Warranty Fraud, No Loaner, Car Held Since March 26 — - omarm8191
Warranty Fraud, No Loaner, Car Held Since March 26 — Management Must Be Held Accountable
Short version: Audi Livermore has had my 2023 Audi A3 since March 26, 2026 — over 6 weeks — with no loaner vehicle despite promises, and is now trying to charge me $4,000 for what should be covered warranty repairs. Service Manager Johnny Cheng has overseen every failure in this process and should be held directly responsible. I spoke to a corporate agent, the promised me 3 times that Johnny will call me directly because he was required to. All 3 times he had his service manager call me. Showing defiance even towards corporate.
The full story:
In October 2025 at 45,500 miles, I brought my A3 in for a yellow battery warning light. I suspected the battery, but the technician diagnosed a bad BSG (Belt Starter Generator). Instead of replacing the BSG — the actual diagnosed problem — they only charged the system and told me to "monitor it." This was a deliberate half-repair on a known warranty issue. Had they simply replaced the battery or the BSG at this visit, none of what followed would have happened.
Fast forward to March 26, 2026: the car suffered a cascading warning light failure, directly related to the unresolved BSG issue. I had to have it towed in. I emailed both the dealership and Audi corporate ahead of time explicitly stating this was a continuation of the prior warranty repair which they later attempted to change in order to charge me and to restart the 30-day clock for Lemon Law.
Since then:
They replaced the 12V battery — which resolved the core issues — but then claimed the remaining ABS warning light was a separate, non-covered problem worth ~$600. Any competent technician knows that after a 12V battery replacement, control modules lose their settings and can throw warning lights that simply require a computer reset using Audi's ODIS diagnostic system — a procedure that takes minutes, not thousands of dollars.
Weeks later, they added an AC unit failure to the bill, ballooning the total to $4,000.
They have never replaced the BSG — the original diagnosed root cause — to this day.
They promised a loaner vehicle. They never delivered. I have been without transportation since March 26, 2026.
I have observed my work order being altered to reclassify issues as non-safety related issues. This is an attempt to stop or reset the 30 day lemon law countdown and it also strips me of my right to safety by misclassifying it as a non safety issue.
Johnny Cheng, the Service Manager, bears direct responsibility for this situation. A service manager's job is to ensure customers are treated fairly, warranty obligations are honored, and his team follows proper diagnostic procedures. Under his watch: a known BSG fault went unrepaired for months, a customer was left without a loaner despite explicit promises, repair costs were inflated from $600 to $4,000, and documentation appears to have been altered to label andd cover the issue as a non safety issue. This is not a technician error — this is a deliberate management failure. The irony is that if the battery had simply been replaced at the first visit in October 2025, this entire saga — the tow, the cascading failures, the loaner obligation, the corporate escalation — never happens. Johnny Cheng's decisions have cost this dealership far more in liability, reputation, and customer loss than one warranty battery replacement ever would have. The new owner Todd needs to know what hes paying out of his own pocket due to situations like this.
I have documented everything — emails, work orders, and correspondence with Audi corporate. I am pursuing this through every available channel. They will have a state representative physically go to the location to confirm what I am saying. They will go through all the files and even inspect the car themselves. Attempting to charge someone for an issue stemming from a warranty repair is illegal in California, but Johnny wanted to gamble.
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