We have three Octavias in the family, two Octy 2s for my wife and I and our old Octy 1 with our daughter and SIL.

 

I'm interested in VCDS for both keeping the cars fettled and performing any necessary tweaks from time to time.

 

I appreciate the product is good value for money but as a pensioner I'm finding it hard to justify the cost just for us, hence this post.

 

I'd like to understand a little better what sort of prospects there are for earning back some of the purchase cost by hiring out the service.  I'd also like to understand the typical VCDS requests and the sorts of vehicles to which those requests apply, together with typical fees charged or 'gratuities' received.

 

I appreciate such information may be sensitive so if you're willing to help I suggest you PM the information to me, or if you wish something 'off forum' PM me your contact information and I can call you.

 

I intend to create an anonymised document from whatever I learn and will be happy to share it back with anyone who has contributed.

 

I will NOT disclose any identifiable information.

 

BTW I'm based in Lancashire and there are only a couple of VCDS members within a 20 radius.

I think most requests I've had are to apply tweaks from various guides on this site. That means it's typically not too challenging once you're familiar with VCDS, even more so if you take autoscans and adaptation maps before you start. The only thing that might catch you out is finding exactly which guide is correct for a particular MY* as things can and do change.

 

*MY = Model year, basically when the car was built which typically defines what revision of control models it has and therefore, which guide to use.

 

There is certainly scope to make back money towards the purchase cost, even more now that VIN-limited interfaces are standard. You can also sell your VCDS interface later on as they tend to hold value well. On average, I probably get ~£10 towards the beer fund from making some changes for someone and I've looked at ~30 cars in the last 6 years. Many people seem to loan them out on eBay but that's not something I'd feel comfortable doing.

 

TBH, I'm not in it for profit as I've used VCDS so much on my own car. When I got the Octavia, the price from the dealer to retrofit bluetooth was so high that doing it myself covered a fare amount of the cost for VCDS at the time ;)

 

I would agree with @langers2k I have one of the older dongles that had no limit, however I have now had to buy a HEX-V2 as that is needed for the vehicle I now have.

I would happily do coding with the old interface for "beer money" and as said the cost was well offset by the changes I had made to the two vehicles I had prior to this one.

The cost to code a LED in and the other mods I made covered it. However if you want to do the newer cars with the change in licencing will up the cost if you want the unlimited one. The cost for just the 3 licence version does make it cheaper if you only want to do your own.

I could also sell my old cable for as much as I payed for it originally. 

 

John

Buy the 3 user one for your own vehicles and dont concern yourself with making it pay for itself, it will do so the first time you have any problem where otherwise you would need a garage to diagnose for you or worse still you or they throw parts at it.

 

With 3 vehicles you will likely find faultcodes that may mean you can avoid an imminent expensive failure in which case it will already have paid for itself.

 

Cant recall the costs but my 3 user one was £225 IIRC, turned out to have been worth double to me with one vehicle in very short order, had I invested before I would never have scrapped the previous car avoiding the cost of the new one.

 

Say I wanted to recover the cost, then i would need to buy the unlimited one, not sure of the cost but lets say £450, that would mean paying £225 more and having to work on 45 other peoples vehicles (which would be a pleasure) to recover my costs, realistically I would not hit those numbers so the extra £225 would be money down the drain.

 

Dont forget with the 3 VIN one you can still diagnose, measure, find & remove fault codes on other vehicles where people have problems, which for me is where the pleasure comes, those wanting recoding of lights etc are likely to just buy something like Carista and play themselves.

Edited 26 February, 20206 yr by J.R.

3 hours ago, jjc said:

I could also sell my old cable for as much as I paid for it originally.

This - I've just sold my old HEX-USB+CAN cable on eBay for £200, so the cost of the cable for 11 years ownership was £99.

 

Take into account the saved diagnostic fees on the 3 VAG vehicles we've owned (Skoda Fabia, Audi RS4 & Skoda Octavia) and I'm quids in - and that's without taking into account the beer tokens I've earned doing tweaks for people local to me and the satisfaction of tweaking our cars to work more like we want them to.

 

Edited 26 February, 20206 yr by PetrolDave

I can add very similar comments. 

 

I initally bought vcds to allow me to see faults and save money on diagnostic costs at a garage.  Then after a while and some playing around on my own car I realised a hobby interest and put myself on here and a few other forums to assist others. 

 

I've certainly got my money back for the cable i got in 2008 but it wasnt quick and requests have mainly been simple tweaks to control modules via guides on here and other forums. 

 

I've always been clear to "customers" on my beer tokens and some have been most generous in that department. 

 

Buy a 3vin cable, play with it and reach out to others if you want at further cost to unlimited to but dont bank on getting it back quickly. You're not a full time garage. 

 

Yes I guess that would sum up my feelings, buy the 3 VIN for yourself, dont try to justify it because after a short while you will be saying "why did I not buy it before?" then once competent and confident you can consider justifying the extra expense of the upgrade to unlimited VINs.

 

My only regret is using one of my 3 VINs for my neighbours car when all he wanted was a simple coding that could in fact have been done on his maxidot display if he or I had RTFM.

 

That said if he gets a problem tomorrow it will have been worth it but it blocks me from doing anything for anyone else or if I purchase a future VAG myself, as it is I have not yet registered my Yeti with the program until I really need to change something rather than just desire something like needle sweep.

I have the HEX+USB-CAN version which I've used a lot over the 5 year ownership of my R32.. in addition to helping others out with their VAG vehicles.

 

Being able to diagnose an issue yourself, rather than relying on a mechanic or dealer, is great. As well as being able to provide them with the scan output as it makes their lives easier

 

I'll be sending my cable back to Ross-Tech so I can upgrade to either the HEX-v2 Enthusiast (+ upgrade to unlimited VIN) or HEX-NET Pro, still internally debating which one to get

9 hours ago, defiant said:

I'll be sending my cable back to Ross-Tech so I can upgrade to either the HEX-v2 Enthusiast (+ upgrade to unlimited VIN) or HEX-NET Pro, still internally debating which one to get

 

It'll probably work out cheaper if you sell the old cable on eBay or similar and buy a new one outright.

 

The older cables have held their value well making them worth much more than the trade in discount

I live in New Zealand so don't use ebay for selling unfortunately.

 

I could sell it on our equivalent, trademe, but I don't think there's much of a market for it but could always try

I just sold my old HEX-USB+CAN for £200 on eBay.

 

Isn't eBay available in New Zealand? They will ship overseas as well (I just pay to ship it locally, the international shipping is at the buyers expense but handled by eBay) which I've used several times in the last couple of years.

4 minutes ago, PetrolDave said:

I just sold my old HEX-USB+CAN for £200 on eBay.

 

Isn't eBay available in New Zealand? They will ship overseas as well (I just pay to ship it locally, the international shipping is at the buyers expense but handled by eBay) which I've used several times in the last couple of years.

 

Well, it is available, but we don't have a "localised" version so predominantly use ebay.com, www.ebay.co.nz just redirects to ebay.com

 

I'd be selling to 99% international buyers as local buyers would use trademe or Facebook market place (and I don't have a facebook account)

2 minutes ago, defiant said:

I'd be selling to 99% international buyers as local buyers would use trademe or Facebook market place (and I don't have a facebook account)

I refuse to join Facebook because of their incredibly arrogant attitudes towards sharing MY data.

Just now, PetrolDave said:

I refuse to join Facebook because of their incredibly arrogant attitudes towards sharing MY data.

 

Agreed 👍