Rory

I've always been in two minds abour whether brake fluid change is simply a rip-off, and it's always miffed me with VW service plans that the brake fluid change isn't included. Quite how they get away with this on "All In" is a mystery to me. I notice it is now included on EVs (the intro of which has caused VW to change the first change to 2yrs from 3). Last time I refused it at £80 and when I picked the car up the dealer said they'd done it as goodwill - some justification that the servicing had got messed up as they did a longlife service as the car's first service. Using the Skoda website for my local dealer brake fluid change now adds an incredible £108.52 to the cost. I wondered what Audi charge, so used a random Q3 registration - local dealer £52 and all the local Audi dealers (the Audi site shows the pricing for them all) are in the £50-£60 range.

Hmm...the operation of the clutch in a DSG isn't within the control of the user. OK, you could abuse it, but it would take sustained deliberate intent to do it - the gearbox electronics should take care of the clutch. On the SEAT forum someone sued their dealer over a clutch failure in an early 1 litre manual at low mileage - they got an expert to say it should last 75K miles and they won in full. I'm gobsmacked there's any issue on a 33K mile DSG. The car is much newer and has a different engine to clutch slip article above. Are you sure the dealer has asked, and, of so, appealed? I just had a heater panel replaced on our 7yr old 90K mile Ateca under All In - it had crackled where the heated seat buttons are. Dealer initially said no, I asked them to ask again and All In came back and said yes. Job cost was £888. The knocking noise you're hearing might be the suspension piston knocking in the bump stops. Ours does it - it's a known thing and they grease the pistons and it stops for a while then comes back. It's most noticeable when the car is loaded and making slow turns. If it's not that, then there's a whole bunch of other known suspension noises, including the strut top mounts.

I just cancelled one after only four months (not used it at all). The guy I was speaking to didn't offer to refund and when I asked he said they don't refund. Bit of back and forth and eventually he said he'd make a goodwill payment. I was expecting 1 month or something, but he calculated the four monhtly payments - in other words, the whole amount I've paid. I've immediately taken another All In plan at the Black Friday pricing.

My wife had one of the last of the mk1 Tiguans in 2015, so it had the then new 150PS Diesel with Ad Blue, with DSG and 4Motion. She switched to the 1.5 150PS DSG Karoq a couple of years ago. Her use is exactly the same - semi-rural trips of a few miles to the shops, picking grandchildren up from school etc. I spreadsheet the MPG and the long-term average is exactly the same - 38MPG. Of course the Tiguan was 4Motion, and for most of its life it used V-Power, then switched to Costco stuff. Use standard Costco petrol in the Karoq.

Our Karoq has the retractable cover, but we also have an Ateca with a hard shelf and I didn't recognise those rests and sure enough they're not there. Instead there's a lip for the shelf to rest on. Odd how VW Group would make such changes in what are basically the same car, made in the same factory.

Bit odd that stop/start would work if the battery is iffy - mostly people complain it hardly ever works. Bit of a faff if you're both working so probably not worth it now, but if it fails again you could call Skoda Assist - if it needs to go into a dealer they can jump the queue.

Thanks, but I meant the first 3yr one, when the car turned 3yrs old. It doesn't seem like there's any way to get that service covered unless you take All In the day the car turns 3 and then have the service late, which is always a bit iffy with VW Group cars. Plus you'd have to pay for the MOT to be done a little before the car was three.

Did you manage to get the service and MOT at 3yrs old covered by All In? Got this coming up on one of our cars and it doesn't seem to be possible now it's all done on line as the system shows the original warranty in place so won't allow All In to be bought. We had a mk1 Tiguan when All In started and that was covered by extended warranty until it was 6. The dealer said the warranty couldn't be cancelled so I couldn't take the plan online but they somehow managed to wangle it to get All in to cover the 6yr service and MOT. That gave us warranty and assistance until the car was 8yrs old.

