I dutifully come to report back! The oil change at Sonnen was a success.
Max went in for his 10k today. Matt Forsythe, my service coordinator, was happy to bring out the magic golden bottle for me to double-check this morning and even took a moment to complain about how frustrating it was that he couldn't buy the Castrol 507.00 in larger sizes to save on plastic waste (ahh, Marin County, how I love you).
When I went to pick Max up, Matt even offered me the remnant mostly-full 5L for the long road-trip I'm taking at the end of this week, "Just in case". I also checked my oil and it's darn high full but it's not over-full, which was reassuring.
There were a couple of SNAFUs that the entire company handled well - from phone to service to managers. For starters there was a miscommunication about how their shuttle service works, and when I found out that I couldn't get a ride until 5:45 instead of 5p I panicked about guests coming over at 6p, they worked to find an additional employee to come get me at 5.
The other was that we've been waiting for parts for a defective back seat issue which is minor - it affects the center seat belt, which I've not used yet, and the underside foam of the back seat (long story). In short Sonnen has been struggling to get the parts needed because it seems that some replacement parts just aren't abundant on a new car model yet. They thought they had the parts, but the foam seat cushion (aka my "foamy bottom" as we've started to call it jokingly) was too small. Sonnen confirmed with VW that it's a defective foamy bottom and they've requested a new one. It's irritating but I completely understand that it's hard to get parts for a new car some times, and I'm appreciative of the effort they've made to keep me in the loop, try to get parts and not compromise on parts that aren't quite right.
So two big thumbs up from me and Max on our 10k change at Sonnen in San Rafael. Even if I didn't seen any other TDIs today