# How VW warranty works from a Service Advisor



## vw_service_advisor (Aug 10, 2017)

At work as well as skimming this forum over the past few months I think many VW owners might be interested in a brief explanation of how warranty repairs on your Vehicle work and some common misconceptions I’ve found some customers may have.

Do Dealerships not want to fix cars under warranty? 

As a rule no, it’s one of the main ways we make money. VW pays the dealer on behalf of the customer and gets a volume discount off the parts and labor rate they pay us because they pay us for so much warranty work each month, but not that much of a discount.

Volkswagen warranty repairs are a big part of how we make a living.

That said, there can be incentives to not spend a lot of time trying to verify a customer’s complaint if a vehicle is under warranty and the stated problem is hard to reproduce. VW does not pay for diagnostic time so most VW dealers won’t pay a tech to diagnose warranty concerns. 

Basically VW will only pay if and when when we replace a covered part. Dealer pay structures pass that risk straight onto your Service Advisor and technician. We cant make a dime trying to find your problem until we can reproduce and locate it.

When you’re trying to track down intermittent issues on a new car while dealing with a steady stream of other cars coming in all day you can probably see where the incentive structure isn’t perfectly aligned here to take care of new car owners with intermittent problems.

I wish VW would change that. It would make the ownership experience better as well as my job.

What are the standard types of warranties?

By standard I mean you didn’t have to pay extra for it when you bought the car. It just comes with a new VW. 
Here’s the three types I see, in order of how common it is we repair a vehicle under each warranty type:

1) NVLW Repairs: 

New Vehicle Limited Warrany covers a lot of stuff. As long as it’s not a wear item (like brake pads, alignments, light bulbs, etc....) and an outside influence did not break the component, there’s a solid chance the NVLW warranty will cover it.
For most VWs I see the NVLW lasts 36K miles or three years from the original date of purchase, whichever comes first. Some newer VW models have extended that to 6 years 72K miles. Which is a pretty long coverage period for a warranty this extensive. NVLWs are transferable when a used car is sold.
NVLW repairs account for probably 80-90% of our warranty repairs.

2) Extended warranties on specific components:

Sometimes your car may have an extended warranty only on a specific part or parts. Intake manifolds, fuel injectors and other parts are covered for quite a long time under specific conditions on some VW models.
If you ever have a question about whether or not your car has any parts with specific extended warranties just call your local dealer, give them your Vin, and they should be able to let you know pretty easily.

3) Powertrain and Emissions Warranties: 

A longer warranty period than “3 and 36” usually exists for the powertrain and some emissions components depending on where you live.
For the VWs I see every day powertrain warranties often last 5 years/60K miles. There’s an actual book long list of what is covered that I don’t have memorized but typically if it’s coverred under the powertrain warranty it’s a mechanical component of the engine, transmission or drivetrain.
While it happens, we don’t do repairs super often under power train warranties because these components usually last a long time.
Very occasionally we’ll replace a failed part that is specifically related to a vehicle’s emissions warranty as mandated by federal and local governments. A catalytic converter we finished today was one such example. That car had an 8 year 80K emissions warranty I believe but a lot of that is dependent on the government regulations where you live, especially if you’re international.


Why didn’t I get a loaner for that warranty repair?

My understanding is that VW pays us to put customers in our loaner cars for repairs under the NVLW only. If there are no loaners available VW will pay for most of a rental car IF the rental car is a VW, which creates a lot of problems.
Rental car places don’t stock VWs too often, so if a new car breaks suddenly and I didn’t have a loaner available I may not be able too get a customer in a loaner car for that repair.

What do I have to do to maintain these warranties?

Just follow the maintenance schedule in your manual. You don’t have to have that maintenance done at a dealership. We’d love to have you, but if you choose not to just make sure you or your shop of choice uses the right parts and fluid as specified in your manual.


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## rodhot (Jan 4, 2012)

*good + honest!!*

a very informative explanation for sure. there ARE dealers of all kinds that say you MUST come here for service for your warranty. a few years back a female sales associate told me that when i was shopping for a new triumph motorcycle, i knew better but did not comment + just left knowing i or anyone i talk to would prolly NEVER buy there!! word of mouth is a powerful seller or NOT, satisfied customers return + tell their friends when they deal with a better dealer + unfortunately they vary a lot!!!


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## Gear_Cruncher (Mar 28, 2013)

Thank you for the explanation, it helps understand what the dealers are thinking and how they operate. :thumbup:


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## Xanderips (Aug 28, 2002)

Thank you!


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## vwbrvr6 (Jul 31, 2002)

Can you go into warranty denial due to car modification such as cars that have been tuned? Why are some dealerships more prone to deny coverage then others? Can't the dealer just not disclose to VW that the car was modified?


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## vw_service_advisor (Aug 10, 2017)

vwbrvr6 said:


> Can you go into warranty denial due to car modification such as cars that have been tuned? Why are some dealerships more prone to deny coverage then others? Can't the dealer just not disclose to VW that the car was modified?


VW engineers stop by sometimes and we send live data on tests we run for some cars, so there is risk. Plus lying sucks.
My approach is that if there’s an unrelated minor modification and this vehicle is going to get in and out of the shop in a relatively quick and pain free way then let’s get the customer taken care of. 
If a customer has serious issues with their car and it’s been flashed or something though now I’ve got to get my tech, Service Manager, and Warranty Specialist on board to coverup any warranty repair. All of whom would have to want to fix the car bad enough to risk their reputation with their biggest business partner. Why would they take on that risk and way of doing business? 
Most weeks we’ve already got more honest work than we can handle coming in the door.


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## vwbrvr6 (Jul 31, 2002)

I'm not saying lie, I'm saying not tell them....does VW actually ask? Case in point. Denying warranty on a timing chain tensioner due to a tune. VW knows is a **** part, and even redesigned it. So why not just fix the car under warranty? does VW want to see proof that the car is not tuned?


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## vw_service_advisor (Aug 10, 2017)

vwbrvr6 said:


> I'm not saying lie, I'm saying not tell them....does VW actually ask? Case in point. Denying warranty on a timing chain tensioner due to a tune. VW knows is a **** part, and even redesigned it. So why not just fix the car under warranty? does VW want to see proof that the car is not tuned?


Let’s take that example and walk it through. 

Depending on the tune the customer should probably have the work done at the shop that did the tuning anyway. Some tunes may call for altered timing specs, and we’re going to just trust a customer knows their tune doesn’t when we’re putting everything back together?

It’s not super rare to chase random codes after a repair, sometimes that takes ten minutes sometimes your scratching your head for half the afternoon on a code that keeps returning on a repair you just did. 

Do we really want to be doing that on a tuned car? We don’t necessarily know what spec measurements are anymore for any tests we need to run and we can’t call VW Techline obviously.

It would be totally possible to get something like that through warranty, yes I see your point. But we’d be saying to VW this meets the terms of warranty coverage even though we knew that to be false, and we’d be setting ourselves up for a confusing cluster**** of a situation if anything goes wrong.

And in a busy shop you’ve already got enough of those situations to deal with so you avoid them like the plague when they walk in the door.

The customer is the one that put their warranty coverage at risk with the tune so it’s reasonable for the customer to go to the the trouble of tricking VW about it by getting the software returned to stock prior to coming in if they want us to do a thousand odd dollars of engine work for free.

If they aren’t willing to go to the trouble to do that but they want us to go to extra trouble for them, they aren’t the kind of customer we’re going to stick our necks out for with VW anyway.


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