Just before Xmas I bought my wife an ex demo Touareg with only 3k on the clock. We'd been looking for around 4 months, not overly hard, but having a new baby wanted something to house all the stuff a baby needs while being comfy and safe for both my wife and boy.

Anyway, a number of issues happened, some I won't go into but the ones that concerned me most were the brakes. The squeaked badly so got a mechanic at work to take a look. They said it sounded like it hadn't been used for a while so to just use it and it will be fine - it wasn't. Took it to the local VW dealer and they put some shims in which still didn't cure it so booked it in to replace both front callipers.

They replaced them and called to say the car was ready for collection. The wife drove it home and followed me all the way. she said a number of times the ACC had activated the collision prevention, and made emergency stops. I got in the car, the brakes were spongy, i could get my foot all the way to the floor and the reason the ACC was kicking in was obvious - they hadn't bled the brakes!!!! OMG! a Main VW cant bleed a set of brakes. WOW!

Lets say I wasn't impressed - it was the last straw and decided my wife and boy weren't going in that car again and i was going to reject it. Rang Customer services, they said call VW finance, called them - said I don't have a finance agreement!! After kicking off and finally getting to speak to a manager, they told me my wife was down on the docs (not sure how as she wasn't there and signed nothing). Anyway, she rang up and was told she wasn't on the agreement but I was! Anyway, got to the bottom of it and told if i wanted to reject the car, I had to do it with the dealership.

So, rang the dealership - was in a really good mood by now! - and very quickly got through to the highest ranking manager on site. Explained the situation and got an appointment within 24 hours to discuss the issues. Went down today and they took the spec Id be willing to take. They found ONE in stock matching the minimum id take, a bit newer, higher milage, few extra options. Its coming down next week for me to inspect but hopefully this is the end to it. So fingers crossed ill finally be in a safe, working touareg.

To be fair to the dealers, they have tried hard to accommodate me with the issues ive had (not all listed above) but fingers crossed in 10 days ill have a safe car for my boy.