A-Point Volkswagen

I take my American/​Mexican-​made VW Beetle convertible for repairs here because it’s the only VW dealership in Amsterdam. They are thorough, do good work at expensive prices, but also live and die based on their documentation and databases.
We had a rocky start to our relationship. They refused to make an appointment for an oil change because they didn’t believe my car existed since they couldn’t find my VIN in their database. I guess they only have European VWs in their database, which would explain why my American car wasn’t in there, but they couldn’t wrap their mind around the idea that something could exist outside of their computer database. So we had to bring the car in for one visit just so they could confirm it existed, and then we had to come back again to have the actual oil change done.
Once we brought my car in for the oil change and tune-​up, the mechanics here wouldn’t believe I ever had any service done on my 9-​year old car since the ‘maintenance book’ that comes in the glove compartment was never filled in by my old dealership in Chicago. We tried to explain that in America all that maintenance was tracked on the VW dealership computers, but yes, regular maintenance was always done on the car, and again they just couldn’t understand. We even offered to get the old dealership to fax over the maintenance records to this dealership, and it didn’t make a difference to them.
My Dutch husband spent about 30 minutes explaining this idea of computerized records to the A-​point people and they were always reacting like he was talking about space aliens coming down and giving us new technologies or something. «But the maintenance is always written down in the *maintenance book*!» they’d say, «And there is nothing in the MAINTENANCE BOOK!», *frantic pointing to the empty open pages of the book*, «therefore there was NO MAINTENANCE!». Nevermind that it’s illogical a car could stay in good shape for 9 years without maintenance, logic has no place in this dealership!
Once all that stuff was worked out, they were super thorough in terms of checking out the car, i.e. super good at finding things to charge us to fix as preventative maintenance, and the car has been running well since then. There is some weird electrical issues we’re seeing now, but that could be related to the added lights that were added to my car to make it street legal in Europe, we’re not sure. Also my husband accidentally clipped the bumper of a Volvo in a parking garage, so we had to take it back here for body work, and they were able to do body work as well. That makes this place a bit of a one-​stop-​shop in my mind. Not cheap, but definitely thorough.