Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles UK Reviews 

Terrible service. Please someone from management pick up on this downward spiralling issues at VWCV customer service centre. I ordered a Cali van top of the range and all I’m trying to do is get an update. When calling VWCV I have experienced so far :- system down, no mic connected to laptop so I got the silent treatment when put through as their working from home, I’ll call you back one person said as they can’t get through to commercials for an update but they never did. Another said they don’t do this commercial van service anymore and to call a van centre ! Van centre said its wrong advice and sent me back in to the loop .. They seem to have many Asians picking up the phones at VWCV, which means the names are not straightforward and hard to remember or report even if you did get through to someone who cares. Perhaps ID badges or numbers would help. I was told (by Assan?) the call centre was in Leeds but again I am losing the trust of the brand now. I think I must have rang when its time to pick the kids up as it was just silly trying to get through to many that are supposed to be at home and online

Break down under warranty. Took a month for VW to pick it up, during which time I made 70+ of phone call.
It is difficult to put into words the inept uncaring attitude of ALL of the staff. When I finally went to pick my "Cleaned and fueled up" van that had been on extended 50 mile road test. It was in the red and dirty, with 400 mile extra on the clock. The person who gave the keys held them out as if he was going to drop them before i reached out. No there you go sir or anything. I struggled to not say thank you....
Then the under panel fell off and customer services just didnt want to know. Still waiting as van is unusable. They need to be taken to court and kept there. I do not have anything good to say about the service staff or anything. I deeply regret buying a new £45K vehicle from them. At one point my local garage was to pick the van up and they just didnt turn up no sorry or explanation. I eventually got VW in Northampton about 100miles way to pick it up. Then got the attititude. Customer services have given up they just do nothing promise things thatthey cannot deliver and leave you to sort it out yourself. The initial breakdown person who turned up said VW VANs are rebranding changing logos and trying to make VW as if they have chanegd and are relaibel and careing etc. What a lot of BS. Never ever again will i buy a VW

hi.. a very good friend of mine bought a brand new caddy van last September. he lost the key, so (for the first time) tried his spare. this doesn't work, further the key was opened to find it contains nothing. I think it is vw responsibility to get the problem sorted.

But no, VW breakdown service are not interested..... they take no responsibility at all.

Do not under any circumstances even think about buying a van from this organisation.

A massive shout out to Mark and Cameron parts department VW DEALER BIRMINGHAM for phoning me and said you paid us £783 and we had no idea about. My dad ordered a viscous fan for transporter and forgot about it. Mark calls and says account team have realised they owe you money. I dropped of some chocolates to the guys.we would have never known. Big respect to these guys. Im gonna now get some thing nice maybe book a trip to Devon for a break. Cheers all.

went over my budget thinking I was buying reliability to help me run my small business . how wrong I was injector failed prematurely (which vw are well aware of with the 1.6 TDI ) nothing but trouble since . turning into a very costly experience . customer service don't know the meaning of good will. thanks for nothing . would never entertain the brand ever again.

Excellent service from Volkswagen Leicester where we bought our VW Ocean Camper. Dealt with Christian Joudrey who was always pleasant and very helpful indeed.

My "premium" £40K T32 4 motion transporter... where do I start. Always loved the van and the idea of the lifestyle. Sadly it's not all its cracked up to be. I'm currently staring at a new Bi Turbo and potentially new engine on my 6 year old fully serviced van. Mainly motorway miles & mostly with a very light load. So a well maintained and loved van. It currently been at Listers VW commercial van centre for 5 weeks now and they still haven't diagnosed the actual issue, which I know stems from well documented DPF and EGR valve issues that are giving their 2ltr 180BHP engines such a bad name and short lifespan. If that's not bad enough, I ring to chase progress now most days. I get promised call backs but they rarely happen and when they do they tell me nothing of any substance, I'm convinced they don't know what to do with it, there was even talk of smashing the rocker cover to get a stubborn injector out... Big alarm bells at this point. The price so far is £2k over what a friends van has cost. Same age, same model, but much lower mileage. His engine died on the same weekend 5 weeks ago - you literally couldn't make this up. Why are VW owners not doing something about this on mass, it should be on every VW van owners radar. VW won't give me a final costs or a plan of action, it's all very woolly. Were just stuck in this strange world of running my business with no van, no support from VW (probably due to it being 6 years old), no "courtesy van" as promised on all their automated phone systems. Just "bear with us". Well no I won't bear with you any longer, I want my van back put its old turbo back on and don't charge me a penny. I'll take it to a company who actually want to repair my vehicle and get me up and running again at a fair cost.

