If your vehicle has a parasitic current drain causing the battery to be depleted when it is not driven for several days, don't even bother bringing it here. They do not have the diagnostic tools to identify intermittent current draw from devices on the vehicle CAN bus over time. Worse, they will move the vehicle in and out of their bay each day, which "resets" the problem devices on the car network which are drawing current and thus never see that the prolonged drain is sufficient to kill the battery over a period of days. They take the "diagnostic fee", although they identify and solve nothing.
Renn Haus can certainly empathize with the situation Mr. S is in. While our technicians routinely diagnose and repair parasitic battery drains successfully, Mr. S had a vehicle that would only act up for a matter of seconds randomly and then go back to normal. We advised Mr. S of the situation, and explained until there was a draw that is more constant, it would be extremely difficult to diagnose his problem. Mr. S was advised of a low cost solution. Install a battery cut off switch and/or simply keep it on a battery trickle charger. This was suggested before he brought the vehicle to us and incurred any charges. Mr. S insisted that he would like us to try to diagnose the car anyway at his expense. After days of measuring the battery drain and inspecting the car, Mr. S was advised there was nothing conclusive that we could recommend for replacement. Our average measurements did not constitute any alarm. He was charged the minimum fee to cover the cost of our time. Some manufactures do have special CAN analyzers to measure this, as I explained to Mr. S, VW may not be one of them. While we at Renn Haus understand why Mr. S is upset, we certainly do not think his review of 1 star is fair or accurate of the service we provided and more of a representation of his frustration with his vehicle.
- Renn Haus