I bought my car as a 1yr old back in 2018. When I went to look at it I noticed it was asking for a service at the 9k miles it had on the clock.

I discussed this with the dealership, they said of course it would be serviced before I took it. We talked about schedules and it was agreed that I'd be moved over to variable servicing.

Assurances were made, I collected the car a week later and have been happy with it ever since.

At almost to the day it's 1yr anniversary since I bought it, I got the "oil service due - 30 days" message on the screen. I spoke to the original dealership, apologetic, excuses - but at a 220 mile return journey I decided not to go back to them.

Also, not knowing what exactly had been done in the service that previous year, I went to my local main dealership - explained, said I would pay for a service again now - however I want the car moving to variable servicing.

 

Fast forward another, almost to the day, year and once again I've got the "Oil Service - 30 day" message popping up. That's 1yr and 6000 miles later - so obviously once again it has not been moved to variable servicing.

 

As it happens I'm at the dealership tomorrow for the cars first MOT so I shall be having words - they need to resolve this, be that resetting counters or free servicing, that is up to us to decide once I chat to them tomorrow.

But how can this be so difficult? A simple request and I'm lead to believe a simple thing to change - yet here we are.

 

Madness! Rant over.

It is irritating, I know it doesn't help you now but for future reference, when you collect the car post service, in 'Car Settings' (I think, maybe general Settings) area of the infotainment you can go to 'Service' and it'll show you the countdown in days and miles - on variable these will show as 700 and something days and then 18,600 miles for oil, 19,900 for inspection IIRC. If they show 365 days and 10,000 miles it's been left on fixed again. At least if they do it again this time you can walk straight back in and moan.

Another simple fix is to never use a Skoda dealership for servicing, and switch to a specialist VAG or tuning garage.

 

(I understand that there are massive dependencies on this, including whether or not you need to maintain guarantees / warranty / PCP clauses, as well as higher costs potentially etc).

 

However, independent garages have a reputation to uphold and more often than not deliver vastly superior service, with better knowledge. Rather than typically lower quality, high quantity work that most dealerships provide. If you can't trust them to fix a simple issue after multiple requests, how can you trust them when it comes to the bigger stuff? And if you care about quality work to the vehicle, it's a no-brainer to move to a VAG specialist.

 

Either way, all should have checklists of some sort to ensure that requests for resetting servicing intervals etc are completed to stop the inevitable pinging on every start-up!

Fixed service settings showing 372 days / 9,400 miles is quite usual.  (1 year and a week.)

As from being reset at the PDI from Variable / Flexible as the car arrived when in 'Transit Mode' then put on Fixed Servicing.

 

As it is there should not Be Oil Services showing and also Inspection Services, that is the crap VW Group / Skoda have on there.

 

There are Oil Services & Inspection / Maintenance Servicing being done on one visit be that Fixed or Variable Servicing intervals.

I'm very much a "back to dealership while the car is in warranty" kind of person. I know EU rule stated a number of years ago that so long as a car is maintained to the same level as a dealership they cannot invalidate warranty - but for the relatively low additional cost, it just seemed easier to go back to them. Absolutely no arguments in the case of warranty work required.

15th November and it's 3yrs old, so no more warranty (although I am debating if I'm going to extended it another year). Once that warranty is all over then I will move to other options.

 

It just amazes me that I decided that pragmatic approach last year was to pay for another service - I couldn't get a guarantee that when it was serviced just prior to my collection they had used all of the "long life" materials. I could have said "sod it" last year, assume they just forgot to reset things correctly and carried on driving until I reached the 2yr/18,000 area and then got it serviced.

In the end I paid for a service I likely didn't need under the instruction we could start again and it would be variable going forward.

 

I shall dig out my invoice for last year and also ask them to show me list of parts used - as long as they can confirm long-life oil was used etc, then I'm happy for them to reset whatever things need resetting and I'll see them in a year.

If they cannot prove that, then I'll be asking them to service it again foc and then resetting it to variable as I did a year ago - think that is the least they can do.

They should not be resetting service indicators without servicing.

If they messed up last time they can foot the bill on the extra service and then in a year reset the car to what you want it at.

 

No Main Dealer in the UK should be using anything other than long life oil for fixed or variable servicing unless a customer asked them to and have car on fixed servicing.

Even then many will decline your request to have VW 502 00 used rather than VW504 00 / 507 00 or VW508 00 / 509 00.

 

Services might seem like just Oil / Filter services, but at least an annual service should have your car getting a visual inspection and report which is good if you are not doing the checks.

Edited 16 October, 20205 yr by e-Roottoot

So I went in today and they have taken a look.

As the car was only booked for an MOT they didn't have a massive amount of time to investigate.

They have promised me a fluids & filters service FOC, which is fair enough - after 7k miles it's unlikely it'll need plugs etc.

 

However, when they were looking they said they were unable to set it to more than 12k miles. I wasn't trying to tell them their job, but I was stressing that sounds like a fixed interval and I want it setting to variable.

They have said they will need the car longer to find why they seem unable to set the interval to anything but 12k.

Got it booked in a couple of weeks.

I'm sure I read somewhere that once it's been changed form variable to fixed, it can't be changed back (I wonder why.. ;-))

^^^ Just as well it is not actually correct then.