One of the things about Volkswagons is that their(relatively) low initial purchase price draws people in.
When it comes time for service, though, you're still paying the "German tax" although it's not a BMW or Mercedes.
I'm often blown away when I hear repair costs on what I'd regard as relatively trivial items on other cars.
I go to church with a guy whose wife had a diesel Beetle. He's very much a DIY guy and her car saw a dealership very few times. Even so, when he did a repair, he often ended up visiting the dealer to get lights turned off or other things set correctly. I know batteries were a consistent problem-every battery change or even disconnecting for other work required a trip in to the dealer to get everything reset.
I know my grandfather was QUITE upset when he took his E350 Wagon in to Jiffy Lube. At the time, his '89 Buick Century(which had about 25,000 original miles on it when he sold it in 2011) was about $25 for an oil change and the Town Cars he drove most of the time would run him about $30. I think the one time he had the oil changed in his Mercedes in his ownership(probably about 8K miles over 3 or 4 years), it was well over $100. Even doing it "right" yourself is relatively pricey between the amount of synthetic you need and the cost of a cartridge oil filter.
On a slightly different note, the switch back to cartridge filters is certainly interesting to me. One of my main car interests is in MGs, and I'm pretty sure the "B" engine(MGA, MGB, and Magnette) used a cartridge filter up until the MKII MGB. The derived "C" engine also always had a cartridge filter. It's not uncommon to see an early B engine with a spin-on mount from a later engine. Spin-on filters on these engines are placed on the right hand side of the engine(passenger side on US cars) just forward and above the distributor. The filter is inverted, and there's no good way to take it off without making a mess. Were it not for the lost cost and ready availability of the correct spin-on filter(I generally use Motorcraft filters on everything, and FL-300 is the correct p/n for the filter on that engine) I'd be tempted to track down a cartridge set-up.
