My dealer just called. Said he's been given the same BS line about the factory shutdown causing delays. He agreed that that is BS as the shutdown happens every year and is planned! He sounded pretty f7cked off to be honest as they are making his job as a retailer a nightmare.
Another day and yet another delay from VW 
The fact they are saying this as their current excuse when everyone knows its rubbish leads me to the following conclusion:
VWUK do not know what the problem is and their strategy from the very beginning has been "fob the customers off with excuses, the cars will come soon and all this will go away." The problem with this plan is it only works if the cars do indeed come soon. They have not.
So they are now left with having to continue to BS us with excuses as per this plan even though they know now that no one believes any of it, or admit that they don't really know what is going on, and if they admit that we'll be doubly pissed because it proves they've essentially been lying (or at least misleading) us from the start in the hope that the problem will be resolved soon.
I mean, this happens all the time. I've worked in places where you regularly have to (or rather choose to) give a customer (a business) some excuse line just to secure enough time to correct a mistake you don't want to admit happened, so its nothing new or special about VW. However, by choosing to do it this way they've run the risk and it has backfired on them. You should only ever go down the BS excuse route if you are damn certain you can fix the problem before people lose patience and if you accept the damage caused will be less than the damage caused if you admit to whatever dumb mistake you made in the first place. Honestly I wouldn't do business like this but I've worked in places that do do it.
What they should have done is levelled with us from the very start. "We're sorry, we underestimated lead times." OR "This is the exact problem we have." OR "We can't actually give estimates, it might be some time." Just give us the TRUTH.
Now quite why VWUK know f**k all is a different question. I suspect it is because VW Germany have some problems causing chaos and they don't give a damn about updating anyone like VWUK on progress to resolve. Doubly so because as I alluded to earlier they have a superiority complex and think of the UK as some mangy dog that should be glad to receive the scraps... ergo VWUK is completely ignored and stonewalled (an effect they then pass on to us).
Water under the bridge now of course. I will be laying out in detail all the mistakes VW have made in my letter to Mr Thomas however.
