Skoda

Soldato
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I'd stick with a good quality wax (£20 upwards depending on what you want) which will last you for years... the wax that is, not an application of it :p

Mr Postman dropped me off an invitation from Darren and Lee at the local Skoda dealership to come and test drive the new vRS with an offer of 0% attached (which I assume is referring to finance ;) ) I won't be taking them up on it though because as much as I'd love one it is about £17k more than I have to spend on a car :p
 
Soldato
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Has anyone had any oil problems with their Fabia vRS? I'm buying one and the sales rep told me he would give me some extra oil as the engine was known to burn through it and it was normal. When I got home i did a search on this and found quite a few threads (esp on the Briskoda site) about oil problems with the vRS and engines getting replaced etc.

This is probably just a knee jerk reaction but I don't want to be stuck with a car that I keep having to put in for repair. I realise I wont know until I get it and drive it but forewarned is forearmed. It's a year old and so will have 2 years warranty left when I get it.
 

v0n

v0n

Soldato
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TSI engines, depending on where they were assembled, can develop appetite for oil. There are several documented fixes in VW advisory documentation to resolve this and in Germany, for example, they just replace pistons, piston rings and breather pipes under warranty to be done with it, but as I mentioned earlier, in UK, most dealers hide behind note in the user manual which stipulates oil consumption of up to 1 litre every 630 miles or 1000km is considered normal.

Additionally, just to scare you away from the doorstep, oil weighting test can, to manufacturer standard, can only be performed on fresh oil, with additional charge of about 1h for the weighting test. So every time you complain and want the oil consumption checked, you are looking at about £80-200 service charge depending on whether you are doing it as an addition to your service or as an ad hoc exercise. And obviously, at that point, for your car to reach the 1l/630 miles levels with brand new oil inside that engine needs to be practically traveling in clouds of blue smoke everywhere.

In other words, in most cases, if your TSI is one of the affected ones (not all of them do burn oil), it's often easier to get rid of the car than to get it fixed. I love the engine but I'd never buy a TSI second hand car without iron clad warranty.
 
Soldato
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Has anyone had any oil problems with their Fabia vRS? I'm buying one and the sales rep told me he would give me some extra oil as the engine was known to burn through it and it was normal. When I got home i did a search on this and found quite a few threads (esp on the Briskoda site) about oil problems with the vRS and engines getting replaced etc.

This is probably just a knee jerk reaction but I don't want to be stuck with a car that I keep having to put in for repair. I realise I wont know until I get it and drive it but forewarned is forearmed. It's a year old and so will have 2 years warranty left when I get it.

Yep, I suffered badly with this. It is most prominent in 2011 cars with the CAVE engine code.

Mine was so bad at one point I was going from the top of the dipstick to the low oil warning light in the car before the end of the 200 mile 'review' period the garage were testing it on.

They did some weird stuff with a redesigned breather pipe and some other bits and pieces and it seems to have gone away now. I've done 4000 miles and only had to top up once.

Apparently later cars had a different 'something' in the engine that solved it. There is about 500 million pages about this on Briskoda, and the problem also affected the Seat Ibiza with the same tune engine. Apparently the lower powered engines didn't suffer from it to anything like the same level.

Lets get some details on the purchase then !! What options?

I've got a 2011 Fabia VRS Estate in Black with Black wheels and then options are:

Climate, Cruise, MFSW with telephone prep, Bluetooth Phone connectivity, arm rest, rear electric windows.... and I think thats it.

Really tempted to get it remapped as apparently it is a night and day performance difference (sub 14 seconds to 100, or for comparison, Mk2 Focus RS fast) but in honesty I really just see mine as a workhorse and don't really love it as much as previous cars. It does the job nicely, but lacks a bit of soul. The DSG and lack of exhaust note are probably the cause there.
 
