Amount in offer letter doesn't match buyback calculation

When the proposed settlement was announced back in June, I went through the tables in attachments 1A and 2A to calculate the buyback amount. A few days later, a TDI enthusiast created an online calculator that matched my calculation exactly. When I finally tried the VW Online Claims website calculator, I got an amount $60 less than my own calculation. On Saturday, I got my offer letter which shows the same amount as the claims website, $60 lower than my own calculation. I verified my calculation with the final settlement documents, which haven’t changed since June for my vehicle.

Has anybody else had a discrepancy between hand calculations and the claims website/offer letter? If I’m looking for where a $60 shortfall could have come from, the claims website could be using the “Central, Desert SW…” region base value ($18,497) instead of the higher “Pacific NW” value ($18,557), where the car is registered, even though I submitted the registration to the claims website.

I called the claims support line today--completely unhelpful, but someone is supposed to call me back within 72 hours.

The vehicle: 2011 Golf TDI 4D, Dynaudio, Automatic

$60 isn't even noise...

Tarbe said:

$60 isn't even noise...

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Agreed, but (1) it's wrong, and (2) if mine's wrong, somebody who isn't checking might have an offer that's off by more than $60. After this whole dieselgate thing, I'm not letting VW keep any money that's due to me.

Also, if three $20 bills were sitting on the sidewalk, I would pick them up. Wouldn't you?

best of luck with the callback, they were supposed to give me a callback on two occasions and it simply didn't happen

CHawk said:

Agreed, but (1) it's wrong, and (2) if mine's wrong, somebody who isn't checking might have an offer that's off by more than $60. After this whole dieselgate thing, I'm not letting VW keep any money that's due to me.
Also, if three $20 bills were sitting on the sidewalk, I would pick them up. Wouldn't you?

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Not caring to comment on the validity of your final analogy, what sort of advice would you find helpful? I daresay no one here will contract for a hit on those guys.......

Tarbe said:

$60 isn't even noise...

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VW will hear the tune of $60*500,000 crisp and clear.

Rico567 said:

I daresay no one here will contract for a hit on those guys.......

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Not for 60$, that's for sure .

Rico567 said:

Not caring to comment on the validity of your final analogy, what sort of advice would you find helpful? I daresay no one here will contract for a hit on those guys.......

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No advice sought. Just wanted to alert folks to the possibility that the buyback offer could be wrong and they should verify with the tables in the final Order for Permanent Injunction and Monetary Judgment. Maybe I'm the only one affected by this, but the amount is specified in a legally binding document that required hundreds of millions of dollars to negotiate. These types of errors should not occur.

I don't have a final offer yet, but the website calculator differed by several hundred dollars from the FTC tables on my 2015 A3. When I asked for a recheck tweaking a day or two on the dates, the Claims rep stated they have no access to a similar calculator and that the VW claims calculator was "independently verified". To me that just means math verified. But if their assumptions are wrong..........

Waiting to see. FTC docs do say 2015 values are estimated. But VW calculator does not represent FTC value, nor does it represent 0.707 MSRP.

I have the 2011 claim still open, so when I tweak dates with that calculator it lines up perfectly with FTC docs.

Hmm - I might have ended up with a portion of that missing $60. I'm getting $.78 more than the calculator results.

FWIW, my experience:
I never sat down with a sharp pencil and calculated the exact amount of my buy-back, just ball-parked it in my head. But when I did my initial application on the website---back when they were giving "estimates" after the settlement was announced and before it was approved, my total was $15,225.

Now, after all these months, when they sent me my formal offer to sign, notarized and return, my buyback amount was given as $15,455. At that point, I had not updated my mileage figure (which is low for the time passed but they didn't know that).

I've just finished scheduling my appointment (earliest available at my dealer was 12/9) and the website did ask for a mileage update. I don't think I've fallen back into a lower mileage group (and they wouldn't have known anyway), so I'm not sure why the amount increased (by $230) from pre-final estimate to formal offer.

My offer was almost $500 more than the calculator shows. No idea why. Guess I'll find out for sure on 12/13......turn in date.

Mine was almost $400 more than calculator and paper & pencil method. By the time I turn it in I am hoping for a ten fold increase.

BuyMeBackSoon said:

Mine was almost $400 more than calculator and paper & pencil method. By the time I turn it in I am hoping for a ten fold increase.

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Does the extra money have to do with the eligible sellers pool?

.....this thread provides humorous, thoughtful and useful feedback. i'd go to sea with you guys.


ez

coolbreeze said:

Does the extra money have to do with the eligible sellers pool?

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No idea, I am a regular buyback owner transaction and don't intend to dig any deeper when they want to give me more money.

coolbreeze said:

Does the extra money have to do with the eligible sellers pool?

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As far as anyone knows, no post-9/18/15 buyers have offers yet, so it wouldn't.

BuyMeBackSoon said:

No idea, I am a regular buyback owner transaction and don't intend to dig any deeper when they want to give me more money.

