Z

99gti
19-11-2007, 06:37 PM
Bwahahahahahahaha. Well composed. I didn't realise they were this bad?!? :?

phaeton
19-11-2007, 06:49 PM
Well once upon a time VW were like Toyota here in Australia.

Infact when Kombi's started dying out due to dust in oil filter/engine.

VW Australasia as they were known back then got a fleet of Kombi's painted the vehicles with oil yes oil and drove them all over the desert and found dust clung to the bottom half of the Transporters where the airvents were.

Solution: well the air vents on the split window Kombis were moved above the hip line and this Aussie made discovery made its way onto the 2nd generation VW Transporter the Bay Window.

Next time you see a Bay Window look at the airscoop within the D-Pillar.

VW Australasia made many mods to Australian VWs back in the day.....

Most of the VW range we get are tested in South Africa, Brazil and other rugged places.

I do think though we have a unique country and if VW were to build a research lab for testing out here they would greatly benefit from Australia's harsh testing grounds.

Some makers that test here are Toyota, Mitsubishi, Ford, Holden, SsangYong, Roewe and many more.

barefoot
20-11-2007, 08:00 PM
Bwahahahahahahaha. Well composed. I didn't realise they were this bad?!? :?

To be fair, I was lucky enough to have not suffered from these commonly reported faults:

Water pump failure;
Stepper motor;
Transmission; or
Fast tyre wear.

So I count myself fortunate. But I do sympathise with others here who have had a heck of a time dealing with VW/Dealers.
Cheers

balkanac
22-11-2007, 02:07 PM
i had no idea about these problems! I wanted one, but now i think i'll go for an X5 or similar. Im keeping the R32 though!!

dmm_au
23-11-2007, 08:25 AM
Barefoot could have mentioned that it much more common for those faults to have been reported on earlier models, and that the recent recall is supposed to have addressed what were likely to be design faults.

In my opinion the X5 isn't an alternative to the Touareg as it lacks low range gears. If you were never planing on using the low range gears then perhaps it's a good thing this forum has made you rethink your purchase.

barefoot
23-11-2007, 07:03 PM
That's right mine is an MY05 and I didn't suffer from these, I think most MY04 owners suffers from these issues AND in addition, even if it's an MY04:

90D7 takes care of water pump;
90D7 takes care of stepper motor programming;
90D7 takes care of transmission programming;
Tyre wear see below.


The point is about support and fixing things as they're discovered or even pre-empting and fixing before failures (and I think 90D7 is a sign VGA is coming round), remember the US t'reg owners got free holidays etc .... we got free unscheduled servicing .....

on tyre wear....
Go to a tyre dealer ask them to do a wheel alignment using 'their' spec NOT VW's spec, I'm told VW has adopted Porsche's sport bias settings which wear out tyres quicker. I don't know how true this is but I've been told this twice from two different tyre dealers.
Cheers

dmm_au
23-11-2007, 10:43 PM
Good summary and advice Barefoot.
When my new TDI gets here, I intend to change the tyres to Coopers. I've checked with a couple of dealers, and their willing to buy whatever comes on the car back at a wholesale rate, so the new tyres won't be a huge outlay.

Coopers have a warranty. Probably about 50K km on the tyres I'll order. The catch is, you have to have to get them checked by a Coopers dealer every 10K or so.

My thinking is that's a pretty good way to get an appropriate wheel alignment, and the dealer is incented to reduce my tyre wear.

Anyone else tried this? I know a number of you are using Cooper tyres.

David (not a Lawyer or accountant)