Scottish Elises

Has anybody else noticed what I'd class as slightly underhand tactics by Audi to move car's onto Fixed Service Intervals ?
My 2002 A4 Tdi has been on a 'Long Life Service' schedule since I bought it in December 2005. I had my last service @ Edinburgh Audi (price matched before you ask why ) only to find that when I checked the on-board computer some months later it is saying 6000 miles to next service when it normally went for 2 years and upto 18,000 miles. Had a similar experience with my 2012 S3 when it had it's 1st service. I asked about Long Life and the quote was higher than fixed intervals despite them using exactly the same oil.
I'll be taking the A4 back in to ask why they have moved it to Fixed Intervals without my knowledge or agreement and get them to reset the computer back to Long Life. I see it as a money making exercise as Audi and others must be loosing a lot of money as cars go further between services so this is a sneaky way of addressing that defecit. Not on my watch

We had similar with the Merc when we had it, it became apparent it was set to 6k miles between service rather than 12, they reset it and gave some half arsed excuse about setting it lower to ensure it was done yearly if you covered lower miles.

My s4 is on long life servicing, but it has an interim oil service. Having previously listened to a long and boring presentation on the benefits of fully synthetic oil I was interested to know why this engine needed interim oil changes. The response from audi tech in Germany (UK passed on the email) was that the customers expected it on this model. They did point out that this would be a benefit as oil consumption increased, so maybe there is some guidance/rational as engines get older.

kerryxeg wrote:My s4 is on long life servicing, but it has an interim oil service. Having previously listened to a long and boring presentation on the benefits of fully synthetic oil I was interested to know why this engine needed interim oil changes. The response from audi tech in Germany (UK passed on the email) was that the customers expected it on this model. They did point out that this would be a benefit as oil consumption increased, so maybe there is some guidance/rational as engines get older.

Can understand the logic for an interim oil service on the higher power S and RS models plus this should help out when it comes time to sell it on but on the lesser versions I'm not convinced.

Had this on my b7 a4 2.0tdi, although the dealer (perth audi) were open and asked if I wanted it changed to fixed as it had 70k+on the clock. I declined, they also suggested it on my s5 as some customers prefer the comfort that the v8 change of oil is every 10k miles, again I declined.

Im sure these engines can handle it and as you say its more a case of sneaky money making tactics imo.