Search the Community

This is a bit of a saga, I'm afraid. I hope people will bear with it. My car is a Passat Highline 2.0 TDI, bought in May 2013. It's my third Passat. I like all the new technology in the car and was really enjoying driving it, but VW seem to have messed up with the auto-dimming of the instrument panel lighting. Actually I hadn't even noticed this "feature" until early September when it suddenly became very apparent, annoying and maybe even dangerous. I always drive with the side/headlights control switch in the AUTO position so the headlights turn on if ambient light level gets low. The car also has separate daytime running lights, by the way. If I drive into a long stretch of road with overhanging trees casting deep shade I would expect the AUTO lights function to turn on the headlights. It always used to work that way on my previous Passats. What happens now is that the instrument panel lighting starts to dim, going quite dark before the headlights turn on, if they actually do so, which they don't always. Most worrying are the times when the dashboard lighting dims all the way to off - no light on the instruments, driver cannot even read the speedometer. I have had this happen for periods of twenty to thirty seconds before the headlights have turned themselves on, at which point the instrument panel also gets re-illuminated. I had driven the car for four months before experiencing this effect, so I assumed something had gone wrong and telephoned my retailer. They said they had received a number of complaints about the dimming instrument lights, and not only on Passats. They have a technical note issued by VW saying this is not a fault, it's a feature, do NOT attempt to fix it. This is a deliberate design intended to alert the driver to low ambient light levels and prompt him/her to switch on the headlights. You can imagine how I reacted. The retailer would not do anything and suggested I call VW Customer Services, which I did. They were also of a mind to do nothing so I said I wished to raise a formal complaint, which duly happened and I got a "case number". Back to the retailer, now willing to see me and the car because they have a "case number" to deal with. To support my argument that something was wrong I prepared a 6-minute DVD showing the dashboard dimming effects and the inconsistency of the on/off switching by the AUTO lights setting. The technician did not want to watch that, requiring an actual test drive instead. OK, that's sort of understandable, I suppose. On the test drive, of course, we saw the dimming effect, but never all the way to blackout. Fortunately, we did see inconsistency in the switching on/off of the headlights, including times when the lights were on but clearly should be off. This was enough for the retailer to agree to book in the car for a proper check. It was explained to me that under the warranty all they could do was run VW-specified diagnostics because they wouldn't get paid by VW for anything else. Guess what, according to the VW diagnostics procedures - nothing wrong. Fortunately, again, two people at the retailer's had observed the inconsistent AUTO switching, so in spite of the diagnostics failure they offered to order a new rain/light sensors unit for the windscreen, this being, apparently, the cheapest possible component to replace, albeit, none in UK and 10 days to get one from Germany. Not so fortunately, after that diagnostics work the Coming-Home feature on the lights no longer works. It was fine before (and, yes, it is enabled in the MFD settings). In the meantime I had been wondering what was going on at VW Customer Services. I had been told I would get a telephone call from the case handler. I didn't, but there was eventually an email from a Customer Relations Manager, who (benefit of the doubt) may have been having trouble with my ancient one-digit-short telephone number,asking me to call or send email. I sent an email detailing the situation and got no response for 9 days, so I telephoned, left a message, missed a call-back, called again - you know how it goes. This person was not really interested in my stance that it was unacceptable and unbelievable that VW would build a vehicle with an AUTO lights control feature and then over-ride that with an independent, unlinked feature to prompt the driver to operate the lights manually. My focus was on getting VW to provide the best technical aid to the retailer to sort out my problem. VW Customer Relations Manager focus was to "close the case because there is no fault". However, since in addition the car now has the fault that the Coming-Home function has failed, the case has been left open. I am now waiting to see if, when I get the call from the retailer, they will still be on track for trying to fix the original problem or will have been ordered only to fix the Coming-Home issue. Am I the only person who thinks VW have got the design of the lights controls all messed up here and just do not want to admit it?