Soldato
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Additionally, just to scare you away from the doorstep, oil weighting test can, to manufacturer standard, can only be performed on fresh oil, with additional charge of about 1h for the weighting test. So every time you complain and want the oil consumption checked, you are looking at about £80-200 service charge depending on whether you are doing it as an addition to your service or as an ad hoc exercise. And obviously, at that point, for your car to reach the 1l/630 miles levels with brand new oil inside that engine needs to be practically traveling in clouds of blue smoke everywhere.

Just for comparison, Skoda didn't charge me a penny for any of my investigations on the oil use. I had a free courtesy car every time, got given free oil and a gesture of good will amount for previous oil I'd bought. Once it was deemed fixed, I also got a voucher for my next service to be free.

So, swings and roundabouts.
 

v0n

v0n

Soldato
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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.
 
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Soldato
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I must admit that while I've only had dealings with three Skoda dealerships my overall satisfaction was very good. Robinsons (Norwich) and Simpsons (Great Yarmouth) were faultless. Checkered Flag (Attleborough) came across a bit amateur, not sure I'd go there for work to be done but they were OK for parts, apart from when I was told to come back in an hour because their system was down... to pick up a new badge for the grille :o

With regards to the TSI engines I must admit I'm glad to see that it doesn't effect the lower powered models as I do see myself in a 1.4 TSI Octavia as a general run about in the future... even though I told myself I wouldn't buy a Skoda again after the huge number of issues my old vRS had and the experience of my mother in laws new Fabia :o
 
Soldato
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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.

Point of view understood !

I bought my car from a garage in Doncaster and they were great. My local garage in Gloucester is good, dealing with all the issues with no fuss at all. Regularly have good chats with the guy from service about all sorts, and I never seem to have any issue with them at all.

Skoda UK customer service have also been good news for me. When I've had issues, they've dealt with them promptly. The best one was probably when I got a split fuel hose....

Driving down the M1 at 6am from Yorkshire to London, I notice the car in front seems to smell a bit.... neat. I look at the fuel guage and it seems to be going down quite a bit. Smell gets stronger as I overtake the 'neat' smelling car.

Pull off into the services, get out of the car, smell of petrol is properly strong now. Get down on my hands and knees to see a shower of fluid pouring out of the engine bay. Turn off the engine and it immediately slows down. Lift the bonnet, can't work out what is going on.

Call Skoda recovery that comes free with the warranty, get a VW repair guy there within 30 minutes. He patches it up and tells me to get it booked in asap. I drive to London, and on the way home call Skoda.

Skoda have to order the part in, but don't want me to be without a car. They deliver a hire car to my local garage, and I use it for a week, putting nearly 700 miles on it. It was a Kia Cee'd, but it was free.

Car comes back to my front door, courtesy car collected, I'm happy.

I guess thats the two ends of the spectrum right there really. However, I agree, Skoda pricing is starting to look stupid. The new Octavia VRS estate was looking seriously interesting, but the prices are a total joke. Personally, I even think the carfile prices I listed further up this thread are on the high side.
 

v0n

v0n

Soldato
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With regards to the TSI engines I must admit I'm glad to see that it doesn't effect the lower powered models as I do see myself in a 1.4 TSI Octavia as a general run about in the future...

Whatever gave you that impression? :D Last generation of 1.4 TSI can be equally prone to bore/piston issues and as oil thirsty as its 1.8 and 2.0 counterparts, and additionally suffers from exaggerated deadly timing chain problems.

The new 1.4 TSI is revised (so are 1.8 and 2.0 though) and has timing belt, but then again, I'm not sure going from chain to belt to fix timing issues could be exactly called a step forward.
 
Soldato
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Whatever gave you that impression? :D Last generation of 1.4 TSI can be equally prone to bore/piston issues and as oil thirsty as its 1.8 and 2.0 counterparts, and additionally suffers from exaggerated deadly timing chain problems.

The new 1.4 TSI is revised (so are 1.8 and 2.0 though) and has timing belt, but then again, I'm not sure going from chain to belt to fix timing issues could be exactly called a step forward.

