I'll try to make this as short as possible. I took my 05 2.0l A4 in for it's 1st 5k service back in Aug. I needed to take it in roughly 1k miles early due to an upcoming long trip. Any way, the service reminder had been counting down from 5k just as expected. The dealer performed the service and reset the reminder. About 300 miles after the service the reminder display was supposed to come off of all dashes and show roughly 10k till the next service I thought. Instead it showed 5k until the service. When I returned to the dealer with 7k on the car and explained the situation they reset the reminder again. About 300 miles later the display showed 700 miles till the next service. I then thought they were doing something wrong. So I reset the thing using the procedure outlined in the owners manual. After 300 miles the display showed 600 till the next service. I went back to the dealer with 8k on the car and they reset it again. Although this time the tech who was using the VAG tool said one of the parameters was was set wrong, a 1 instead of a 0 or vise versa. Well 300 miles later the display came back from all dashes to showing 600 miles to the next service. Has anyone heard of this and if so what are we missing. They, the dealer mumbled something about replacing the cluster. I would like to avoid this if all possible.

Thanks in advance.

 

Don't know, but they should check the coding carefully. I don't think it is a cluster problem. However, the car is under warranty and it is THEIR responsibility to fix it.

changing the cluster however, is not a big deal on these cars. It is only a handful of screws

 

Why do you want to avoid an instrument cluster change? It's no big deal at all as David said.