Service Intervals

[mattwilko92]

Picked up my GTI from the dealer yesterday and it has totally exceeded my expectations so far!

One question re servicing. It's currently set for 20k or 2 years, i presume long life?
Ive read you can get them to change it to yearly?
What do you guys recommend?

The car will be doing around 12-15k per year, a good 20 mile run most mornings for the commute.

I've purchased the ' 2 services for £150 from the dealer '.

[TwoSheds]

With a mileage of just 12/15k miles per year I'd have it changed from Longlife regime to the 10kmiles /or one year servicing.

What is covered & the service frequency for the ' two services for £150' you say you have ?

[The ANT]

I would never dream of going 20000 miles or two years, between services, to me that would then be a car that doesn't hasn't been cared for, my mk6 went 6 months between its last 2 services as it had had done nearly 10000.
If i am buying a car like this i want proof that it has been serviced at least every year regardless of milage and not travelled further than 12000 ish in that year. Or i'd walk away unless it was a very good price, these aren't mk1s and 2s where you expect the history to be patchy in places.

But I'm a bit obsessive apparently.

[mcmaddy]

You shouldn't have been able to buy two services for whatever on a car with long life service regime. The two service deal is only really for annual servicing.

[Mark V GTD]

Correct - and the whole 'Longlife' thing was just a VW method of enticing fleet sales on the basis of reducing their maintenance costs. Its not a recommended way to service a private car - but they don't want to tell you that.

[mattwilko92]

Get what your all saying and I completely agree. I'm an engineer myself and prefer annual servicing. It's strange how the norm is to have the cars set up to long life.

I will call the dealer and arrange for them to change it.

[monkeyhanger]

It's strange how the norm is to have the cars set up to long life.

They do that for convenience, long life oil in at the factory means that if someone actually does want a longlife regime, they can do so without an oil change at the dealership. If they go annual then the dealership makes the change to set-up - you can run annually on long life oil, but you shouldn't run long life on oil meant for an annual change.

That reminds me - when we got the wife's A1 1.6TDI, we found it was set to longlife as they'd specified the longlife service pack (I missed that!). It is coming up to 10k miles so i'm going to do a DIY oil change to tide the car over to it's proper first longlife service.

[mattwilko92]

It's strange how the norm is to have the cars set up to long life.

They do that for convenience, long life oil in at the factory means that if someone actually does want a longlife regime, they can do so without an oil change at the dealership. If they go annual then the dealership makes the change to set-up - you can run annually on long life oil, but you shouldn't run long life on oil meant for an annual change.

That reminds me - when we got the wife's A1 1.6TDI, we found it was set to longlife as they'd specified the longlife service pack (I missed that!). It is coming up to 10k miles so i'm going to do a DIY oil change to tide the car over to it's proper first longlife service.

I've just come from an A1, mine was set to long life but i had a 5 year annual service plan. Needless to say they thought i was talking a different language having it serviced annually. I have to go back to VW on Saturday as they aren't happy with one of my signatures on paperwork, so ill see if they can get a tech to plug in and change it.

[The ANT]

Too many people see cars as just a device for moving them about, not something which is probably their second most valuable possession that also requires care and maintenance.

[Watts]

Although I mostly agree with the comments on this and I am doing annual servicing on my GTI, I would like to counter as my previous Audi was on long life servicing regime and that was fine. I had it 12 years from new and put close to 100k miles on it. My friend at work has it now, not sure how many miles she's driven it but I'm guessing it's around 110k now and it still runs beautifully, always has done. I think there is a big difference between a car being well looked after or not regardless of annual or long life servicing.