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At a Loss!

Well. I am still at a loss. My van has now been stuck in a garage compound for the Grand Total of 30 days. This is getting quite stressful now it has to be said. VW should be ashamed of themselves. But hey ho they have had my money and I have nothing.

If you were down South I could recommend a couple of dealers for you to take it to but you are in York ...

I'm going to post for you in the help section,

This is disgusting and you need community support.
 
A few weeks I took my 6 month old T6.1 Coast in to the garage for some warranty work. I thought it would just take a couple of days tops. After all the problem was just a leisure battery that was losing charge. No problem I thought it will soon be fixed. How wrong was I. It has been over a month now and fuses and all the wiring has been checked and a New Camper Control Unit has been fitted and all to no avail and the problem persists. I am at a loss. It feels like my van has been stolen by VW. I have raised a complaint and expressed my dissatisfaction about the whole sorry affair but feel so helpless. Has anyone else had any issues like this. It must be some kind of record.
I think I mite have beaten your time for the garage keeping your van ! my partner and I were away in France in my new T5 Cali about 8 years ago when one morning the elevating roof would not come down when pressing the consul button After reading the manual and then lowering it manually we finished off the holiday sleeping on the lower bed and had to keep the safety straps on the roof for the duration of the holiday to stop it blowing up when driving. We took it to VW Cardiff and after three months and changing three controls units, removing all the ceiling, panels and wiring etc, still could not find the issue, but eventually found under the passenger footwell carpet an earth connector that had the earth wire for the consul computer was not actual around the bolt, but sitting on the nut that should have been holding it down which is why it was working intermittently whilst my partner was sat in the passenger seat unwittingly putting pressure on the ring connector allowing the roof to work now and then. In all fairness to Cardiff VW, they gave me a Cali demonstrator for the three months and after asking them for a gesture of good will to compensate for the three months, gave me the choice of £ 1200 worth of Brandrup accessories. So not such a bad turn out.
 
A few weeks I took my 6 month old T6.1 Coast in to the garage for some warranty work. I thought it would just take a couple of days tops. After all the problem was just a leisure battery that was losing charge. No problem I thought it will soon be fixed. How wrong was I. It has been over a month now and fuses and all the wiring has been checked and a New Camper Control Unit has been fitted and all to no avail and the problem persists. I am at a loss. It feels like my van has been stolen by VW. I have raised a complaint and expressed my dissatisfaction about the whole sorry affair but feel so helpless. Has anyone else had any issues like this. It must be some kind of record.
I am afraid you are way down the league… my T6 Ocean went in for diagnosis of a gas to cooker supply issue and repair on March 2nd… a faulty gas regulator… £20 online - half an hour’s work at most….
it was “repaired” (ie no it wasn’t…) and returned… I complained… they then stated they couldn’t look at it again until May as they were busy…(!) and once there it took them a whole month… yes a month…! to swap over the faulty regulator….
 
If you were down South I could recommend a couple of dealers for you to take it to but you are in York ...

I'm going to post for you in the help section,

This is disgusting and you need community support.
I’m down south and dissatisfied… where do you recommend ?
 
Well. I am still at a loss. My van has now been stuck in a garage compound for the Grand Total of 30 days. This is getting quite stressful now it has to be said. VW should be ashamed of themselves. But hey ho they have had my money and I have nothing.
Sorry to hear of your issues can I ask do you have it on finance ie lloyds etc if so take it up the the lender that can sometimes work.
 
It may be time for a second opinion.

Get it out of Jail and take it to one of the recommended dealers mentioned on here who have an understanding of the Cali.

Notify VW Customer care why you are doing it and your disgust at having to do
Sorry to hear of your issues can I ask do you have it on finance ie lloyds etc if so take it up the the lender that can sometimes work.
No. It’s fully paid up.
 
Well. I am still at a loss. My van has now been stuck in a garage compound for the Grand Total of 30 days. This is getting quite stressful now it has to be said. VW should be ashamed of themselves. But hey ho they have had my money and I have nothing.
Was the rear battery actually losing carge or was it just the control panel reporting it as flat.
it could be as simple as a faulty battery monitoring module the T6.1 now has on each battery.
 
Was the rear battery actually losing carge or was it just the control panel reporting it as flat.
it could be as simple as a faulty battery monitoring module the T6.1 now has on each battery.
We covered this some time ago in the electrical forum. I think @Coasterman is looking for help with dealing with VW rather than electrical help.
 
Well my van is still at the dealers. VW Customer services gave me a call this morning and informed me that the Battery Monitoring Module was going to be replaced. It seems logical to me that this should have been checked earlier in the rectification process but it wasn’t. I feel a bit more confident that this will solve the issue. Fingers crossed..
 
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Well my van is still at the dealers. VW Customer services gave me a call this morning and informed me that the Battery Monitoring Module was going to be replaced. It seems logical to me that this should have been checked earlier in the rectification process but it wasn’t. I feel a bit more confident that this will solve the issue. Fingers ctossed.

