My wife and I recently purchased a new 2011 Jetta TDI from Young’s VW in Easton PA. The car came with a “Premium 8″ (RCD-510) Radio which is a dual-din* touchscreen device sporting satellite, am, fm, bluetooth, and flash drive players.
When the salesman demoed the car to us, he showed us the hands-free telephone features built into the radio. By pushing the telephone button the steering wheel, the radio would display a set of telephone menus. These menus allowed us to dial a number from the radio screen, pair our phones, look at our contacts list from our cell phones, answer a call, etc. It was a very nice system.
Fast forward a couple weeks, and these bluetooth phone menu features have all disappeared from the radio. It was simply not possible to bring up the phone menus again. The bluetooth still worked using the voice commands, but no other bluetooth functions worked. It wasn’t even possible to hang up a call, as the steering wheel button no longer had any functionality.
I called up the dealer’s service department and made an appointment to have the radio fixed. After examining the radio, the dealer informed me that my car never had those features and that I must have dreamed it up. In essence, he called me a liar, and said he could do nothing.
The owners manual for my car says it has the phone features. The owners manual supplements for my car says it has the features. I saw the features. But I feel that I am screwed on this situation. Its like buying a car with air conditioning, having it work for a couple weeks, then fail; and then having the dealer tell you the car never had air conditioning!
I know I wasn’t dreaming, and neither was my wife who was watching the whole demo. I suggested to the dealer that he talk to the salesman who sold us the car, but I was told that he no longer worked there. Apparently the dealer does not want to talk to the ex-salesman.
At this point, I have no options as to how to proceed. The dealer told me that these features cannot even be added to my car, that my radio cannot be upgraded or swapped for a higher end unit.
I think this is my first and last VW.
*) 4″ by 7″ Touch screen radio
Wow, what a dilemma. I would be really pissed off both at VW and the dealer.
I found a video that was saying that there was a rolling change and the version 3 was the one with the phone stuff. Did he demo it in your car or a 2012 that was similar? Check out the link and see -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdnnCYK6FUs
Good luck, I would at least show the dealer and prove that you are not nuts!!!