Possibly VW UK have agreed a price with the body shops that includes the body shop having a long time slot to carry out the repair so that they can juggle the work and slot it in with other work and so keep thier costs down. Bet if they were
doing it quicker they'd want more dosh!
I'm inclined to agree with the idea that these are background jobs for the repair shops but.... The costs of the replacement vehicle hire which is done through VW Mobility with a 3rd party must really push those costs up. Maybe they can reclaim that from a different budget in Wolfsburg - who knows.
We booked a date for ours 3 months in the future and were told that it would take up to 2 weeks. Then just before it was due to go as we were negotiating the replacement vehicle it went up to 2 to 4 weeks.
After 10 days or so with no news I emailed the dealership and had no reply - a few days later emailed both the dealership and Claridges - again no reply.
We were due to go away for a few days, so as we were driving to the airport, contacted Claridges - who said they had been in touch with the dealership after my first email to let them know what was happening and also said that they weren't aware we wanted the van back in any hurry, so had only started the work when they got the email - duh!! So I'm guessing if I hadn't emailed them they wouldn't have started until just before the end of the 4 week period - crazy...
So I guess the moral of that is that if you want your van back keep up the pressure.
Anyway, the van is back and apart from reaking of fresh paint work everything seems OK. It appears that a new seal was put on - ours was pretty messy after nearly 4 years and also the seal doesn't seem to have been stuck back on. They didn't touch the front cap which they shouldn't have done but I was a bit concerned they would.
So all's well that ends well - at least until the check just before the 6 years is up I guess.
Now I have to go back through all these posts to find the one about the tape so I can order some and get it applied while everything is still pristine.
One last thing, as I dropped the van off before the work, the bodywork person from the dealership came out to look at things. (I'd asked then to confirm that the font cap wasn't corroding in any way.) His view of why the roofs were corroding was that us owners spent all the time pulling the trim on and off and this was what caused it!!!!! I wonder if that is the general VW folk lore view of what causes the problem?
PS Has anyone saved the page number of the post where the tape was mentioned - would save me some reading! Thx in advance if you can point me to it.