[Biturbos4] Extended Warranty Buy

[Russell Romano]

So it sounds like Audi has their dealership relationship explicitly setup to AVOID warranty payments.  Understandable from a financial perspective, but it is pretty shady that they actual refuse to pay for repairs that a customer didn't complain about!

It would probably be a VERY worthwhile practice to pay an INDEPENDENT foreign car shop to go over your car with a fine tooth comb and make a list of all "problems" it sees just before your OEM warranty is up.

Then go to the dealer with a bulleted list of "action items" for them!  It would be well worth the 2 or 3 hours of shop time you'd have to pay for from the independent guy.

On a related note... I also have a '97 Subaru wagon.  I brought the car in complaining about a CV joint noise and the tech NOTICED a leak from one of the camshaft seals.  He noted it on the worksheet.  When I went to the customer counter to pay... the service guy said "You have a leaking camshaft seal.  Lets set up an appointment to get it in for service".  I said I wasn't sure I wanted to foot the bill for that yet and he said "No, don't worry about it, its under warranty".  I was amazed as I was the third owner of this used subaru, but because it was under 60k miles (It had 59900 on it at the time!) they WANTED to repair it for me.  They said, "a new timing belt is $35.  If you buy the part we'll do the belt change while we are in there for no extra charge".  Now THAT is service!!  Not only will I buy another Subaru, I'll go out of my way to buy it from THEM, and I've sent them a LOT of business as a result of this one "favor".  If you live in or near Allentown PA and have any interest in a Subaru, check out Becker Subaru on 222 in Wescosville!

-Russ


-----Original Message-----
From: Al Adler [mailto:adlere at sourcecodecorp.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2004 7:22 PM
To: Keman
Cc: Bi-Turbo Audi S4 Audi Fan Group
Subject: Re: [Biturbos4] Extended Warranty Buy


Keman,
    All in all I wish you had been the tech who worked on my car at 48 k 
at its last warranty visit. Your dealership would have been able to bill 
AOA for 2 tie rods, 2 front upper control arms, a leaky driver side cam 
sensor, an medium sized oil leak below the passenger cam sprocket from 
something (just the valve cover gasket or more serious??? ), a leaky 
trans tail piece, and a malfunctioning tip switch -I'm guessing that 
would push around $2500 or so. Damn AOA - they definitely saved a some 
serious warranty $$$ on my car. So far I've done about half of it and 
that car is not easy to work on without a garage full of special tools 
and lots of time. Thanks for the heads up on the turbo - so far the car 
doesn't seem to burning any oil but I've only put a couple of thousand 
on it so far so I don't have much of a baseline. I just gave it an oil 
change yesterday w/ 0w-40 synthetic and a factory filter yesterday - the 
acura dealer I bought it from filled it with 10w-30 and some strange 
filter brand I'd never seen before. I suspect the Audi dealer here 
didn't use synthetic either in the past but I will be going forward.

Thanks for the advice,
Al

Keman wrote:

>>>enough to complain about them. I talked to a service rep at the
>>>dealer he used to find out about the service history and the guy
>>>said "we only fix the things the customer complains about - we're
>>>too busy to do all the work needed anyway". My experience with that
>>>      
>>>
>
>This is a real sore spot of mine. According to Audi, if a tech receives a
>car that's brought in for a headlight repair.. and files a warranty claim
>for a valve cover gasket leak, he has broken the rules and the claim will be
>denied- the dealership will not get paid for the work. This is called
>"warranty solicitation". It's Audi's attempt at controlling warranty costs
>and making it such that their techs "don't get rich off their warranty." ...
>my opinion is that if they don't want their techs getting rich off their
>warranty, build the fscking cars right.
>
>Luckily, the first 50k of maintanence is free and during this period I use
>the fact that I am supposed to inspect the entire car for any possible
>problem during maintanance and _every_ problem I find, is fixed. If we or
>the customer doesn't have the time to fix it, I reschedule some or all of
>the repairs to be done at a later time. If the problem is hazardous, I put
>the customer in a rental. My goal is to hand the car back as it rolled off
>the assembly line. No leaks. No quirks. No problems.
>
>Amazingly enough... this is the mentality at my dealership, and compared to
>other dealers in the state our warranty repair costs are one of the lowest.
>Go figure.
>
>  
>
>>>    myself. Since this S4 needs a lot of work its keeping me quite
>>>busy. A side question - when I was doing my DV's and TBB I noticed
>>>some (
>>>not much)oil in the driver side turbo passages, while the passenger
>>>side was fairly dry. No whining yet, but I should I be budgeting for
>>>new turbos or is that oil from crankcase venting?
>>>      
>>>
>
>It's pretty common... mine does this as well and has since the first time I
>replaced a DV at like 18k miles. (I noticed it then). I'm fairly certain
>it's a very small amount of oil leaking past the turbo. My car does not burn
>any oil so what you see is what you're losing.. a few drops in a fine mist.
>I seem to see this on the drivers side frequently. While there is a
>crankcase vent on the drivers side of the intake plenum (that big Y thing on
>top), that's the fresh air draw IN to the crankcase ... not the other way
>around. There is a second crankcase vent that's attached to the lower intake
>which actually draws crankcase gasses in.
>
>I honestly wouldn't worry about it. When I had my downpipes off I checked
>the play on the turbos at like 76k miles and there was none, they felt like
>new. Between that and the lack of oil loss, I'd say the turbos are holding
>up very well. I run synthetic, change oil every 3500-4500 miles, and always
>let the oil temps lift off the peg before getting into boost. I also let
>things cool down before shutting the engine off.
>
>- Keman
>
>  
>
>>>TIA,
>>>Al
>>>      
>>>
>
>  
>


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