In the last couple of days I have had the local VW stealership send two clients back with 2002 Golfs claiming that installing a deck with a harness interfered with their readers.

They claimed they took 2 hours to remove the radios and clip two wires and charged the clients $106 and now they say I should pay these charges for something that would take me 5 minutes to do.

I have checked with a couple of other shops around and they said that the system VW uses to troubleshoot has changed in recent months and the stealership has tried the same thing with them.

What do you boys think of this? Have any of you had a simular problem?

 

What happens is, if the installer hooked up the blue wire on a aftermarket harness (which isn't needed) it will screw up their scan tool. In some cases it has smoked the scan tool. Just before I left Visions I did a brand new VW and I hooked up the blue wire and the customer came back with a $4600 bill, $60 to repair the wires and $4540 for a new scan tool.

If you notice, almost all wiring harness companies now leave the blue wire out of the harness and there is usually a note as to where to put it depending on what year car it is.

 

Metra ended up paying the bill on the tool, cause that harness had just come out I believe and there were no notes to not use that wire, and every other VW before needed that wire hooked up.

 

You know it is funny, the Dealership KNOWS this fact about aftermarket radios. BUT they bill out the labour instead of sending the customer back to you to disconect the wire which would have taken about five minutes. Now you know why we are tring to change the way people think. Dealerships charge what they charge because they can charge, remember that when you are quoting a job and do not under quote yourself going foward. You are not going to win against the Dealership, customers never go back to argue.

[ December 18, 2005, 01:56 PM: Message edited by: Claudio Piccolo ]

 

Damn that is one expensive tool.....

 

For what it can do, $4600 or so for the VAS1551 is pretty cheap.

Funny thing is the VAG-Com VW/Audi scan tool I have has built in protection on the K-Line to avoid just that problem. $400 tool that protects itself... kinda neat.

Gus