Oh, I got the wrong end of the stick there! TBH it is the VFM factor of mk2 FL cars that is tempting me but if it goes wrong with the frequency (and cost) of my mk1 then I'd be better off getting something else!

Ironically one of the straws to break the camels back of my last car was a thirst for oil that went from <500ml/10,000 miles to 1L/800 miles.
 
Soldato
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Question for anyone who has tested the new Octavia vRS - how did you find the ride? The new issue of Evo which came through my door yesterday includes a "First Driven" test. Harry gave it four stars but the negative comment was the comprised ride would get annoying long term. He said the car would benefit from the adaptive chassis control VW put in the Golf.
 
Soldato
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Question for anyone who has tested the new Octavia vRS - how did you find the ride? The new issue of Evo which came through my door yesterday includes a "First Driven" test. Harry gave it four stars but the negative comment was the comprised ride would get annoying long term. He said the car would benefit from the adaptive chassis control VW put in the Golf.

can only comment on the 45 mins I spent in the vRS estate. Mainly motorway/A roads with some city centre roads on the way back.

Personally felt fine - not to harsh at all, seats were comfy and generally felt sporty without the rock solid suspension that sometimes comes with "sports suspension"

Saying that - i've driven a BMW 5 series M Sport with run flat tyres for 5 years which can be a bit harsh at times.:D
 
Soldato
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new vRS i ordered is Build week 42 (14th October) confirmed - should be sooner than that but that's what the factory is quoting at the moment. Delivery is about 2-3 weeks after that to dealers.

Not that bothered as I'm away on holiday for nearly 3 weeks in October so end of that month is fine for me!
 
Soldato
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Picked up my Fabia vRS on Sunday. Just been driving to/from work so not had much chance to open it up. Just a couple of niggles for me so far:

Seems to be quite a bit of wind noise/roaring so not sure if it's down to the tyres or window seals. Very loud compared to my Civic.

Volume scroll wheel on steering wheel - I must have turned this to full volume at least 4 times so far this week cathcing it when turning the steering wheel. Not good when you're listening to metal, first time I did it I thought something had blown on the car it was so loud.

It's my first automatic (although driven them before) so still getting used to having a redundant left arm and leg!

Talking of autos, I have to reverse up a ramp to get into my carport. Never having done this before is it a case of left foot on brake/right foot on acc and using it as you would a clutch to get me up the ramp? Don't wanna use too much acc and end up in my garden.
 
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Had a good look at the octavia vRS estate and took a test drive on Monday.

Car was good, met my expectations and ticks all the boxes for me - sales chap dismissed any discount if taking the pcp offer but luckily I've got about 6 other skoda dealers within easy reach so I may speak to a few others this weekend.
 
Soldato
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Discounts are hard to come by at the moment - and to be honest on a car this new and only just starting to be built that is no real surprise.
You should find your 6 dealers will all offer similar deals - the dealers have their hands tied by Skoda UK at the moment.
 
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Got an issue with my Aircon unit.

When it's on ECON mode, there's no issue, but when you put it on AUTO, it makes a humming noise and you can feel a slight vibration when the clutch is down.

Any ideas?
 
Soldato
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Had a good look at the octavia vRS estate and took a test drive on Monday.

Car was good, met my expectations and ticks all the boxes for me - sales chap dismissed any discount if taking the pcp offer but luckily I've got about 6 other skoda dealers within easy reach so I may speak to a few others this weekend.

Not the same car but I got over £1k knocked off my Monte Carlo and £600 off my Dad's Fabia.

But they're both coming to the end of their life.

Hopefully you'll get somewhere with a dealer.
 
Soldato
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Had a good look at the octavia vRS estate and took a test drive on Monday.

Car was good, met my expectations and ticks all the boxes for me - sales chap dismissed any discount if taking the pcp offer but luckily I've got about 6 other skoda dealers within easy reach so I may speak to a few others this weekend.

I got around £1k off the list price with the pcp 0% deal. You'll struggle to find much more than that.

I'll email you the quote I got from an internet broker via a skoda dealer - I used that as a bargaining tool.
 
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