My 15 year love affair with Volkswagen has officially come to an end. I would like to scream from the roof tops that this company doesn’t back their product and does not care if they lose loyal customers. And I will never buy another car from them again.

I leased a 2007 VW New Beetle in October of 2006. It is a 5 speed manual transmission. It has 10,000 miles on it to date. Thursday while attempting to drive up North to visit my family for Thanksgiving the clutch started skipping and a horrible smelling white smoke started blowing out of the car. We pulled over to see what was wrong, it finally stopped smoking and the clutch was barely working.

I called the local dealership Saturday morning (McKenna VW, Huntington Beach, CA) and they say “”bring the car right in”". We bring it in and then they tell us “”well, we don’t actually have anybody who can look at it today but we’ll see what we can do and call you”". They call me at 5:00 p.m. and say “”nope, didn’t have anybody to look at it, it’ll have to wait until Monday”". So Monday in the middle of the afternoon they call us and say “”we need your authorization for the $900 fee to take the car apart and look at it, it may be a wear and tear item and not covered under warranty”". ARE YOU KIDDING ME?????? 10,000 miles???? I have been driving a stick shift since I was 16 years old. I have leased two other New Beetles from Volkswagen and have never ONCE had an issue with the clutch. I KNOW HOW TO DRIVE A MANUAL TRANSMISSION. I’m sorry but if their product is so badly made that the clutch will burn out after 10,000 miles I have no interest in putting my life in the hands of Volkswagen.

We called the corporate office to complain. The corporate office didn’t call back until the next day and told us we’re out of luck, that’s policy. Their policy is 12 months or 12,000 miles for wear and tear items. We’ve had the car for 13 months. They don’t care that we’ve leased 2 other Volkswagens from them and have been a loyal, on-time paying, perfect lease returning customer since 2000. They have never had one single issue with us. And they would not even look at the car to see if it was a possible failure opposed to “”wear and tear”" unless we first fronted $900.

I am DONE with Volkswagen. Their product is NOT well made, they don’t back their product and they care more about profit than keeping loyal GOOD customers. I am sad to see them go… I look back on my ‘68 and ‘69 Bugs, I look back on my 1990 GTI and I look back on my 2 New Beetles with fondness. But I WILL NOT deal with a company who isn’t willing to work with GOOD customers. So long Volkswagen.

…You spend more in a year on service than car payments!

…Your car spends more time in the shop than on the road!

This is one of my all time favorite “”fixes”", weekend wastes.

I had to spend a couple more hours over the weekend trying to figure out why my radio would not work. Nowhere in VW owners manual does it state where the radio fuse is. Nor does the map on fuse panel door define which fuse is for radio. I went to next best method to find culprit - I tried to look for a blown fuse - which I did not see.

I knew the answer was simple, in the back of my head I remembered this had happened before but I could not remember how to fix. Perhaps other have experienced this?

I Googled for answer my thanks to CarSurvey.org, post 6th Mar 2006, 10:22 for the answer.

Why, why, why… forget it. I am not wasting anymore time wondering about why.. why I drove in silence… why it took so long to figure out… why there is no proper map fuse… Why all I had to do was remove fuse 42 and put it back in - that’s it. No it is not blown. Just take it out, and put it back in, get radio back.

If not for Internet I would have paid VW service and they would have gladly taken my money to diagnose this madness.

Edited by peterd1965 on 11/08/07 at 8:34 AM

Edited by peterd1965 on 11/08/07 at 8:36 AM

Edited by peterd1965 on 11/08/07 at 8:37 AM

I purchased my used ‘98 2.0 GTI in march of ‘06. I love the looks of the mk3 and needed the excellent gas millage of the I-4 motor. Since then it’s been an up and down ride of highs and lows. Simple things started to go wrong, but were easily fixable. Glove box latch broke, sun-roof regulator blew, ball-cup flange on the shifter snapped effectively making my car only able to use gears 1, 3, and 5, and the best, my license plate lights blowing out which landed me a nice fine by the local police. The worst thing that has happened was my ignition system going bad after hitting a small puddle, volkswagens and water do not mix. I will have to take my hat off to the 2.0 engine. I drove it with mis-firing and horrible stalling and bucking quite a few times in the rain and it kept on trucking like a champ. After I installed a new distributor, plugs, ignition, and wires it ran like a brand new car. The same can be said for my wife’s 1.8L mk2 cabby which is still chugging along at 280k miles and an oil leak. My car may break often, but after driving other bland feeling-less cars (i.e. Sunfire GT, Civic, Cavalier, Ranger, and Ultima) I find myself gently hugging my volks’ steering wheel and thanking volkswagen of mexico for assembling me such a half-assed-fine piece of german engineering.

Edited by Momike on 11/08/07 at 5:08 AM

For info.

Big Time Ripoff on Oil……Thanks VW!