AllanDJ

That’s the most obvious thing to alter on the car for a facelift update. My own car looks great from the side and the back but a bit clumsy looking, when looking at the front.

Thanks John, used to do photography years ago for Tourist Boards and Calendars!

I see a fair few mentions of software issues with these cars, just wondering whether a software update would actually fix this? Since collecting my SEL Estate car in January it has given me a wide variety of different warning notifications. Everything from parking brake, hillhold, front assist, parking sensors as being faulty or not working. The messages usually vanish after a short time but are annoying. Last night when returning to the car after a walk photographing local waterfalls. I found the screen showing me this. Clima with a green circle moving around it and heated seats blanked out. Tried switching it off and on again but was stuck with it like that all the way home. Today it was back to normal again but it makes a mockery of what is fundamentally a good car, when you can’t access simple functions like heated seats or air conditioning because Skoda removed the buttons and left them as virtual blobs on a screen. Obviously, the infotainment system has issues. I find it remarkably unfriendly to use, having to delve into menus to adjust the air conditioning. It still won’t let me set favourite contacts on my iPhone and every so often reprogrammes my preset radio stations. Switching the station I’m trying to change to, making it the same as the station it was on originally. I wish they’d left the infotainment system and physical buttons much the same as in the mark 3 Octavia!

I’ve got a 2022 UK spec SEL estate car. The heated seats are standard but heated steering wheel was an optional extra bundled together with a heated windscreen. Has Skoda UK changed the SEL specification recently? I would have liked the heated windscreen but it became quite expensive when combined with the heated steering wheel which I didn’t particularly want.

It isn't a huge deal, I never had that feature on my last Octavia which was funnily enough also an SE Tech model but I do have it on my current car. It works well enough most of the time, depending upon which pocket you've got the car "key" in! Car makers always try to differentiate between models, often times with features which cost very little to them, just so you'll buy a slightly more expensive car to get that particular feature or add it as an extra cost option. Like you say, this particular feature could probably be activated by coding, surprised they haven't added it as an extra cost option via the Skoda Connect app.

I had problems with mine too, decided to delete the App completely as it doesn't seem to do anything very useful. Okay if its free but definitely not worth paying for after the first year.

After having the car about two days trying to put a lot of bulky items in the boot on a cold winters day, the last thing you’d expect is to be unable to remove the luggage cover because someone secretly redesigned it to be two pushes rather than one! I had the manual out too, couldn’t find it in time. As I said not intuitive, if they want to change things like that, the best way is to tell people when they collect their new car. I thought the cover was faulty and didn’t want to break it…

You shouldn't need to read through hundreds of pages in the manual for such basic things, going by my experience, it doesn't seem as if Skoda dealers actually read the manuals either!