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Most of the early submitter's buybacks were calculated with a Nov 1 date. If we are scheduled for the first week in December and our mileage at turn in is still under the mileage calculated for Nov 1, we should then see extra cash also. I would think.

DanB36 said:

As far as anyone knows, no post-9/18/15 buyers have offers yet, so it wouldn't.

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Makes sense, and it wouldn't be for the extra mileage we have going out another month, because mileage will be confirmed at buyback and then adjusted, I would think

dpospres said:

My offer was almost $500 more than the calculator shows. No idea why. Guess I'll find out for sure on 12/13......turn in date.

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Mine was $1500 higher. I'm not complaining.

CHawk said:

No advice sought. Just wanted to alert folks to the possibility that the buyback offer could be wrong and they should verify with the tables in the final Order for Permanent Injunction and Monetary Judgment. Maybe I'm the only one affected by this, but the amount is specified in a legally binding document that required hundreds of millions of dollars to negotiate. These types of errors should not occur.

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I have highlighted what I believe is the relevant sentence in your post. To this, my response is twofold:

1. No, they should not.

2. Nevertheless, as the immortal Dr. Seuss wrote "From near and far, from here to there, funny things are everywhere."

CHawk said:

Agreed, but (1) it's wrong, and (2) if mine's wrong, somebody who isn't checking might have an offer that's off by more than $60. After this whole dieselgate thing, I'm not letting VW keep any money that's due to me.
Also, if three $20 bills were sitting on the sidewalk, I would pick them up. Wouldn't you?

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Depends upon who is behind me!

On a serious note...my comment was a way of saying I hope you aren't stressing over $60.

As you can see from the other posts, there are going to be plenty of delta$ examples.

The calculator said $14875, but the offer letter says $15125.

I will take it.

Calculator said around 23600

Offer in letter said 23100

I think they used Nov turn in dates.. so I'm sure I'll see the $500 difference when I go turn it in.. otherwise I'm raising hell..lol

I'm just hoping they will adjust our buyback amounts upwards if our final mileage ends up in a lower tier. The language in their "final offer" letter allows for reducing the amount but not increasing, so it could be possible our buybacks are capped at the offer letter amount.

BuyMeBackSoon said:

Mine was almost $400 more than calculator and paper & pencil method. By the time I turn it in I am hoping for a ten fold increase.

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Took a look and mine is the drop to the lower mileage bracket. Mystery solved.

CHawk said:

When the proposed settlement was announced back in June, I went through the tables in attachments 1A and 2A to calculate the buyback amount. A few days later, a TDI enthusiast created an online calculator that matched my calculation exactly. When I finally tried the VW Online Claims website calculator, I got an amount $60 less than my own calculation. On Saturday, I got my offer letter which shows the same amount as the claims website, $60 lower than my own calculation. I verified my calculation with the final settlement documents, which haven’t changed since June for my vehicle.

Has anybody else had a discrepancy between hand calculations and the claims website/offer letter? If I’m looking for where a $60 shortfall could have come from, the claims website could be using the “Central, Desert SW…” region base value ($18,497) instead of the higher “Pacific NW” value ($18,557), where the car is registered, even though I submitted the registration to the claims website.

I called the claims support line today--completely unhelpful, but someone is supposed to call me back within 72 hours.
The vehicle: 2011 Golf TDI 4D, Dynaudio, Automatic

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Resurrecting this old thread, I figured I would record my findings for TDIClub members and posterity.

1. Claims hotline is useless for resolving this type of matter. They say someone will call you back, but they never do. On my 4th call to them, they finally told me that they couldn't resolve my question and that I should call class counsel. They provided me the number.
2. I left a message with class counsel and I got a callback in about a week.
3. We exchanged a few emails about the buyback discrepancy, verifying information on mileage, etc. (Very responsive, by the way--no complaints about the class counsel lawyer I worked with.)
4. The answer: VW calculates the buyback amount based on the region in which the vehicle was purchased, not where you reside or where the vehicle is registered/titled. I bought my vehicle new in New Mexico, but moved to the Pacific NW shortly afterward. The lawyer agreed that this was probably not the way it should be calculated (NADA values used in the settlement are based on where you're selling the car, not where you bought it), but there is nothing that can be done about it. He says there will be an appeals process that will be rolled out in a couple of months.

What I can't answer is whether VW's calculations are based on the original region of purchase or the most recent region of purchase. Anyway, some of you will benefit from this; some of you won't. Differences in regional values are as large as $300. If you have any question about which states are in which region, see attachment 1B of the settlement.

Tarbe said:

$60 isn't even noise...

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$60 of diesel will drive my TDi (about) 1,500 miles

I received my offer yesterday and it is 500 less than the calculator. I suspect this is because I haven't drove it since submitting my claim and VW assumes I'm driving it 12k miles a year, so they have moved me into the next mileage bracket.
Should i submit the paperwork as is (i really dont care about the $500) but my fear is they will cancel my buyback at my appointment and I will have to reschedule.

They ask for actual mileage during the submittal or scheduling (cant remember which) so the payout amount should shift to the correct mileage bracket. I would pay attention to make sure it is correct though!