We remove 3-4 dpf's a week on the 2.0 170 ppd engines, the 140ppd suffer as well but are not so common. Removal isn't as expensive as it used to be, around £4-500 including software is the going rate for a professional job. Cars that use biodiesel (I.e morrisons diesel) and do short journeys are the worst, we have seen them fail at 30k miles or 150k miles, there's no real guarantee based on mileage.
If you have vagcom you can keep an eye on how the DPF is doing, blocks 074-077 give info on back pressure, time and miles since last regen and other values, as well as doing a forced regen yourself.
A lot of dpf's fail due to other components failing such as the differential pressure sensor or EGR valve. If you need to know any specifics, just ask.