How much has VCDS saved you ?

Inspired by this thread on AW.

My response was

Brake job on the A6, mods on the A8's, retrofitting NAV on the A6, diagnostics on all, helping friends... untold thousands.

I think Misha said it best "Without VCDS scan, it's like performing surgery over the radio"

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What say you fellow VCDSers ?

Wait... VCDSers.... now we need a flag

It has saved me in the $1000s. Maybe in the $10,000s range when you add in the usage of friends' VCDS cables.

VCDS made me thousands of dollars when I was a dealer tech ... unlike the factory scan tool that sucked money out of my wallet.

VCDS has saved me.....


- a large sum of time
"Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend."

- a marriage
If I had to pay $7,000 for a scan tool my wife would kick me out of the house and I would be living in my 1996 GTI
with my VAS5052, which would suck because it is slow and there are no more updates.


drpeter

I think that it is important that anyone who is serious about repairing VW-Audi is to own the OEM VAS and VCDS.....


VCDS allows you to save time more than anything.......time is money and than there is sanity.
Time saved by data of specs displayed via captions is priceless.
An idea!
It should be a license plugin enhancement with link to secure wiki fast data compare....... with DTC's related to each threshold side!

Time saved performing logs and baud rate bump ups are absolutely needed...... along with the ability to archive a complete cars config.

I am back and fourth with both tools including the historic East blue boxes, Abrites, Diagra, Actia XS and others. I am a Tool-A-Holich though.

Any base tech which doesn't own VCDS for the money is an idiot not to.

I don't turn a wrench professionally anymore - not since the late 80's, and my ASE cert expired in 1996, but I still do all the work on my family cars, as well as extended family and friends cars as needed. A genuine Ross-Tech cable and VCDS was initially purchased to do the rear brakes on my brother's Passat, but VW's and Audi's tend to be the family favorite, and thus, the tool has saved an unknown amount of money, and even more important, TIME.

I do agree with Peter's comment above that "time savings" is by far the most valuable benefit of VCDS.

Recently, I had an electric fuel pump failure on my car whilst driving across Canada. Using the VCDS cable and a laptop I had with me, I was able to diagnose the cause of the problem right on the spot, and jury-rig a fix that got me home. Without VCDS, I would probably have had to have the car towed a hundred miles or more to the nearest VW dealer, then had to wait over a long weekend for a new fuel pump to be ordered and shipped to the dealer for installation on the spot.

I use both VCDS and a VAS 5052 (I'm just a hobbyist who maintains my own car, and I can't afford a newer VW scan tool). I use VCDS 95% of the time, and only rarely use the 5052 when I need guidance to carry out specific complex multi-step functions. VCDS operates significantly faster than the VW 5052, and also offers me considerably more control over the diagnostic and coding/adaptation processes.

Michael

Michael has gotta be just about the only hobbyist around who actually has a 5052.

-Uwe-

PanEuropean said:

I do agree with Peter's comment above that "time savings" is by far the most valuable benefit of VCDS.

Recently, I had an electric fuel pump failure on my car whilst driving across Canada. Using the VCDS cable and a laptop I had with me, I was able to diagnose the cause of the problem right on the spot, and jury-rig a fix that got me home. Without VCDS, I would probably have had to have the car towed a hundred miles or more to the nearest VW dealer, then had to wait over a long weekend for a new fuel pump to be ordered and shipped to the dealer for installation on the spot.

I use both VCDS and a VAS 5052 (I'm just a hobbyist who maintains my own car, and I can't afford a newer VW scan tool). I use VCDS 95% of the time, and only rarely use the 5052 when I need guidance to carry out specific complex multi-step functions. VCDS operates significantly faster than the VW 5052, and also offers me considerably more control over the diagnostic and coding/adaptation processes.

Michael

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Sir, your garage space is way too oragnized and the walls way too bright. Where are the greasy finger prints and tools left out by the kids.

dafrazi said:

Sir, your garage space is way too oragnized and the walls way too bright. Where are the greasy finger prints and tools left out by the kids.

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He is a pilot "they treat their tools like their life depends on it!"
Back to the original OP VCDS has bought me a number of cartons of beer but more importantly it has bought me respect from the local dealer to the point they now listen to me very carefully and no longer say "it's not possible"

Uwe said:

Michael has gotta be just about the only hobbyist around who actually has a 5052.

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If I recall correctly, it's a cast-off from his dealer when they upgraded to ODIS. No updates anymore, I gather, but our 2004-2006 cars aren't fast-moving targets either.

dafrazi said:

Sir, your garage space is way too oragnized and the walls way too bright. Where are the greasy finger prints and tools left out by the kids.