I would argue that you don't need software updates on a car a few years old - the car has worked fine so far, and updating things could show up problems that weren't apparent before, just as happened with the EA189 diesel updates. I refused to let VW do an AdBlue update on our 7yr old Tiguan as it had never given a moments trouble up to then. We had cover on the Tiguan until it was 8yrs old and as soon as it finished I got rid of it and bought the Karoq. Just bought All In for the Karoq as it turned 3. Our 7yr old 90K mile 1.0 Ateca has just finished its All-In cover. Messed up a bit, as should have cancelled and re-bought before it was 6, but didn't intend to keep it. As it happens, the turbo actuator failed a few weeks ago and it was around £350 to get it replaced, so wouldn't have been too horrendous if I'd had to pay except, and this is what worries me about going to a dealer without warranty, if I'd been a cash paying customer they probably would have insisted the whole turbo needed to be replaced. Somewhat amazingly they also covered the cost of replacing the heater panel which looked like it had overheated where the heated switch buttons are. Dealer said "no chance" and blamed water damage! I pressed them to ask and it got approved. That cost £888! I will say the couple of times we've needed to use the Assistance package with All In it's been brilliant, with them suppling a hire car. If I was working I'd be miffed at how time consuming it was, but I'm retired so it didn't really matter. Anyway, decided to hang on to the Ateca - bought Britannia Rescue for breakdown cover through a comparison site for an amazing £24. Will just have to take a chance on repairs. In practice we hardly use the car, but live in a rural area and don't want to be down to one car.

I drive daughter's Gen 2 Kona EV now and again, and was out in it today. I'd never really thought about it before, but it's certainly a more car-like than SUV driving position. No sense of the steering wheel on my thighs, although I was sitting a fair way back. I'm a shade over 6'.

Ours can judder a bit when driving away after reversing off the drive from a cold start. It's a bit weird really, it seems if I think about it, it doesn't do it. If I forget, then it does. We don't use it much and it reminds me of a manual car we used to have that did the same, and that was put down to condensation on the flywheel, but I don't think that can be the case with a DSG.

You don't need to do that. It'll cost hundreds of pounds in interest charges vs a few tens of pounds (and VWFS even waived that on the last one I did, in late 23).

Ours is back doing it. I asked for the struts to be regreased when it went in for service in August - the service advisor reacted with shock that I would assume they would have time to do it and told me I;d need to book it in. When I picked the car up, he cheerfully told me they'd done it. It did seem briefly better but was soon back to knocking again. As mentioned previously, it's mainly noticeable on our car when there's more than two people in it, which is rare. We also don't use the car much, and I really can't be bothered pursuing it. I'll mention it if it goes in again, but the car is out of its main warranty now and is covered by All iN, so the dealers, the keenest I've ever dealt with to screw money out of me, will no doubt be looking to extract payment from me.

Correct - you Withdrew, so just paid a daily rate of interest costing you maybe £50. If you'd Settled beyond 14 days it would have cost you several hundred pounds extra.

Nope. I Withdrew from (which is cancelled) all of the agreements within a few days after collection. Paid a nominal interest charge in two previous cases (£20-£30), inc a used Skoda in mid 23. It was waived on the third one. If I'd settled then the interest charges would have been several hundred pounds as you have to give 28 days notice and finance companies can (and always do) charge 30days penalty. This is nothing to do with T's and C's etc- it's in the Consumer Credit Act 1974. I've always been bemused by why, if you cancel, there's still a daily interest charge because it's supposed to be like the agreement never exisited. However it did alarm me when VWFS waived in on the last car and I wondered if that might lead to the deposit contribution being reclaimed but it didn't. Indeed that dealer paid us another £250 for messing up the handover (we turned up, the salesman was off sick, and they weren't expecting us). By the time they actually paid us they'd have been well aware we'd Withdrawn from the finance. Quite why VW doesn't claw back the incentives I have no idea but they don't. On our Tiguan the deposit contributon was £2750 and there was a free service pack. I can only guess it's because if they did claw them back then they could be in trouble for charging different prices for cash and credit, which is suposed to be illegal.

