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Comment by bdamm | Hacker News Reader

After the terrible treatment I received as a Volkswagen TDI customer, I will never buy another VW. Period. They fraudulently sold me a car, then managed to finangle their way out of any financial restitution by putting up not only extensive hurdles for customers who wanted to opt for restitution instead of return, they then penalized customers who experienced delays due to their internal system faults by simply rejecting applications for restitution that were even a little bit out of spec.

Never. Again.

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not sure what your problem was, i had two TDI's and did buybacks for both and, though it took a while, the experience was pleasant and the offer was generous.

The problem was I couldn't do a buyback due to my life situation - I was not in a place, at the time, where I could just give up the car and go get another one without major disruption. Think days off work. So I opted for restitution.

Yeah, they really screwed you if you opted to keep the car. My dad has a TDI and wanted to keep it but the number of hoops to jump through was ridiculous. Plus they wouldn't have the fix for a year and he couldn't get a sticker for the car without it. Ended up doing the buyback instead.

Owned a 2001 Jetta. The number of parts I had to replace became more than the cars worth. I will never own a VW anything because of the terrible reliability.

When did these issues start happening?

I own a 2009 rabbit and have no faced any issues beyond routine maintenance. Guess I should knock on wood.

I've owned many VWs and Audis, and the 2008 Jetta I bought (albeit with a manual transmission) is still going strong. Not a single service issue, to date. It must have almost 200K miles.

Any tips on how to heel toe in this gen jetta? The pedals are so awkwardly placed...

Tough... I agree with pedal placement. I was probably more prone to occasionally stalling in intersections, but then I took the car to SF and drove there and got the feel dialed-in real quick.

I've since bought newer cars and gave this one to a relative. It's still on the original clutch/transmission, so I guess I didn't do too bad.

Ditto for an 09 Jetta, I love it. I vaguely remember reading about VW going through significant quality improvements in the mid '00s.

90s to early 00s VWs had some big issues. I remember when 90s Jettas were basically free because they all had blown head gaskets.

I had a multiple VWs, including an 2001 Bora TDI (the EU name of the Jetta) and they were very reliable. Still, some cars are born a lemon.

The Bora was good, we had one as well, sold it and bought a Civic that had its share of issues. However I would not buy a VW electric, not after Dieselgate. They're cheaters and cheaters need to be punushed.

Who would you buy from? VW got the most attention, but it seems like every automaker has been caught cheating emissions tests going back to the 70s. Daimler just got caught last month.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal#Manuf...

https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/14/mercedes-diesel-emission...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat_device#Timeline

Mainly from Japan. Honda, Toyota, Mazda, Suzuki, Subaru. Not Nissan since it's an overpriced Renault now, not Mitsubishi since they're expensive and plagued with issues.

Heh, yeah people complain about that generation of cars from VAG quite a bit.

I had a MK4 Golf with the 1.8T that I raced every month for a few years and also drove to work. It broke a couple times, but wasn't unreliable. I think this was partly because I did preventative maintenance.

I think - the motors were fine for the MK4s, but everything around them had one problem or another.

The motor is going into my next car... :)

Had a B5 Passat 1.8T

Two coil packs A/C evaporator unit packed up Some vacuum pipe broke

The worst probably was the 1.4 Twincharger engine (one with a turbo supercharger) and wisely they discontinued it after one generation.

Total engine replacements before 30,000 km was not uncommon.

That was a different 1.8T. But yes it seems every manufacturer has had a misadventure with coil packs. Not sure why.

The 1.8Ts in the Passats gave the transverse 1.8T a bad name. The one in the Passat is mounted lontudinally, like your classic American v8. To do that with the Passat (for the AWD system) they had to move the engine down and a crossmember was in the way.

So they wisely made the oil pan smaller. On a turbocharged engine. Doh! To add insult to injury lots of dealers used cheap oil. So engine failures happened.

Fun fact - you can take the engine from the Passat - turn it 90 degress - and bolt it in pretty much any VW from 1979-~1999. Even the waterpump housing was unchanged for like 20 years. These engines are commonly used as power upgrades for older cars (which is what I am doing with mine).

The 1.8T that was in the GTIs was a complete redesign and had less problems. Forged internals etc. But VW decided to use a timing belt instead of a chain and when owners forgot to replace the belt at 80k miles and the engines went kablooey it didn't exactly help customer relations. A great engine destroyed by one consumable component. Luckily VW isn't using belts anymore.

Before I gave up owning a car all together a year ago, I used to take my car to an independent car mechanic. He is also the singer in one of Norways most popular rock band, The Dum Dum Boys. Compared to the car mechanics working for the car brands, he does not seems to hold any dirty details back. He claims that new german cars needs to have a lot more parts replaced more often now than they used to do 20 years ago. The cars have not become more expensive either. Wires, cables, casks, everything breaks faster than it used to not that many years ago. If you thought the car industry have become more disruptive and automated, you probably have to think again.

Could you give more details? Was this related to the emissions scandal?

I wouldn't do it because for some reason they thought it was ok to experiment gassing humans and monkeys.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/29/vw-condemne...

What issue did you have?

I have a 2015 Jetta TDI and opted to keep it and get the payout and modifications. I had no issues at all, I got paid the specified amount at the specified milestones and got a rental paid for by VW for the days the car was at the dealer. I've currently got ~110,000 miles on the car and other than a few minor cosmetic interior issues its been good car.

I expect to keep it for another 100K at least and my next car I expect will be electric.

For context my previous car was 2002 Subaru WRX that I put 340,000 miles on, with a top end engine rebuild at ~180k, after a "friend" who borrowed it continued to drive it after the radiator return hose burst and it overheated.

I sent my initial reply in fairly quickly, and got a restitution offer letter back. However, that was only the beginning.

First, they offered to pay half before the modification, then half after the modification. After I got the final final approved offer, it was only all after the modification.

The modification wasn't possible right away, because they hadn't decided what to do yet. Eventually they decided to offer a fix for these engines, and the EPA eventually agreed to allow that fix for my engine. But that was the better part of a year. When the fixes were begun to be rolled out, the initial reports were dismal, with reports of engines running rough and bad performance. The message began to be "don't let them touch your car." I decided to wait until at least the second half of the window for modifications to be performed so that the bugs could get thoroughly worked out.

Meanwhile, life got more complicated. I started moving from one state to another, and that meant three homes in two years. Since I couldn't register the car in the new state until after the repair was done, I needed to extend my registration in the old state.

After the second move, I was able to complete the process, and the approved modification was available. I went to complete the process, but due to moving to the new state I needed to re-do all of the original paperwork, and I needed to send a letter stating what I had done.

They restarted my application process twice.

There was a fault in their system that left my application in an inconsistent state, resulting in errors in the court settlement web site. I spent time on the phone working through that, with multiple people.

At one point I needed to print out a dozen sheets and mail them in. While not a big deal, I don't normally print stuff, so getting a printer located and working is just another hurdle.

After another set of failures in getting the system sorted, they actually requested that I fax in documents.

FAX.

And after all that, I missed the deadline for the dealer work by 2 days.

My appeal to their 3-member appeal review board was filed within the 15-day window, but it was denied.

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