1999 new beetle=> Can a bad alternator cause drive belt failure?


I got my timing belt,drive belt water pump replaced by the VW dealership (Winn VW of fremont) in April. Ever since, there has been a different sound (a high frequency hum) in the car. Lately the sound got worse, like a grinding noise and I took it back in. The day I took it in, there was smell of rubber burning too, but only for a little while.

The diagnosis was a blown ac compressor.

They said that the rubber burning was nothing serious and that I could drive it around “safely”. Well I took it out with the intention of trading it in, and after a while I had fumes coming up from the hood. There was a red battery sign in the dashboard and so I pulled over.



The drive belt was burning away and I had the car towed back in the dealership.

This morning they said it was the alternator that caused my drive belt to go bad. Can this be true?



I have a feeling that they did not install the belt properly which cause the ac compressor and the alternator to go bad. Is there a way to prove this one way or the other?