The small part of the two-piece exterior door handle cover - the part that surrounds the key hole - just fell off when my wife was opening the door (keyless entry; not using key). It's a painted plastic piece with a couple plastic ears, one of which was broken off.
Her car only has 25k miles but the dealer says it's not a warranty item. Around 80 for the part, THEN it needs to be painted (white)! No telling what that bill will be. It seems very strange to me that it would not be warrantied.
Has anyone else had this issue, or have any suggestions for me?

Thanks!

 

Warranty on broken parts is tough for a dealer to do. What I mean is, technically it's not a defect in manufacturing or workmanship that caused it to break after it's been on the car a while. Basically, the dealers hands are tied. Their only option would be to pay for the repairs themselves. Think of it as the dealer trying to warranty a door trim panel because a kid poked his foot through the speaker grille. It WILL get charged back to the dealer and good chance that will trigger a warranty audit where they come and scrutinize every warranty claim for the past 3 years. When I was an Audi tech I saw that happen and trust me, it is not pretty!
That said, might be worth a shot to call Audi Customer Service (or whatever it's called) and explain to them what happened. You never know, sometime you get lucky.

From my experience, it costs more to have those small pieces painted than the part costs itself. A bodyshop can only mix so small a batch of paint that doing one tiny part means most of the paint is wasted. As a guy who's recently painted his car, I can tell you that automotive paint is expensive. Thanks EPA..........