I haven't yet mentioned the front splitter and rear spoiler I had fitted at their body shop when the van was just 6 months old, badly done with gaps and glue left on the body work, the rear splitter wasn't allowing the tailgate to close properly. Both had to be re fitted and I had to get quite forceful to get this done as they said that's who they are fitted to all their vehicles. The front spoiler / splitter had also got overspray on the front grill. Shocking and can only assume they had got hired help from the blind school. Then there are the VW matt black side bars... they started to rust just over 12 months after fitment. These were not cheap and when I took them in to complain I was told there was only a 12 month warranty on these products. They categorically would not replace them. And are still on the van to this day, a lovely reminder of how poor VW parts and service are. I could have brought aftermarket bars for a third of the price but obviously I only wanted the best...

There are spots of rust coming on the bodywork too. Really not good enough for a £40k van at 6 years old.

My advice is there are other much cheaper vans out there, VW is however riding the crest of a wave based on its surf and camper lifestyle. Don't get fooled it's just a very expensive van. It's MPG is nothing like what is claimed mine does about 24mpg, by all accounts they make 10 to 20% less than the claimed BHP figures. Your engine will likely last between 80 and 120,000 miles, pitiful by today's commercial vehicle standards. And that premium VW van comes with very poor customer service from the dealer network that is short sighted and forgets you will need a new van at some point... It definitely won't be a VW next time!

UPDATE BELOW

OK this is an update on the above as of 27th July 2021. Listers have reduced their labour costs from £110 per hour to £60 and given me 10% off all parts because of their poor service to date. And they have finally given me a courtesy van. Sounds great until the overall price finally came in nearly 7 weeks after the van went into their care. Wait for this... its a big one... £17,000.00 apparently I need a new engine, a new DPF, a new CAT, and the list goes on. There was compression in the engine so not destroyed at the point they stripped it and mostly the crank, shells and oil pump damage & that actually need replacing. I will be taking the van to a specialist engine rebuilder now for a 2nd opinion and hopefully a better service and a price that doesn't write my van off. After questioning the VW service manager about the fact that all this has stemmed from DPF light coming on and doing the VW recommended DPF regen steps as per the handbook, he told me the turbo has gone and fragments of it have gone through the engine and is nothing to do with the DPF... Hmmm, I smell a cover up! but, he said they regularly have transporters in from as little as 30,000 miles with this issue and that I should be grateful I've had 118,000 out of mine. Wow now thats an add for VW in the making! Poor customer service and a service managers honest review of what you can expect from a £40K premium van all in one. Shame on you VW!

Terrible absolutely terrible. You sign yourself up for a life of hassle with no emptahy from VW commercial at all.
My van has had several serious engine management faults since i've had it from new, to the point where they're changed the ECU on a vehicle first registered in 2018, today it's gone into fault for about the 7th time, and as any self emplyed person knows when your van is off the road you're not earning. I've lost in excess of £1500 in pay due to this vehicle and all I've been offered in return is a free service with absolutely no care from the customer care team.
Save yourself the hassle and go for a different manufacturer.

Buy a VW Van and you are on your own.
We were sold 3 x brand new Crafters and the sales patter was how reliable VW were and how superb their aftersales care is, and they were worth the extra money.
Beleive me, this is not the case and could not be further from the truth.
3 Call-outs to VW assist within a year, Warranty is worthless, as for their "Customer Care" team, well they simply do not care! In fact, I have had more intelligent conversations with toddlers, who would not only be better organised, but also have more reasoning skills and empathy than these guys
We have spent in excess of £120k over the last 12 months with similar plans for the next 12 months, and believe me, we will certainly not be spending this years budget with VW, in fact when they are all back on the road, they will be gone!
Completely disappointed as we thought they were premium vehicles and worth paying extra for, the reality is the vans are not that good, contrary to how the ads go, extremely unreliable, full of faults from new and non-existent aftersales care.
If you like spending time in recovery vehicles, go for it, if not stick with another much cheaper brand of van.
Do not say you haven't been warned!

Absolute waste of time contacting VWCV customer care. They promise the earth and deliver nothing - all they are interested in is fobbing me off and closing the case down as soon as possible.
I’m still awaiting a call back over a week after it was promised and I’ve chased this 3 times now!!
I’m quite sure VWCV won’t contact me about this review, however people need to be aware before spending £1000’s on substandard vehicles.