This is incorrect. If you're reluctant to get into a PCP VW Group dealers will tell you to do it and then cancel so that you get the incentives. You do not go back to dealer. You contact VWFS and send the money to them. You have 28 days (interest free) to pay after cancelling. You will pay a nominal daily interest charge based on the number of days elapsed before you cancel the agreement. Last time I did it (on a new Skoda) they even waived the interest charge. I've done it multiple times. Last time was a new Skod in late 23. It's possible things have changed but it's so commonly done with VWFS that there'd be uproar if it changed.

That's quite out of date, really. Cars now with electronic brake distribution brake more evenly, and stability control often uses a rear brake on corners. A qucik search shows a 2013 post from a Yeti owner years ago confused about why the rear pads went first. Rear pads are pretty small compared to fronts. Our Ateca (same car as Karoq) did a 35 mile each way motorway commute in my daughter's hands. That had new rear pads at 80K, which seems decent, but the fronts were reported as only 40% worn. So if fronts lasted 50/60K, changing the rears at 38K wouldn't be out of court. The Ateca was driven by daughter with autohold always on but now I'm using the car I leave it off, just using the "hand"brake manually with the switch when needed. I found, if anything, that the brakes tended to release too early and I'd find the car rolling. I am concious not to hold the car with the clutch, as I expect it's tiny. It's pretty flat where we live though.

There were a couple of earlyish issues - something had been sprayed on flywheels that was causing clutches to slip when the cars were in transit mode (for delivery) and damaging them. Also also some suspected issues with the electronic parking brake releasing too slowly so the clutch was workinga against it. Other than that, there's always the odd failure. We had a new clutch in a Polo when it went in for first service and I mentioned the pedal was very stiff.

Are the 99's XL (extra load) tyres? Not sure about this but I wonder if it's more marketing than anything - I read Michelin, for example, use the same carcass for pretty well all of their tyres. XL tyres can only carry more weight at higher pressures. Both 95 standard & 99XL tyres are 690Kg at 2.5bar (36psi)

Interesting. Ours is intermittantly jerky, more of a judder, really - can't reliably replicate it, then, when I'm not thinking about it, it'll judder from rest. Had DQ500 before and DQ200 is definitely more "edgy".

Suspect ronenfe is a bot account posting nonsense.

Can I ask how much the package was? We had it on a SEAT many years, and it included tyres, and it was £15/mth for 3yrs/30K miles. But I asked when we got the Kamiq and the dealer seemed baffled by what I was asking for. I didn't push it as they did the 2yr service plan free.

You'll probably get nowhere but if you put the right details in and they supplied the wrong parts then they're not as described and that should trump their returns policy. Out of interest, how are you dealing with the electric handbrake?

It seems incredible that in Aug 23 we couldn't find a new one anywhere - same as the "bait" story above, some dealers said they had one, but didn't. Our dealer was talking 9mths leadtime. So bought nearly new as was keen to get rid of our 8yr old Tiguan (which had been brilliant but felt like I was tempting fate hanging on to it). Of course me buying triggered a market collapse! The dealer had left our new order in place and it turned up just 4 mths later but the cost to change was insane so I refused it (dealer assumed I would). As well as the other comments in the thread about Karoq, one thing we don't like is the lack of colour choice. Ours is metallic petrol blue and we ordered the new one in that colour but it immediately disappeared off the configurator. The other thing is that Karoq is an old design now - I imagine there's a number of people who have been through two PCP cycles but now want a change.

I don't know what's normal, but there are currently 867 Karoq's in UK inventory, so they're probably quite keen to shift some of them. https://www.skoda.co.uk/apps/stock/carSearch?CarType=N&Model=BIBM&Sort=DATE_OFFER&SortDirection=DESC