silver rain

alright so the story goes like this. last friday my windshield wipers, fog lights, and turn signal stopped working. not thinking about labor costs, i took her to the dealer in hopes i would get it fixed under warranty. my service rep told me they would take a look at the car and call me back that night. i call him back at 8:15, as my dealer closes at 9 and the receptionist told me my car was ready. i headed down to the dealer to pick up my car and as i enter the lobby, i run in to the service rep who tells me my car is not in fact ready. he then tells me they couldn't figure out the problem and was marking me down for 4 more hours of diagnostics (@ $99 an hour), not wanting to take my car elseware and pay the already accumulated $100, i agreed to this plan in hopes it would be covered by warranty. he told me at this point if they found the problem was causes by radio, it would not be covered, however i left it anyway. Today i get a call saying they found the problem (a relay) and total came to $575. i headed down to the dealer to argue with my service rep. he tells me it is not covered under warranty for the following reason. Although he didn't directly say it was the radio at this point, he told us they could'nt find the cause because it didn't throw a code and therefore it was not thier fault. i don't know how or why they came to this conclusion, as one would think if they couldn't find the cuause, they would have to cover it under warranty (or else blame it on somthing). after some arguing over the rediculousness of this claim, my service rep tells me that after 1998 audi made radios that were part of the OBDII system and that if you had an aftermarket radio it screwed up the system so it wouldn't throw codes (which is completely inaccurate right??) and anyway at this point he was clearly blaming it on the radio. then i saw "so your saying the radio causes this" to whcih he replies "no i didn't say that, we don't know the cause" after some more argument he makes the mistake of saying "someone was tampering with the wires" which causes even more sever arguing on my part. At his point he tries to get us to leave by saying he had to take another customer and this causes even MORE severe yelling and what not. anway, he then tells me he has no control over warranty and i would have to call the next guy up the chain tomorrow. So in the end i had to pay the $575 and ill have to call again tomorrow to get this whole thing resolved. Damn. anway can someoen tell me if that thing about the radio is right?? that doesn't make much sense to me, i think he was actually trying to tell me the car couldn't throw codes with an aftermarket radio. anyway im very very bitter now.

silver rain

the reason he said it took so long was that because the car wasn't throwing and codes, they had to manually search the car and it turned out to be some obsurely positioned relay that doesn't ever fry. is this possible?

AudiMick

Known issue with Vag.com probably also with VAG-tool.<ul><li><a href="http://www.ross-tech.com/vag-com/aftermarket-radio.html">http://www.ross-tech.com/vag-com/aftermarket-radio.html</a</li></ul>

ModifiedA4

unless the radio is wired to pull current through the relay, which i doubt it is. are you running factory wattage bulbs?

silver rain

i don't know what type of relay it was but if it was lights that wouldn't explain the wipers not working. oh well i guess we will see what i can work out tomorrow.

ModifiedA4

do you know what relay it was? after 24 ill look in my bently.

ArandA4

It's their burden to show that something you did caused the problem.

lost in beer country

month ago. It was one of the 370 relays. I had help troubleshooting so it only cost me the price of the relay ($38).
Sorry dude!

silver rain

he couldn't tell me what relay it was and on an unrelated note seemed to have no idea what i was talking about when i mention drive by wire (talking about another topic)

ModifiedA4

sounds like they thought they could pull the wool over your eyes.