So, swings and roundabouts.
Very much so. To be honest, I've been observing Skoda winning customer satisfaction surveys for about six years now, and to be absolutely honest, my experience with Skoda customer service is less that satisfactory. I think of them not in terms of "between Seat and Audi" but somewhere along old Nissan and some amateur Perodua.
I have four, five, maybe six Skoda dealers within 30 miles from where I live but I drive 40 miles to get any service at all. First time ever authorised dealer tried to rip me off (by demanding I pay non refundable fee for diagnostics to confirm a fault in a car under warranty) was at Skoda. Karmically, that branch on Sutton Road in Maidstone closed soon afterwards. First time ever I booked a £129 basic service and arrived to find £500+ bill without a single call to get my sign off was at Skoda. I think half of London heard the screaming of the shift manager when I refused to pay it.
I bought my last Octavia in 2010. At the time I spoke to just about every dealer across south east as none of the immediate dealers in Kent would just keep wasting my time, not returning my calls or emails. In retrospect, I never had such hard time getting people to take my money as I had while buying that top of the line Octavia. In the end I travelled from Medway to Epsom to get it done.
Every single problem I had with that car ever since, to convince anyone to investigate or do anything with, was like pulling teeth with nail clippers. And the car is far from fault free. Never mind the small bits, but the expensive stuff - half the car taken apart to find leak in the roof, two DSG gear boxes, two clutch pack changes on the last one in first 50,000 miles alone. Engine with 4.2 litres in sump that now consumes 9 litres of oil between services, and you are told this is well within "long life" norm.
There was never ever any courtesy anything from any dealers in London or Kent. Every "courtesy car" carried an initial fee. Sometimes they called it "insurance fee", sometimes they call it "daily fee". Small sum, but never the less. Last two times I took demonstrator cars for test drive instead of courtesy car. They still charged a fee.
Every oil test was paid for every time. This time around I paid for major service and extended warranty. Better part of a grand left on the table. The guy at the dealership still charged 80 quid and once I paid it he asked with a smirk on his face "you were told again and again, these engines take oil, why don't you save your money and our time and just accept it"? That's the kind of service I get from Skoda. In Kent.
Now, I accept these underwhelming shortcomings from the nearby dealers, because when you jumped the "nobody wants Skoda, that's my profit" bandwagon in the last decade and kept on rolling on those never ending offers that would see special black edition vRS being built to your spec for less than £14k, you don't expect to get much from people who sold you car for peanuts. But now, as a maker of vRS that costs the same money as Golf GTI, I think Skoda might be surprised just how quickly that tide can turn. Either that, or of course, perhaps my experience over the last few years, is a one of exception.