10,000 miles

My car recently hit 10,000 miles, so I took it into the dealer for a service checkup. I took it to the dealer where I bought it, which unfortunately is on the complete other side of Seattle, and it can take about an hour to get there during rush hour, which is a huge pain.

When I dropped it off in the morning, the service guys were extremely friendly, but almost suspiciously so, which was kind of weird. They told me it would be ready by 5:00 PM. I arrived right at 5:00 expecting to pick up the car, but they didn't have it ready. My suspicion is that they hadn't even started on it until I showed up, because I had to wait another two hours to get it, and it certainly doesn't take two hours to change the oil, rotate the tires, and check a few things.

While I was waiting they tried to be extremely nice about it, apologizing profusely for the delays. At the end I finally learned why - they offered to give me a "free oil change" coupon as long as I "said good things" about them when Volkswagen Corporate called me to ask how the service went. I muttered some sort of "OK" and went on my way. I think it's the first time somebody has tried to bribe me in a real-world situation, which is sort of interesting (I don't count homework-bribes in school under this category).

When Volkswagen called I told them what happened, and the guy on the phone sounded displeased and insisted that they would "rectify the situation". My guess is that this dealership has been getting bad reviews (apparently for good reason), and Volkswagen has been getting on their case. I'm not sure if my complaint was anonymous or if they can trace it back to me, but I probably won't be going back to that dealership again anyway, mainly since it is so far away and inconvenient. I honestly expect to get bad service pretty much wherever I go, so I'm honestly not too displeased about that.

Car recalled, again

This week: Volkswagen recalls 340,000 vehicles because of head lights

And in February: VW recalls 790,000 vehicles because of brake lights

Recalled twice in one year.. this could be a bad sign.

New Bulb #2

So fortunately it ends up that the brake lights on the 2006 GTI are actually user-serviceable, but it requires a few more steps than on a 1984 Buick. First, the molding behind the the light must be peeled back and the light enclosure unscrewed:

Then the entire enclosure can be removed:

And the bulb holder can be extracted:

Finally we can replace the actual bulb and notice a tiny break in the filament of the broken one:

Dead Bulb #2

Fortunately this one is in my car instead of in my projector.

I like how the car knows exactly which bulb is dead and can even tell me about it. On my old car I had no way to tell that something was dead other than manually checking out all the lights.

Of course, on the old Buick, I could go out there with a normal screwdriver and replace the stupid $1 bulb myself. On the new car the lights are all hermetically sealed into the back of the car and I'll probably have to pay Volkswagen $75 to fix it.. grr.

I wonder if this is related to this story from February which I seemed to have missed: VW recalls 790,000 vehicles because of brake lights

Discovery

I just discovered that after the gas pedal on my car is depressed all the way, it can still be pushed one "click" further, to accelerate even faster. Sweet.