I received my new Octavia 1.5 SEL Estate in January this year, it looks very smart in Velvet Red and is on the whole pretty easy to drive. Its a very different car to the two mark 3 Octavia's that I I've had before, better in some ways and more complicated in other ways: (1) Car styling is overall better. (2) Heating/ Airconditioning is much more difficult to use than before as there are no physical buttons. It works but even on the low setting (hard to find in itself, the low, medium, high options) the car seems to be pushing a lot of cold air into the cabin, with no way to precisely control the fan speeds, as you could with a real button. It also makes you look more at the screen than the road at times as you try to make sense of what's going on. In my view this is a less user friendly and somewhat more dangerous option than the setup in the mark 3 cars. Bring back the buttons! (3) Handbrake or lack thereof! That took me a few months to get used to but I'm completely comfortable with it now. (4) Infotainment system is a bit clunky to use. It managed to turn itself off once when I was trying to store a radio station. However, I didn't know what had happened as I didn't know that there was a physical button to turn it off and on. Phoned up garage and then Skoda direct as all I had were a few screens showing different clocks. No help with that from anyone, garage wanted to book car in with their master technician to sort the problem out but this was going to take weeks. Asked a question here and someone mentioned the on/off switch; problem solved! Mind you, still can't get my phone contacts to work with this system... (5) Rear parcel shelf, this one was ridiculous! I'd just got the car in January, went to load up a lot of items into the boot but couldn't get the retracting cover to fully retract. One touch and it went half way back and stuck, meaning I couldn't remove it. Previous Octavia Estate cars fully retracted with one touch as did a Mondeo Estate that I owned before. Managed to load the car very awkwardly, with cover stuck like that. Contacted garage and they checked and sent me a video showing the cover being touched twice to make it fully retract. A small change but kind of useful to know that this had been changed, again staff didn't seem to know about this, not an intuitive or obvious change. (6) I ordered the car with a spare wheel, was recently looking for the usual tyre pump but my car doesn't seem to have one of these. Found an old one of my Dad's and tried to plug it in to check the tyre pressures and found of course that there is no longer a cigarette lighter/ power socket in the front of the Octavia, I mean who could possibly want one in a convenient location, not Skoda obviously! Checked manual, not much help in there. Phoned Henry's in Glasgow, thinking surely someone there would know the answer to this one but sadly not, never received the promised call back. Hopefully someone at Skoda will get in touch with them and tell them where it is! Looked again online and found that there is a hidden power socket in the boot, quite far back on the righthandside, which funnily enough you just won't see unless you press the rear parcel shelf twice to fully retract it. Another small thing that would have been really useful to know when I collected the car! (7) Gearbox is still a bit stiff with first gear in particular, hopefully that will ease off in time. (8) Car can be a bit hesitant in lower gears when just pulling away but then so was my last car too, which had the same engine. (9) Skoda Connect is again a waste of time, didn't bother activating it on last car and have deleted the app as it was stuck on looking for server permanently. These are just niggles that could have been largely avoided with a better handover and an explanation of any major changes from the previous model. In essence the car is good but Skoda has changed a few things that really didn't need changed, just for the sake of being different it would seem.

Thanks for that but will probably just delete the App as I don’t think it’s of much use to me and I would grudge having to pay for it in year two and beyond!

It’s not a very useful system anyway. I didn’t even bother activating it on my last car. This time dealership activated it for me but over last month or so it hasn’t been available and it’s still well within the first free year!

The rear sensors are very accurate when reversing anyway, I’ve never come close to hitting anything with them. My fathers XC60 has a built in camera, nice to have but by no means essential.

Think my car is nearer low 40's mpg from my home to workplace, which is a mixture of a bit of town driving to country driving at the other end, getting closer to 50mpg on motorway if driven carefully. Pretty similar to my mark 3 car with the same engine, after its software update wrecked its fuel economy and torque.

Front Assist has always been a bit over sensitive for me, with two different mark 3 Octavia’s and now a mark 4 too. Current car often comes up with warnings telling me that Front Assist isn’t fully working. First Octavia managed a few automatic emergency stops when cars in front suddenly braked instead of using their indicators. Not that there was any real danger but the car jumped in first! In both the mark 3 Octavia’s I would get random warnings flashing up on windy roads as Front Assist detected oncoming cars on the other side of the road. Not a reliable system all in all…

The gear box on my new Octavia is adequate but not what you’d call smooth by any means. Best gearbox I’ve ever experienced was in a Volvo V60; incredibly smooth in every gear change. Something for ŠKODA to aspire to!

I've had my new car since January but one thing still puzzles me about the way that the Favourites setting works on the mark 4. I've selected various radio stations multiple times saved them as favourites and it kind of works for a few weeks and then I'll try to change from one station to another from my saved Favourites and end up retuning the selected station to whichever station is currently playing. That never, ever happened with my mark 3 Octavia but has happened multiple times recently with this car. I usually end up deleting all the stations and retuning them again to get it back to where I want it to be. It was trying to sort this out recently that led to the car turning off the Infotainment System itself, resulting in much confusion as to how to turn it on again! The other thing that doesn't seem to work is the ability to read phone numbers from my iPhone and select some of them as favourites too. That seemed to work pretty easily with the mark 3 but not at all with this car, car and phone are paired with bluetooth. I can receive calls when I am driving the car but obviously can't make any calls because of this.

