Thanks for posting this request; my parents received this letter, too
and didn't know what to do. And I'm curious, too. Before you take your
car in for work, you should consider that there's something very fishy
about this "recall".

First of all, you may have noticed the other stuff in the envelope
included a "reimbursement" form. If you read the recall letter and
this form carefully, you will see that you are going to be expected to
pay for the repair work, for which you will be reimbursed (later,
after having sent in the form) only if you can prove that you have
rigorously maintained the car according to VW's service schedule. You
must have saved all receipts, and they must be for exactly the
recommended services (or maybe more service, presumably), or you'll
get nothing. My parents more than the required number of services,
though not at the specified intervals. It would be very easy to say
they didn't meet the reimbursement requirements.

My understanding is that work for legitimate vehicle safety recalls is
always free, so right off the bat, I'm suspicious. But to add to my
suspicion, I could find no mention of this problem on either
consumerreports.org or the NHSTA web site (there were four Passat
recalls listed, all of them fairly old, and none of them matching the
description in this letter). There was no safety recall information of
any kind available on the VW web site (they just don't seem to make
this available).

I have not called VW to ask about this letter, but I strongly suspect
that (1) it's at most voluntary, and (2) it's somewhat of a scam to
make some money. If there were a legitimate safety issue, they could
not handle it this way (i.e., by requiring up-front payment with
stringent conditions for reimbursement).

If anyone gets around to finding out more about this, please let us
know. Until then, I've advised my parents to save the letter, but do
nothing.

Rose