Ok I`m sick and tired of writing my car`s stealership service horror stories. But they [alexandria-vw.com] are not tired of doing BS service job on my car. So the car went to service Saturday morning at 8:30AM. Because same problems happened Friday night again. Same old story. An Alexandria VW classic. No good technical service, no loaner, no good customer service.

I went to the service Saturday morning. Dropped the car and requested a loaner. This is the FOURTH time that my car goes to Alexandria VW for the SAME problem! First they changed the throttle body late 2003, then the temp sensor is changed early 2004, then the whole ECM is changed two weeks ago, none of them fixed the problem. (The problem is that the idle is very rough, car stalls, there are stupid burps coming from the exhaust. And believe me if your car stalls at 40 mph with no brakes and very rough steering THAT IS A F.CKING RELIABILITY ISSUE! ) I dropped the car and asked to talk to the service manager for my problem, since this is the 4th time. There were no service manager available. I requested a loaner since my car was going to stay whole weekend there. But the response is a classic. My manager is not there i cannot give you a loaner. So I walked from Alexandria VW to Pentagon City, since they don`t have a shuttle the weekend. (No cab also saturday morning) Distance: 2.2 miles according to Yahoo! driving directions [maps.yahoo.com]. Oh BTW the owner of the 337 with kamei grill in the service… You are not friendly at all…

Afternoon I got a call from customer service saying they couldn`t find what the problem was in the car so it would stay in the shop for the weekend, still no loaner, nobody cares about the “driver” that they “want” [vw.com] !!! So I spent my weekend without my car.

Monday is another story. Since I didn`t hear back from VW service, I called them. First the service department. American faceless corporation multi layered approach kicked in, and the phone operator lady transferred me to the topest layer of the customer service. (No you cannot talk to your customer rep on your first call, just like you can NEVER see your car while it`s been fixed and NEVER talk to real technicians ) Anyway… Customer service lady put me on hold for 5 mins where I learned how Alexandria VW can fix all my problems, how they are sooo good and they have the state-of-the-art showrooms etc… So she told me that my customer rep is taking care of my car and i needed to talk to him directly… OK… So transfer me to him.. NO! here is his phone number and call him. Why you can`t transfer? Because we are in different buildings… Huh? I can transfer my tech support calls to Abu-dhabi, and you cannot transfer this call in the SAME department? And since when Alexandria VW has multiple buildings? I only see one building! Anyway… I call the guy. He said he is not taking care of my car, so i needed to call the other customer rep guy. (This is my third call so far) So I call the service dep. transfer my call to the other customer rep. Same woman answers and tells me my customer rep is at lunch…. I thought you were in different buildings? How do you know he`s at lunch?!

I go out and get some food and café and call my customer rep. He tells me my car is in test drive and they found the problem. GREAT! So I ask him what the problem was. (he is a fast talker and i hate fast talkers especially since english is my third language…) He talks about a lot of acronyms and gibberish expecting that I would get lost in the conversation. Basically he says that he was on vacation and the technician did something wrong and forgot to close some mode in ECM, or something similar. I`m like???? WTF??? I go to vacation too, and I support a f.cking hundreds of servers and I ALWAYS HAVE BACKUP PERSONS!!! IF YOU GO TO VACATION ASK SOMEONE TO TAKE CARE OF MY CAR!!! Anyway… There I start to get angry… Tell him that I will be there even if they will not give my car back, since I need a loaner, I need a transportation device, a scooter a car, a truck I don`t care… Yes! you guessed right. NO LOAAANNEEERRR!! They don`t have any. I told him that my car is in the service forth time because of their incompetance and they have to give me a loaner. And he says sir, i didn`t break your car!!!!!! (How can you break my car, you are just a layer between me and yor technician!?!) And he added I accepted you without an appointment. (OH YEAH?! THANK YOU!!!!! What a great service!!!) They give loaner to appointed customers. I`ll get an appointment next time when I guess that my car brakes down!!!!! (I`m still on the phone)

So I get another call from Alexandria VW. My car is ready. (They claim that it has been fixed) Thank god my friend Atilla drops me to the stealership. At last I am face to face with my customer rep. He says my problem was throttle body!!! (What happened to ECM etc… we don`t know!!) They replaced it and it should be fixed now. So enlightened followers of this page must know that at the first place they changed my throttle body, and the problem went on and on. So we are going back to the loop and start all over…. I guess I`ll puke now….

Yesterday a quick test drive shows that the RPM on idle is still flaky but not as much as to complain. One time when the A/C was open the car tried to stall after higher rpms but recovered without intervention. I sens a little bit of performance loss, but I couldn`t test drive more since it was rainy… I`ll do a better test today. In general, I hate VW and I hate Alexandria VW…