Our Horrible Experience with Dean Team Volkswagen of St Louis

About 5 months ago, we leased a new 2009 Volkswagen Tiguan. We needed something with a little more room and would be rock solid under nasty weather conditions. Volkswagen: Fine German Engineering, right?

1 month in, the cart starts randomly not starting. What’s even stranger is that occasionally, it would only start after you closed and re-opened the driver’s side door. At first I thought this was a clever safety mechanism to ensure that the door was closed before letting the car start, but normally the car starts just fine with the door open. It was very bizarre.
Anyway, we bring the car into VW. They fix it the problem which turns out to be faulty battery cables. While we’re there, we also asked them to do an oil change, because we were promised free oil changes with our lease. Great, right? Well, no one told us that we only get free oil changes every 10,000 miles, nor that the car only needs oil changes that often because it takes synthetic oil. So why, at 5,000 miles did they tell Jess that she needed to have her oil changed? Obviously because Jess was a girl and she didn’t know any better, and probably because they wanted to charge her $80 for an oil change. WTF??

I called and complained until they sent me a check for $50. Randy Carson, their service manager is a complete ass by the way. I finally had to call the sales manager in order to get the refund, and it wasn’t even a complete refund…. But fine, whatever, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Over the course of the next month we ran into even more problems. The passenger side seat belt completely came out while we were driving and the car has started to shake really bad. We brought the car in again, and this time they told us that the back-driver’s side wheel was cracked and that the arm was bent. They said we hit something and it would cost about $900 to fix. Jess said she didn’t hit anything, and I believe her. How do we even know that it was not done in the shop getting the oil changed? Don’t they put the car on the lift to do this? There’s no guarantee that someone there didn’t run over a curb before hand, or that this probably didn’t occur on one of the test drives before I bought the car. I asked them to provide some sort of proof or inspection that the car wasn’t this way when it left the dealership (either at purchase or the last time we brought it in), and they couldn’t.

So now I’m stuck paying a bill for something that I didn’t even cause? Randy Carson wouldn’t even deal with me at this point. He briefly called to tell me that there was nothing that they were willing to do and that I needed to come and pick up the car. Excuse me, but I don’t exactly trust their service team after they tried to intentionally rip off my wife. He said he was sorry, and goodbye. How’s that for a great big “Fuck You”?

I called VW corporate and told them and they weren’t willing to do anything either, because it wasn’t a manufacturer’s defect; but as of now, I already have 2 incidents on file. 2 more and I can legally turn the car back in under Missouri’s Lemon Law.

So to sum up this long story, Dean Team’s customer service has been complete crap and they’ve actually stopped returning my calls at this point. VW corporate told me to file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and that’s what I will do. All I can hope for is that one of you out there learns from my mistake and never do business with them.

P.S. The car itself actually handles great, especially in rough weather conditions. If it wasn’t falling apart, I would actually recommend it.

P.P.S. Ever since we have been telling person about this problem, the response to how badly Dean Team’s service is, has been overwhelming. Thank you for all of your input out there, guys! It seems that a lot of people already would never trust the “Dean Team” to even wash their car!! – Jess