Service (not) due

File this under “Audi dealership hopeless, compared with MINI” …

My Q5 last week told me that I needed an oil change, as I had reached 10K miles:

So I called Audi; they said that service is not due till 15K – because they do a first “free” service at 5K. They didn’t explain whether the Audi asks for a service at 10K, or whether it asks 10K after the previous service and they just didn’t bother resetting the interval at the 5K visit.

I asked them what to do about my car asking for service; they suggested that I ignore it – for the next 5,000 miles! They said that resetting the interval “takes at least an hour” and they clearly weren’t at all interested in doing it.
I suggested that ignoring a “service due” alert for 5,000 miles was a very poor quality way to make a car – apparently they (IRA Audi) didn’t much care. I also pointed out “what if some other issue comes up that requires service, given that you told me to ignore the warning”. Once again, they didn’t care.

So, I emailed Audi USA who, to their credit, called me within half an hour and were apologetic – but still didn’t explain whether the issue is with the car or with the dealership. Anyway they said to take it to the dealership to reset, and I told them how un-popular that seemed to be, and that IRA Audi claimed it would take a long time.

Today, I got a call from IRA Audi; they said to bring the car in so they can reset the service interval – it won’t take long, maybe 20 minutes … hmmm.

If this was a MINI, I know that MINI of Peabody would have encouraged me to bring it in either to service if it needed it, or to correct the wrong interval. I know also that BMW of Peabody would behave the same – since exactly that happened with Margaret’s BMW, and they sorted it.
I know also that I would have got a friendly and helpful explanation if the car was reporting the wrong service interval – I would not have been told to “just ignore it”!

I really like my Q5, but I continue to be amazed just how poor IRA Audi can be 😦