This is not the same at all as a timing belt change.
There is not an inherent fault implied in a timing belt/tensioner which means it could be expected to fail at any time regardless of mileage or maintenance.
It is a service item with a safe limit in terms of age/mileage and it is designed to be relatively easily and economically replaced as part of interval servicing.
The timing chain tensioner in the golf is assumed not to be a service item, but there for the reasonable life of the vehicle. They have been proved to fail randomly regardless of mileage and maintenance level. They were never designed to be routinely replaced, so access is difficult and parts are prohibitively expensive if you do the job properly and replace the chains, guides and covers. There are, I believe, four revisions of the chains themselves, so this could be chain stretch as well as tensioner failure.
It is also too early to tell whether the latest revision of the tensioners/chains are immune to problems and actually fix the issue in the long term. So changing them out will not necessarily fix the problem.
For me, this made it an unacceptable risk in terms of a pretty large investment.
I'm actually surprised existing owners haven't been more vocal about the problem to VW, etc. In the case of the well-publicised piston ring issue with the longitudinal version of the TFSI engine in the A4, after Watchdog publicised it, Audi started replacing the engines with no cost to the owner and refunding customers who had previously paid to solve the issue out of their own pockets.