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Michael is an aviation guy. Not only is he by-the-book, I think he wrote some of the book. If there's no grease on his wall, it's because the drywall and paint manufacturers did not specify any grease. Having grown a little older and a little more tired of things that don't "just work", I find myself doing work Michael's way a lot more than I used to.

Jason

jakematic said:

What say you fellow VCDSers ?

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It's saved me whatever the blue-book value is on my 2006 Phaeton. Without VCDS, I would have parked it in a bad area of town and set it on fire long ago. With VCDS (and the VW dealer SSPs) it's really not that scary to care for on your own. You might be surprised just how little on the Phaeton is truly unique to that platform.

It's also the reason I still own my 2004 Passat. If it was still having to go to the dealer, it would either be uneconomical to keep, or it would have blown up from neglect years ago. So there's another car I haven't purchased. I'm sure VWOA doesn't consider that a positive point, but I do.

Jason

jyoung8607 said:

So there's another car I haven't purchased. I'm sure VWOA doesn't consider that a positive point, but I do.

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On the other hand, I know for a fact that there are thousands of people every year who buy a new VW/Audi product -- without considering any other manufacturer's lines -- because they don't want to own/drive a car that they don't have the kind of access to that VCDS gives them. Once you get used to being able to access all the diagnostic data from all the systems in the car, it's difficult to give that up, and there's nothing quite like VCDS out there for any other brand of car, at least not in the price range that we charge. So in the end, I think VCDS is a net positive for VWAG's sales.

-Uwe-

Uwe said:

buy a new VW/Audi product -- without considering any other manufacturer's lines -- because they don't want to own/drive a car that they don't have the kind of access to that VCDS gives them.

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Perfect example - I won't consider anything else.

Instead of spending nearly $1,000 on a tool for the Porsche, it will be replaced with a VW.

Uwe said:

...... So in the end, I think VCDS is a net positive for VWAG's sales.
-Uwe-

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It's a shame that VWAG does not acknowledge that fact. World wide, our tool has become the defacto standard for maintenance and repair of VAG rides but the VWAG suits continue their hostility towards Ross-Tech. Makes no sense. Their dealers cannot meet the world demand for service. Without aftermarket and DIY enthusiasts, the waiting lines at the dealer would be huge!

Uwe said:

On the other hand, I know for a fact that there are thousands of people every year who buy a new VW/Audi product -- without considering any other manufacturer's lines -- because they don't want to own/drive a car that they don't have the kind of access to that VCDS gives them. Once you get used to being able to access all the diagnostic data from all the systems in the car, it's difficult to give that up, and there's nothing quite like VCDS out there for any other brand of car, at least not in the price range that we charge. So in the end, I think VCDS is a net positive for VWAG's sales.

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Very, very true. I haven't even looked outside VWAG's product range since 2001(*). I buy to keep. Serviceability and total cost of ownership are important.

Jason

(*) Yeah, yeah -- but that was for my wife, and her decision criteria and ownership philosophy are rather different than mine.

Bruce said:

It's a shame that VWAG does not acknowledge that fact. World wide, our tool has become the defacto standard for maintenance and repair of VAG rides but the VWAG suits continue their hostility towards Ross-Tech. Makes no sense. Their dealers cannot meet the world demand for service. Without aftermarket and DIY enthusiasts, the waiting lines at the dealer would be huge!

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Are they actively causing heartache for you guys? I thought your only run-in was over a certain trademark in a certain former name. In fact, I thought I read somewhere that VWOA themselves used VCDS to take cars out of transport mode coming off the boat.

I'm sure they hold a view that service labor, and therefore service information, should be a profit center. Not only that, every move to open things up to less-costly independent and home-DIY mechanics means that cars have a longer economically viable life, which translates into a delayed or lost sale.

Still... how many millions do you think they dumped into creating ODIS? They could have called up Ross-Tech and said, "if you buff up your action scripting capabilities so we can have guided fault finding, our worldwide dealer network will buy about 20,000 interfaces from you next year." I have never used ODIS, so I don't know if the situation has improved, but I have used VAS-PC and it's just an absolute joke in comparison to VCDS. If I were a dealer tech I would buy VCDS out of my own personal pocket if necessary.

Jason

jyoung8607 said:

Are they actively causing heartache for you guys?

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No, not actively. I think it's mostly a matter of "Not Invented Here" syndrome. But there are quite a few people on the inside that use it anyway.

jyoung8607 said:

Still... how many millions do you think they dumped into creating ODIS?

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An astronomical sum. They had T-Systems (Deutche Telekom's consulting group) working on it for a while.

jyoung8607 said:

If I were a dealer tech I would buy VCDS out of my own personal pocket if necessary.

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Plenty of 'em do.

-Uwe-