Dysfunctional

TL; DR - If your Volkswagen is damaged due to theft or attempted theft, you run the risk of waiting months for the repairs to be completed, and you will need to micro-manage the process yourself due to internal company dysfunction and inefficiency.

I am writing this review because I think that anyone considering buying a Volkswagen (and particularly a polo) should be aware of the situation they might find themselves in if repairs are required following an attempted theft (of major concern given that polos are the most ****** car in South Africa).

Three months ago I interrupted an attempted theft of my car (a 2018 polo). It transpired that the ******* had in the process removed and made off with the electronic control unit (a critical component). The car was towed to Claremont VW the same day and after two weeks of back and forth with my insurance company, I requested that VW commence the repairs.

78 days later I am still without a car.

The first issue was that the unit (a standard part) apparently had to be sourced via Germany. There was obviously some or other breakdown in this process because after one month the new unit had still not arrived and no ETA had been given in "the system". VW's standard operating procedure in these circumstances is apparently to just wait and hope for the best. Making contact with the factory in Germany was apparently not possible, nor was there any other way of obtaining clarity on the status of the order. One of the people in the parts department told me that I could be waiting up to six months and should plan accordingly.

Mercifully, the unit only took two months and eventually arrived on 12 December. At this stage I was told by VW Claremont that the repairs to my car would be treated as urgent. Eventually on 24 December I was told that "the technicians are having trouble coding the ECU", a "technical request" had been sent to VW South Africa, and that I would have to wait until after the festive season for the repairs to be done. I made further inquiries on 27 December and established that what this actually meant was that VW South Africa was just neglecting to attend to the communication requesting assistance with the coding. As with the German factory issue, there is apparently no procedure for dealing with this and the only option is to just wait and hope that a response eventually comes through. Resolving the issue with a phone call is apparently not an option here either.

At the time of writing, I have no idea when I can expect to have a car again and - considering the incompetence encountered so far - I have grave concerns about whether "the coding" will actually be done properly.

To top all of this off, when I finally reached the top of the list for a courtesy car (after months) I was told that there had been a decision by the legal department that anyone wanting to make use of a courtesy car over the festive season needed to put the car on their personal insurance. This is legally impossible because the user of a courtesy car has no insurable interest in the car. This means one of two things, either the legal department is as *********** as the rest of the company and is unaware of this, or, they are aware of it and don't want to make courtesy cars available during the festive season and have decided to sidestep the issue by throwing obstacles in their customers way and putting them to unnecessary inconvenience.