More frustration at the stealership...
 

Here's a new one on me...

I have a 2005 A6 that I bought as a CPO.

I was having a problem with the Battery Manager. In cold weather, the car would misread the battery as being low and try to conserve power by not turning on the cabin lights. Then the battery level would read only 10%.After a couple of minutes of driving, all would be back to normal.

A quick forum search pointed out that the problem was the Battery Manager, which required a software update. A TSB was issued in Dec of '08.

When the car was due for its 55,000 service, I advised them of the problem. Naturally, they totally blew off my reference to the TSB. I guess they wanted to sell me a battery.

I finally got the service rep to look up the TSB and compare it to my symptoms, and they grudgingly agreed to look at it.

Here's the kicker - they charged me for the software update required in the TSB! $99 for a "diagnostic." Apparently TSB repairs are only covered under
the original warranty, not the CPO warranty. Huh????

Anybody ever hear of this kind of crap before?

I also broke the visor clip on the driver's side. When I made my service appointment I told them I needed one so they could order it. This was a week before the appointment.

First, the service rep said, "I don't know if we can order that part separately." Separate from what? The headliner?!?!

I ended up having to reschedule the service (I was in the hospital for a couple of days). When I rescheduled, I again told them about the visor clip and made an appointment for the following week. So, This means that I first told them about it almost 3 weeks before the service, and reminded them about it again 1 week later.

Today, I go to pick up my car (the dealer is 40+ minutes away), only to have them tell me my visor clip was broken and they needed to order it!!!
Aaaaaargh!

I really love my A6, but I make a point of NEVER recommending Audis to anyone. The company is one of the least customer friendly organizations I've ever dealt with, the dealership/service system has a crappy attitude to the people who keep them in business, and the quality control is spotty at best.

What is it about customer service that they don't get?

Well sounds like your dealership suffers from "we're the only game in town so we don't have to go out of our way to please you" syndrome. However it is true that the CPO doesn't cover TSBs, but it is at the dealers discretion and can go ahead and sign off on the repairs and only charge you the deductable. My dealer will take care of all that for me, and I don't have to pay anything extra. Sorry to hear about your experiance, is there another dealership that's reasonably close to you that you can give a shot?

TSBs are not cover under extended warranty, thats the case with most manufacturer. As far as the vsior clip, the dealer have to confrim the broken clip before Audi would pay for it under warranty. Sounds to me the Audi dealer did everything by the book.

I don't think a broken visor clip would be covered under warranty, nor did I expect it to.

What I would expect is that for something that simple (and cheap) they would take my word for it and order the 12 dollar part so I wouldn't have to louse up another day with a 90 minute round trip and a wait at the dealership when they could easily have done it yesterday when they had the car for the whole day.

Confirm? What's to confirm? The plastic piece snapped in two!

They do everything by the book, alright - their book, which makes no allowances for customer satisfaction or common courtesy.

My experience with TSB's is that they are more of a "hidden recall" for problems in design or manufacture. With other cars, I only paid for a TSB repair once - a broken window regulator at 80,000 miles, and even then I only had to pay half of the repair cost.

This "repair" did not include any parts, either. It was a "diagnostic" and a software upgrade - Maybe 10 minutes on a laptop.

Is this dealership in NY by any chance?

I understand your anger, but any other car brand or dealer would have done the same. They need to take a look at it and see if they can fix it or maybe they need additional parts to fix it. If you feel that strongly about it, you should have bought the part yourself and give it to them to have it install.
TSB is not a hidden recall, it is merely a factory procedure to fix common problems so the dealership can save time. As far as I know, software updates are included in the bumper to bumper warranty only. The CPO warranty does not cover software updates.

I think your problem is the dealership and not the brand. I had real bad experience at Carlsen Audi here in Palo Alto. Horrible horrible experience. Called AoA, and explained my issues and they asked me to take the car to another dealership (Rector) and the who experience was changed. You might want to give feedback to the dealership GM.