Good thing I've got a tire store....

Had the 20K included warranty service done today at the local VW dealer. Everything went smoothly, except for one item. Like last time, I told them not to do the tire rotation, I have a tire store that does that. They came back and said "The steering wheel looks out of alignment, could be uneven tire wear."

It's a good thing I'm taking it in for the rotation / balancing at my tire store next Tuesday. On the way home, no matter how hard I imagined it, I couldn't make that steering wheel seem anything but perfectly aligned while cruising down the Interstate, and no detectable pull or etc. in either direction. So we shall see.

Which dealership, Groucho Marx?

Sounds like a great way to dupe someone into service, not touch the vehicle and charge for an alignment. Besides with a simple depth gage, tire wear is easy to measure. As a matter of fact, whether they rotated or not, your service statement should indicate how many 32's of tread you have... I'd be looking for a new dealer...

I wonder how many folks would just defer to their judgment and ask them to fix it..?

O'Brien VW in Urbana. I wouldn't buy a car from these people under any circumstances (got the car new from Suntrup in St. Louis). I tried O'Brien's service department for the 10K, and all went well. Everything was also OK this time (oil part # verified, asked for old fuel filter back, etc., under the rubric of "trust but verify"), except for this sketchy bit about the tires / alignment. As I said, the facts will come out at the tire store Tuesday. I've used these guys for over 30 years and trust them implicitly.

Rico567 said:

O'Brien VW in Urbana. I wouldn't buy a car from these people under any circumstances (got the car new from Suntrup in St. Louis). I tried O'Brien's service department for the 10K, and all went well. Everything was also OK this time (oil part # verified, asked for old fuel filter back, etc., under the rubric of "trust but verify"), except for this sketchy bit about the tires / alignment. As I said, the facts will come out at the tire store Tuesday. I've used these guys for over 30 years and trust them implicitly.

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Was Drew or Nick your service advisor?

Bob_Fout said:

Was Drew or Nick your service advisor?

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It was Drew (both for the 10K and this one).

My mother just had her 30k service on her Tiguan and they tried the something similar. Told her she was still legal but probably would have problems with this winter. Said one tire had a spot that was worn out. The odd part was they brought her out and showed her (she checked the plate to make sure it was hers - she's learning!). She knows enought to not trust them and had me check it. All 4 tires, all the way around are perfect. Just under 1/2 tread but no odd worn out spots. Still trying to figure out how they showed her a bad one, unless they stuck another tire on.

I may try my 17" OE Passat wheels on it next year and use her 16s for snows...

Boy you guys are tough, changing a tire to sell a set. Could happen.but really? I guess the experiences reflect the bad atttitude.

gforce1108 said:

My mother just had her 30k service on her Tiguan and they tried the something similar. Told her she was still legal but probably would have problems with this winter. Said one tire had a spot that was worn out. The odd part was they brought her out and showed her (she checked the plate to make sure it was hers - she's learning!). She knows enought to not trust them and had me check it. All 4 tires, all the way around are perfect. Just under 1/2 tread but no odd worn out spots. Still trying to figure out how they showed her a bad one, unless they stuck another tire on.

I may try my 17" OE Passat wheels on it next year and use her 16s for snows...

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My mom is smart enough to lead them on when they try and pull a stunt like that. She'll say "okay, I see what you mean. I'll have my son take care of it". That usually shuts them up.

showdown 42 said:

Boy you guys are tough, changing a tire to sell a set. Could happen.but really? I guess the experiences reflect the bad atttitude.

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I really hope they didn't, but I have no other explanation. They were definitely trying to sell her a set - wrote up the whole quote for them. She did have a slow leak a while ago from a tiny nail - I figured maybe that tire had some issue from being plugged, but I spun it (and then the other 3) around multiple times shining a worklight on the tire looking for anything out of the ordinary. Couldn't even see where I plugged it.

jhinsc said:

My mom is smart enough to lead them on when they try and pull a stunt like that. She'll say "okay, I see what you mean. I'll have my son take care of it". That usually shuts them up.

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That's pretty much what she says. This was her last 'free' service and it won't go back to them unless it's for a recall. I won't even take my Passat in and paid for the supplies to do my own 10k service. This dealer has gotten slightly better over the years, but still pretty crappy. One good salesman, really cool finance manager (I go in to chat about our Passats) and great parts department. To bad the rest of the sales team and the service people pull the place down.

Time for the other shoe to drop on this thread. RE: the issue I discussed in the OP, yesterday I took the Passat to our tire store for a rotation / balancing, with a specific injunction to check carefully for abnormal tire wear. Diagnosis: car is fine, no abnormal tire wear, doesn't need an alignment. As I suspected.
I'm going to make every effort to go to St. Louis (where we bought the car) for the last dealer service, and from then on, only myself, our tire store, or a guru ("Oilhammer" is closest) will touch the car.