Poor after sales, sold a vehicle with faults, not interested in rectify the issues. Very poor customer service experience. AVOID

Avoid these vehicles like the plague

Aftercare service or any warranty repairs will be impossible to get done and expect other parts of the van to be blamed. Infotainment system doesn't connect to my phone correct about 50% of the time and was told it was my handset even though by demonstraing to them in person it connects sometimes but not always and model is listed in the compatible list.

Constant oil levels too high sign to which I was told my style of driving is causing this and I need to rev the van more to correct it.

Aftersales service is a complete joke.

Purchased a new VW Caddy van 1.6 Diesel. New van from Dealer. After approx 3500 approx miles had to have new full set of injectors which VW did under warranty. The van has now done another 4000 miles approx. and the first of the replacement injectors has blown. Unable to get any help from VW Customer care.
Needless to say there is an obvious problem with CADDY 1.6 Diesels blowing injectors. This vehicle has done a total of 7826 miles. From new. We are taking it the Car auctionS so that we don’t have any comeback. Sadly we would not recommend anybody buying a VW Caddy, be warned about engine injector problems. Avoid VW

Took my T5 dsg 4motion here for a diagnostic due to an intermittent grating sound at certain speeds.
When I booked it in, I recommended they put the 'chassis ear' on it' to identify location of the noise.
At pick up they told me that "it is making a noise and they didn't have time for the chassis ear"
That'll be £100 please and £100 further if I want to leave it with them for further investigation.
Goodbye VW.

Have been a customer of VW commercial vans for over 18 years spent over £150k on vw vans with them so today we take our van into VW commercial van centre to get the handbrake checked out as two weeks ago I parked it up on a slight slope on a customers drive, hand brake fully on, unloaded and then proceeded to do some work when I returned the Van had slid into a concrete pillar damage to the back doors and bumper was horrendous, Volkswagen checked it out and said nothing wrong with the cable or callipers but we have tightened up the hand brake cable !!! This was a strange thing to do if the cable was perfectly ok and not faulty Apparently get this somewhere but nobody knows where in the owner’s manual it possibly says you have to park your van up in gear with handbrake on do not rely on the hand brake alone ....but nobody quite knows where this is mentioned, customer services says refer to the van centres ruling even though this has not been a requirement of the previous four vans we have had as we have had manual vans that have never had this requirement to park in gear with handbrake on as handbrake on its own for the past god knows how long has been enough needless to say we will never purchase a van from VW ever again

Useless and annoying adverts stopping me watching TV on My5

Volkswagen Branston were absolutely superb in their customer service when my Brother-In-Law, Mick Goldstraw, purchased a new VW Tiguan Diesel 2020. Everything was arranged effectively, test driving the new car without any complications was easy, whilst a successful rapport was consummately established. I would fully recommend people using this branch. They are a credit to the car selling business.

Bought a VW 2016 Caddy from Sinclair in Swansea, (February 2020) Awful service. Was told it had been MOTd. The van had not been MOTd so I was driving it for three weeks with no MOT. Luckily I checked the MOT only because the window wipers were split. The van also had a nail in the tyre. I’m still trying to get the wheels balanced as vibration thro steering wheel. Also there was no locking wheel nut or wheel brace and jack. Only found this out when getting the MOT done and tyre repaired. I’m still waiting to get the locking nuts changed. Sinclair still ow me money for the MOT. After sales service is disgusting I’m being mugged off and lied to. DO NOT BUY VW, they are not interested once they have your money. Absolutely awful

So we've just off loaded our VW Caravelle. Owned it for 5 years, one of the biggest disappointments was a new clutch at 37000 miles that aside enjoyed owning and driving it.
The biggest let down of all was the van centres. One avoiding their responsibility of fixing something that they broke. The other misdignosing a low washer level light for an engine management light (eml) and then covering their mistake by tampering with the fuse to make the eml come on, after I told them, on the phone, it was a low washer level light. Anyway glad to say I wont have to deal with them in the future. Moved up 🙂 to a Kia!

Impeccable customer service, and the best van we’ve had!
We may be lucky having the Newcastle van on our doorstep, the customer service we received was second to non. Michael guided us through full process step by step, helping us get the van we’ve always wanted and getting the finer detail right.
I can’t thank Newcastle van centre enough and I really recommend Michael.