Golf VI Timing Chain *******

Last Friday we took my wife's 2010 Golf VI 1.4 TSI to Alpine VW as the previous day the car had sounded very rough and the engine management light came on. The car up to this point had 213 000 km of trouble free service. I drove it to Alpine VW and the problem had disappeared yet the engine management light was still on. It them took them the whole day to run diagnostics only to come back and say that the diagnostics indicated a timing issue which required them to open the engine to identify the cause. After negotiating we got the price down to R7700 to identify the real cause. In the meantime I had trolled the internet and discovered that the Golf VI did have an issue with the timing chain and whilst the timing chain was relatively cheap, it was a labour intensive job to replace so I braced myself for a hefty labour quote (why they did not know this is beyond me as even the symptoms were identical). It took VW Alpine 4 days to get back to me to confirm the timing chain needed replacement but now all of a sudden it had developed injector problems which needed replacing as well as a leak on the water pump - none of which had shown any symptoms previously. The quote for this was just under R48k! I told them there is nothing wrong with the water pump or the injectors and the quote came down to just over R32k! This quote included R930 for the actual timing belt and then they added new valves, new ignition coils, new spark plugs, new hoses etc. that have absolutely nothing to do with the timing belt.

Judging from the previous reviews it seems VW Alpine has a very poor customer satisfaction rating as they seem hell bent on doing unnecessary service work to maximise their profits. Their service agents are also very poor on feeding back to the client so thus far the rating seems justified. I have told them I will not authorise this unnecessary repair and will only accept the timing chain replacement so now the fun starts as they are already giving me the run around. I can see this heading to the Motor Industry Ombudsman.

Based on my experience to date there is no way I will ever use them again or recommend them even though we have bought our previous 2 VW's from them.