The worst part of the system is that it might tell you that you have a slow puncture but won't tell you anything at all if another tyre suddenly deflates at the same time. Had that last year with my previous car, I'd kept resetting the system to clear the tyre pressure warning but then it came on again one morning and that afternoon a different tyre ran flat!

It kind of looks that way! Couldn’t understand how there wasn’t any apparent way to turn it back on, especially when dashboard was displaying message saying Infotainment System Switched Off. Usually things that are switched off can be switched back on again. Garage I got the car from were adamant that it had to be looked at by their Master Technician and that there absolutely was no other way to turn it back on again…

It’s not the most intuitive setup to be honest. The on/ off button should ideally be much larger, so that it would actually be noticeable. I don’t get the impression that the dealers really know how the Infotainment System actually works. All I got from them, was that their Master Technician had to see it personally, that and a complete denial of any easy reset. Most electronic devices will return to normal working if you are able to turn them off and then on again. A great example of the KISS Principle! Keep it Simple Stupid 😂 Think of a simple possible solution before you go looking for anything complicated!

Thanks for that, it actually worked! I hadn’t even seen that button before as it’s recessed and virtually invisible. Took me a few minutes to actually find it. Neither ŠKODA or the garage mentioned it when I asked if there was some simple reset button. Zero marks for them! No idea how it switched itself off as I’ve never touched that button before now. Last button I pressed before it switched off was one of the radio buttons.

The other two screen “options” !

I got my new Octavia SEL Estate at the start of January this year. However, the Infotainment System has been completely inoperable since April 2nd. Trying to change radio stations using Favourites Menu, it changed selected station preset to the one that was already playing, giving me two of one channel and none of the other! Tried to reset it but it wouldn’t accept the original channel. Screen suddenly went black and then came on with a different menu, i.e. four different screens showing either date or time. Infotainment showing as switched off on main dashboard display and no way to use Infotainment System at all. Home and Menu completely dead. Phoned up dealers on Monday, thinking maybe there would be some way to reset it but seems not. They were talking about not being able to look at the car until late April. Their solution, leave the car with them for a few days and they “might” find time to look at it but no courtesy car on offer during this time. Ended up talking to ŠKODA directly, they booked my car in to a different dealership for April 21st. Leaving me with a virtually brand new car with no radio or sat navigation for weeks. Has anyone else seen anything like this?

Was in this situation earlier last year with my lease Octavia SE Tech Estate, hardy used it for a long time during Covid lockdowns but managed to extend the original two year lease by six months to give me time to work out what to do. Could have bought the car for £14500 last July, which was a bit higher than it would normally have been with used car prices rising from springtime last year. A few months earlier I missed out on a mint SEL Estate car at local dealers on offer for £15500 with extremely low mileage, which kind of put me off buying my car as I could have had that car for around £15000. Dealers offered me a 4 year old high spec Superb Estate with 4 wheel drive, TD etc but highish mileage and solid red colour; they wanted about £18000 for that car, which again I thought was a bit more than it should have been selling for. In the end I chose to take another lease car and the dealers actually bought my old lease car from VW Finance but this time it cost them over £18000, less than six months after I could have bought the same car for £14500. Crazy times, used values are very high just now but who knows how long they will stay like that!

My seats were roasting on my Octavia 3, where I had them as an option on an SE Tech Estate car. Mere seconds on full power and I'd be turning them down to one or two. Strangely enough on current car, a mark 4 SEL, the seats are much, much cooler than the mark 3. I can leave the seats on full power on all of my journeys just now and its comfortable but never too hot. Obviously some variation in how the heated part is setup.

Also check out used prices for similar cars as prices are at an all time high right now. My local dealers Henrys in Glasgow have got two VRS models of a similar age for sale just now: https://www.henrys-cars.com/skoda/used-cars?location_id=117964&used_car_sorting=&layout=&limit=&brand_name=Škoda&used_models=Octavia&min_price=&max_price=&variant_name=&engine_size=&transmission=&monthly_payment=