Well here's hoping it is now finally going to be resolved. Also, yes, why on earth was that not checked earlier, although I asked the same question back in 2015 when SMG were told to do nowt with the vehicle until the whizz kid from Milton Keynes had popped down to see for himself, despite the fact that even whizz kids take holidays somewhere and he had whizzed off for a couple of weeks :shocked
 
Well my van is still at the dealers. VW Customer services gave me a call this morning and informed me that the Battery Monitoring Module was going to be replaced. It seems logical to me that this should have been checked earlier in the rectification process but it wasn’t. I feel a bit more confident that this will solve the issue. Fingers crossed..
Keep nagging VWCS, phone them repeatedly and make a (polite) nuisance of yourself, pointing out how you've been severely inconvenienced by this etc. Our 2016 Beach went missing for 3 months to get the roof recall (I couldn't even see the issue anyway!) with nobody quite knowing where it was - dealer, transit, body shop or outer space. Persisted with VWCS and suggested that a gesture which would eventually make me happy would be a cambelt + water pump change + full service - which I got. So you might want to think of something....
 
Just a quick update. Nothing much to report. Van is still at the dealers. It’s been there for 47 days now. The game of VW ping pong continues between VW Technical and The dealer. The list of excuses is mounting up. Covid, self isolating, pregnancy. ‍♂️
 
Time to change your user name @Coasterman . - to NOcoasterman. Utterly unacceptable service from both dealer and VW. 47 days in the dealer how many days has it been sat and how many hours have they actually been working on in
 
Time to change your user name @Coasterman . - to NOcoasterman. Utterly unacceptable service from both dealer and VW. 47 days in the dealer how many days has it been sat and how many hours have they actually been working on in
Oh…about a couple of hours i reckon at least. I’m getting sob stories now about lack of staff etc etc. They may as well just fess up and say they are crap and don’t know their ar** from their elbow.
 
Oh…about a couple of hours i reckon at least. I’m getting sob stories now about lack of staff etc etc. They may as well just fess up and say they are crap and don’t know their ar** from their elbow.
Maybe pick up the van @Coasterman and book it in with different van centre. 47 days is really unacceptable without a justifiable reason.
 
Oh…about a couple of hours i reckon at least. I’m getting sob stories now about lack of staff etc etc. They may as well just fess up and say they are crap and don’t know their ar** from their elbow.
Have they got it On Charge? If not tell them and VWCC to replace Leisure Batteries when they fixed it.
 
Have they got it On Charge? If not tell them and VWCC to replace Leisure Batteries when they fixed it.
More likely to have it out on hire! Have you checked it’s still actually in the workshop?
 
Keep nagging VWCS, phone them repeatedly and make a (polite) nuisance of yourself, pointing out how you've been severely inconvenienced by this etc. Our 2016 Beach went missing for 3 months to get the roof recall (I couldn't even see the issue anyway!) with nobody quite knowing where it was - dealer, transit, body shop or outer space. Persisted with VWCS and suggested that a gesture which would eventually make me happy would be a cambelt + water pump change + full service - which I got. So you might want to think of something....
They won’t like it if I lose my patience. I have already started nagging. I have discovered that VW are **** at fixing campers but they are ace at apologising. I guess they have had years of practice
 
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Thought I would post a quick update on the “situation” regarding my van. I have a hire car sat on my drive which I hate because I don’t want a car I want a camper. It will be 2 months on the 8th of September since I dropped my van off for what I thought would be a routine repair. The game of ping pong between VW Technical and the dealers persists at a snails pace. That’s about it. SNAFU.
 
Well. Another update. 79 days on or 11 weeks if you like and my van persists with this problem. Hardware and software has been thrown at it and it refuses to work. It seems to work fine at first but after the van has been left overnight it seems to revert back to not working. Let me just reiterate what is wrong. A warning message appears on the control panel saying 2nd battery is low. It doesn’t matter what I do as regards trying to charge via EHU or running the engine on max charge. The message will then read battery very low charge now and effectively immobilising all the consumer units. So there we are.Am I the owner of the most unreliable California ever? Or is this a common issue on the 6.1 Coast. Should VW be doing a recall. Do VW actually know what is wrong. From my experience the answer to that last question is a resounding no.
 
Not seen other posts with same issue, and it sounds like a single (significant) issue which they can’t fix so could perhaps be classed as reliable rather than unreliable - in that it consistently works or behaves in the way you expect; it’s just that the way you expect is not the way it should or that you want.
This is a particularly torrid tale. Surely you have no realistic option now other than to reject the vehicle?
 
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As your vehicle was only 6 months old I think it’s time to tell them you want a replacement or your money back with compensation. The former will obviously be very difficult because of supply. But if you got a full refund + enough compensation to cover the cost of ordering a new van it would be worth it.
You are now at the end of the holiday season so it’s not such a big deal to be without the van over the winter months.
The vehicle is obviously not fit for purpose. If they refuse you will need to tell them you are taking legal action.
 
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