Dont trust the dealership

steveg241 said:

Legally no one can force you to use the dealer to keep your warranty. If you document the oil purchased and that is Dexos2 or equivalent, meaning ACEA C3 compliant, and that you document you had it done at the specified interval by yourself or some other shop, your warranty should be intact.


Volkswagen is a different company, but when the Jetta I have was new, I did none of the services at the dealer. When something went wrong at 40,000 miles (at the time is was a 4 year/50,000 miles warranty) and the car was running rough, they asked to see maintenance records. I kept every receipt and showed it to them for oil changes every 5,000 miles using Castrol synthetic oil that met the VW oil specs and they accepted it. This included several oil changes that I did myself. I just kept the Autozone receipt for the oil and filter and took a picture of the dash showing the receipt and mileage.

Yes, I'm a bit particular about this stuff, but if you keep good records there shouldn't be an issue.

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There's times where I may be living out of hotels for 6 months or more so stuff gets lost. Checking in and out of places weekly sometimes to include the maids taking into their best judgement on what looks like a receipt that needs to be saved(iPod worst buy receipt vs wal mart one with oil plus paper plates, underwear, cups, gum and a 6 pack) . Best bet is your route and scanning stuff to photobucket into a folder that is not private so you can open it w/o compromising your password via saved cookies from any comp. My last few cars were used but brand new ones goes to dealer for a few years till I feel comfortable about honoring the warranty if need be. I had a brand new car die 1st 3 months of factory fill from oil starvation due to a factory defect and used one go from a factory defect turbo 2 years into ownership. I don't feel like I lost a percentage of manhood from going this route or that special bond from the car you would acquire teaching your son how to ride a bike and letting go of the handle bars. At the end of the day it comes down to convenience vs trust of the facility servicing your vehicle.