I've heard that the vacuum pipes on VAG cars can be a can be a bit cr@p and begin to perish, which means there is the possibility of an air leak.

They can also collapse resulting in the car overboosting and then safe or limp mode and no fault code being stored.

Can anyone shed any light on this as I'm toying with the idea of replacing them for samco pipes and have been quoted

One vac hose has recently failed on the Octavia, I'm going to replace as many as I can while at it. The OEM ones have done 5yrs and 92k miles so I'm going with OEM ones again - I dont think the samco ones are worth the additional cost.

Symptoms are miss-firing and generally unstable idling. You can see the revs wandering around on the rev-counter, see the engine wobbling on it's mounts and hear the misfire from the exhaust exit (possibly not on the TDi tho)

How much are the OEM ones in comparison to the Samco ones?

I've not costed either OEM or Samco - I assumed the Samco ones would be more expensive. obviously the kit will be different fo my car though.