Hello,
My wife and I currently own Volkswagen TDIs and have opted to have VW buy them back from us. Neither of us have ever owned a Volvo before and my wife really loves the V60 both the regular and the cross country. We talked to a dealer and have test drive both models. We asked about the cost of maintaining a Volvo and the salesman said that Volvo is comparable in cost with Volkswagen. I wanted to talk to other Volvo owners and see if this is the case and if it is expensive to own a Volvo? Thank you for your help!

 

I am in the same boat - contemplating a switch from TDI JSW to a V60 (and may actually get one tomorrow). But in my case I owned a couple of Volvos before I got my first TDI, and I would say that the statement that the maintenance costs are comparable is roughly correct, but I would have said that Volvo is maybe slightly more expensive.

There is always the potential for one specific type of service to be really expensive with a given car. And if there are such things with a V60, I don't know what they are yet.

 

Ha I suspect there are going to be many of us VW owners in this forum! I just bought the v60 today. It seems the closest to our TDI Jetta Wagon at least in dimension if not fuel economy. My impression is that it is similar in almost every way including costs. The car costs just a bit more, the insurance is just a bit more, and I think servicing is just a bit more.
The warranty seems better than competitors like Subaru but Volvo seems to have some reliability issues (at least given my friends on Facebook screaming at me not to buy a Volvo but get the Subaru). As well as the higher costs though the fit and finish just seems a bit better too. Compared to the Subaru, it's way ahead. I loved how the door sounds when it closes. The trunk is smaller though than the sportswagen so we may buy a roofbox to compensate and the lack of any spare tyre is a real drag (we had a full size tyre in our Jetta which is almost unheard of in any modern car it seems).
I crossing my fingers and hoping that our ownership experience is better than the VW that suffered not one but two catastrophic high pressure fuel pump failures!

 

One downside is that VAG-COM is not really useful on a Volvo. A generic OBD2 scanner can read codes, of course, but that's pretty limited.

I had the JSW out on the road yesterday (just to keep it in good working order until the buyback), and the car just felt cheap. I will be happy on the day that I sign it over.

Did you seem my comments at tdiclub about the piston ring problems of some S60/V60 5-cylinder engines? Hopefully you don't have one of the affected engines.

 

I had ordered some VIDA(sort of the Volvo equivalent of VAG-COM) DVDs from fleaBay. And knowing next to nothing about it, I wasn't sure what I was going to get. But it was pretty cheap, so it wasn't like I had a lot to lose. Last night I finally had some time to explore the things.

I do not yet have (and have not even ordered) DICE - the actual physical dongle that one connects to the car. As best I can tell, all of the DICE dongles on fleaBay come from China. Possibly all from the same actual factory, and quality is spotty. You can't even rely upon the pictures, as the Chinese rip off each others pictures when selling on eBay.

The vast majority of the VIDA discs out there are apparently some sort of pirated version of something from Volvo. The thing is rather tricky to get working as well, but once you have it up, you can find parts lists, wiring diagrams, how to perform various procedures. This is kind of like combining the Bentley manual with VAG-COM. It is hard for me to convey how incredibly huge the thing is, and I have just begun to explore. But it is also hard to convey what an incredible pain in the (*&*(*& it is to get the thing working.

I got the 2014 version, and my car was actually manufactured in 2014, so I am hoping that the thing is sufficiently complete to cover whatever I have. I probably won't know for sure until I get some sort of DICE dongle. The main question I have is whether the VIDA version that I have has the Drive-E engine or not.