VW have just agreed to pay out £193 Million in UK for their nifty little device to cheat the diesel emission test, that works out at about £2000/car. Anyone here lucky enough to get free money?? 😄

Funnily enough some time back I received a letter from a law firm encouraging me to make a claim as apparently a vehicle I'd owned (not a VW) would have been affected by the "dieselgate" business.

I struggled a bit with this to see what you, as a consumer, would actually be claiming compensation for? If you had one of the "affected" vehicles, you would have enjoyed the usual diesel economy, low CO2 based road tax and BIK if a company car user.

Is it to compensate you for the shame you've suffered for the harm you've done to polar bears?

From what I have seen on VW forums those who had the "fix" to remove the "cheat" often experienced higher fuel consumption and poorer running afterwards, so many have ignored the recall.

Strikes me that overall, the people who will have benefited most from this will, as usual, be lawyers. 

 

4 minutes ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

I struggled a bit with this to see what you, as a consumer, would actually be claiming compensation for?

 

I would have claimed for all the emotional distress at owning a car where my neighbours would have laughed at me for my errant choice, and for all those poor dolphins I may have killed during my tenure of ownership 🤣

1 minute ago, StephenFord said:

for all those poor dolphins I may have killed during my tenure of ownership 🤣

Of course! I was so focused on polar bears I forgot the dolphins!😀

1 hour ago, StephenFord said:

that works out at about £2000/car.

will that be divided by the number of owners a car has had during it's lifetime or just the original first owner?

If it goes to the first registered owner the leasing companies must be thinking it's 'Christmas' 🤣 

I'm with Roger on this.  The people buying the cars didn't care less about NOx at the time...most don't even know what it is...yet they're happy to jump on the compensation bandwagon.  Same as the fools that paid PPI without noticing or questioning what they were paying for.

VW don't suffer from this payout, future VW car buyers suffer as the money has to come from somewhere, which will be future models in one way or another.

For what it's worth, my Golf did have the emissions 'fix' before I bought it.  It's not the best piece of mapping in all honesty (even worse than the 16v DV6 mapping!) and I would have preferred that it hadn't had the fix.

Realistically, they needed to fit AdBlue in order to meet the regs...which would have increased the cost and hassle for customers, who benefitted from them not doing so, and are now being compensated for that.

I didn't bother applying, just made sure I didn't get the "fix" done once I'd asked the questions that weren't answered by the letter, and that I was interested in. Covered 60k+ miles in the car over 6 years or so (inc the Covid years) and passed it onto my daughter and her husband with strict instructions not to bother wih the fix! Value plummeted when the announcement was made (2 weeks after I'd bought the car, used) but had higher than expected value when the time came to change. I think the lawyers had a huge percentage of the payout.

1 minute ago, RMurphy195 said:

...I think the lawyers had a huge percentage of the payout.

I don't believe you! Lawyers making an indecent profit out of a frivolous law suit? Where will it all end 🤣