BCM failure in my new Polo AT: Painfully slow VW service

Now, I'm not feeling upset about the problem. It's a BCM failure. Could happen to anyone. My problem was with the "VW experience".

BHPian RoadMonkey recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

I have previously posted a couple of times in the Polo TSI thread about my troubles, but now my troubles have escalated to VW itself. So I felt like I should post a summary of my experience and feelings w.r.t VW here.

Now, I'm not feeling upset about the problem. It's a BCM failure. Could happen to anyone. We can argue about the likelihood of something like that happening across other brands, but that's beside the point. It happens. It also needs to be resolved. My problem was with the "VW experience".

The car started showing problems in the last week of July. We'd just moved to a new city, the dealership is unfamiliar (I'd built personal connections at the previous dealership). I took my car to them on the 31st. They refused to have a look on a Saturday afternoon owing to a lot of piled up work. They said they'll call me with an appointment as soon as they get their scanner. Alright. Then they didn't call or communicate for an entire week. My car was just lying useless with me. No diagnosis, no preliminary check-up, nothing. I dropped a few emails to VW customer care in a passive aggressive tone and within a couple of hours, on a Saturday evening, the dealership sent two technicians to check it. Suddenly it being a Saturday was not an inconvenience. They checked the wiring for rat bites, other wiring issues, nothing seemed to be wrong and asked me to bring it to the dealership on Monday.

So I promptly took it there on Monday, lo and behold, the scanner had arrived. It could've arrived any time, given the town it supposedly came from is ~150 km away. They diagnosed it as a BCM failure and said I can take my car back, they'll place an order under warranty for BCM replacement. That was on 11th of August and I took my car back on the 12th. I called on 18th to check if there's any update on the BCM and the SA told me there's no update, it'll arrive when it arrives. Wonderful! So my car bought in October 2020 is lying useless, and I don't even know when it'll become useful again.

This has been a particularly unpleasant experience because extensive travel requirements had recently arisen for us. And while we do have a second car ('10 Ritz Zxi), we would've preferred to travel the 1500 km we had to last week on the newer, better and comfier car. I don't expect a car that won't ever break down, but I do expect it to be brought back to working condition in a timely fashion.

Thankfully my father bought the Zxi variant with airbags and ABS all those years ago, otherwise it would've also meant that we had to travel on the less safe car because the safer car can't be relied on. This brings up the question of, is "safety" worth it, if it comes at the price of reliability? My family was against buying anything that's not a Maruti / Honda / Hyundai. I stuck to my guns about wanting a safe, fun-to-drive vehicle. Now, I feel embarrassed to have stuck by my decision of wanting a VW and am definitely going to be hesitant about buying another one in the future. We might be looking to upgrade the Ritz in a few years and Tiguan / Kushaq have just been struck off my list.

Being able to drive a less fun-to-drive car is still better than having a FTD car that you can't even drive.

Here's what BHPian Goldenboy had to say on the matter:

Thank you for sharing this. Reliability and quick repairs are such important aspects of car ownership. They have become even more important after the pandemic, when we don't want to have to rely on public transport and Ola/Uber. I really hope VW and Skoda work on reducing their repair lead times, because it is simply unacceptable that a new car cannot be used for so much time!

I am fairly certain that if you had a similar issue with Maruti, it would be resolved in a week at the most.

Here's what GTO had to say on the matter:

Was this just after a lockdown in your city? German cars are going berserk in these low voltage times. They absolutely hate weak batteries & low voltage levels for sustained periods. I read somewhere about a technician stating that 50% of the current warning lights & errors on German cars are due to low voltage; in many cases, a battery swap solves the problem. But in others, it leads to permanent electronic part failure.

Here's what BHPian fluidicjoy had to say on the matter:

I remember reading about your trouble in the 1.0L TSI thread but I was sincerely hoping the problem was already resolved. I was in a similar boat when I bought the car in September and had a windshield damage, but the dealership took literally a month to find the replacement part for our new lot of vehicles. In that case, it wasn't a problem with the dealership, but a problem with the company part allocation to begin with.

In my experience with ordering Volkswagen parts, the dealership usually gets an ETA against your order. For most major dealerships, local parts if available are dispatched in under 3-4 days, while for niche and unavailable parts, the parts portal provides an ETA which is often two dates in a major month. Request for this ETA from the dealer. It should pressure them into making sure the part has been ordered and arrived. Quite often, the dealer does receive parts but they are very quick to even realise it has arrived. This has happened in my case quite a few times. However from experience, it can still take quite a lot of time.

I think there are quite a few other things you can do if you're feeling up to it. You can easily find a similar 6R0 937 087S BCM High (one in my Highline+ TSI AT) locally and swap it under 20 minutes and have everything restored back. There's an excellent thread on this forum already. You can even find a BCM from a scrap car for a few thousand rupees and keep it spare if you wish. That way, you'll at least have a working car that you can drive around, because keeping it lying around can have its own share of complications like rat bites etc. Have they swapped the BCM and seen if the problem is fixed? In that case swapping the BCM beforehand will also tell you if the diagnosis is 100% correct and the problem is resolved. I hope it indeed is a BCM failure and nothing else, but only trying will confirm this and save potential time if anything else is needed.

It would also be great if you can share the fault codes on ODIS etc. which the dealer technicians recorded so we all can have a look. Just want to say, hang in there mate! This too shall pass.

Check out BHPian comments for more insights and information.