JamesK

The frustration for me is the endless trips to the dealers, and I find myself needing to ensure I have got video/photo evidence of the fault occurring, or they are quick to say "no fault found". In my case the car went in for a week in October and nothing was fixed. It went back for a week in November, and to be fair there has been improvements. But within 4 days of having it back there's yet another software fault which it now needs to go back in for. It's a round trip of 2 hours to take the car up to the dealer, get a loan vehicle and get home, so it is becoming pretty tiresome.

Well, I’m a week into having my car back where they expressly refused to replace the OCU, despite me asking them twice to do so. I am now on the 1896 software. Within a few days I had issues with the car. The latest is that shortly after starting the car, the infotainment crashes and reboots, followed by about 4 errors relating to the the park assist feature failing. So far I have not had the SOS system reboot though. I have a case open with the “executive office” at Skoda UK. Their response today has been “as a car is a mechanical object it is difficult to determine when a fault or failure will take place”. You literally couldn’t make it up. I had previously asked them if they could ensure the OCU was replaced as I didn’t want another trip to the dealer, and they refused. They said if I’m unhappy I can go to the Ombudsman.

Excellent news. My car is going back in next week to be looked at for a third time. I've mentioned replacing the OCU to them twice now, with no confirmation that they will do it. Do you know how your OCU came to be replaced? Was it the dealer idea or a direction from Skoda UK? I really don't want my car going in for 2 day to come out with these issues still present.

It also seems to be a complete lottery with the dealer service departments. My car went in for a whole week. When I picked it up I was told everything was fixed, but they could not provide any detail behind the work they did. They promised to contact me a few days later with that detail, but despite follow up from me they still have not provided it. In reality, nothing has been fixed. I'm not sure why Skoda are not directing dealers to upgrade everything on these Octavias to get them to a standard baseline of software component versions. To me it would make their lives easier going forward.

Hi... do you know if your software was updated to 1896?

So I picked up my car this morning… the software is still at 1668 and the service agent can’t actually tell me about any work they’ve done.

Does anyone know if the issues with the Matrix lights blinding oncoming drivers are fixed in 1896, or is that a separate software component?

I'm hoping that when I get my car back tomorrow that it's updated to 1896. I've asked the dealer to provide me with details of what software has been updated and what hardware components they have replaced. The frustration for me is that many of the issues being raised on the forum are being experienced by many owners, of all model variants of the Octavia, not just the First Edition. From what I've read Skoda do not have the ability to send these bigger software updates over the air, so it seems it does require owners to make contact with their dealer. Owners then go to their local dealer and explain the issue, and that seems to be where problems start. In my case in April, the dealer said they spoke to Skoda direct who said there were no issues with the Matrix lights, when their clearly are, and a member on this forum was an early adopter of new software aimed at stopping dazzling oncoming cars. Software 1810 was available at that time, but they did not update the car to it. So I don't know if it depends how the symptoms are explained when they call Skoda or if the technician is searching a database. However, it seems to me if they don't ask the question or carry out the right search they can get differing answers back. It's a shame because I really do like my FE. It's got a nice amount of kit, the 1.5 petrol I've got is more responsive than I expected it to be (my previous car was a 2.0 petrol Octavia vRS), and it's a very nice car to drive. The software is really letting down a fantastic car. To me I think they need to start distributing these bigger updates to the cars over the air, so more cars are automatically on the later releases of software. Skoda may find that this reduces the number of calls to dealer service departments...

The Karoq is still using an older software platform, that my previous Octavia mk3 used. I think it’s called MIB3. It does look a little dated, but it works quickly and flawlessly. I think the Karoq works as it should because it is still using the older software platform that’s tried and tested. The dealer provided me the build data for my car. It was built end of July 2020, and delivered to the dealer in May 2021. I do know my car hasn’t been driven since I dropped it off with them on Monday. I’m hoping it’s in a locked, covered garage as it is currently unlocked with the windows open! I do like using the Columbus navigation as being able to have the navigation display on the virtual cockpit is great… right up until Pop,Pop,SOS events occur and immediately stop that view from working. With the Matrix lights I don’t use them in auto mode at all now. In April the dealer told me there wasn’t any fixes for them, despite people on here having the same issue and fixes subsequently applied. I’m hoping the dealer does give me a full report of what work has been carried out this time.

My car is in the with the dealer this week, they wanted to have it all week, and are going to be looking at the following list of issues: SOS System "Popping" & Restarting Full Matrix LED Lights - when the system is activated I am getting constantly flashed by oncoming drivers. Climate Control SYNC function not working properly after car is switched off Bluetooth telephone connection does not always connect to phone when car is started ACC system sometimes complains when overtaking cars on right, but not on the left ACC often tells me to "Brake!" when there's nothing in front of me Columbus forgets destinations that are added to favourites Tailgate rattling – may need adjustment Electronic Child Lock Fault I've not had any kind of progress update from them yet. For a hire car they've given me a 72 plate Karoq SE L, which I'd never driven before and is actually quite nice. It looks like it uses the same software platform that my 18 plate Octavia vRS used, and I have to say that it's nice driving a car where all the software "just works". I get in the car knowing that the phone will automatically connect to Bluetooth and Apple CarPlay will be set-up, rather than the lottery I have in the Octavia of "will bluetooth auto connect? If it does will it enable CarPlay or will I have to manually do it?".... Also the navigation on the car just works.

I’m sure I read somewhere that my car cannot take the 1896 software due to the “B” revision hardware installed. The system information screen reports the part number as 5E3035816B, hardware H56, software 1668. I’m also concerned that the dealer doesn’t seem interested in me providing them with dashcam video of the car making the popping noises, or screenshots of the dash display, which doesn’t fill me with confidence for them wanting to investigate and resolve the issue.

I called my local dealer this afternoon, and they have requested to have the car for a week to properly investigate the issues. What did surprise me is that they apparently now charge £23/day for the use of a loan vehicle. I've never come across this before, is this a new thing for car dealers to charge for loan vehicles?

This has just started happening for me too, and it only seems to happen when I'm using the built in Columbus navigation. I've used the car for around 6 long journeys this past week, and 4 of them I used the built-in navigation and consistently had issues. On the 2 journeys where I used Apple CarPlay for navigation I had no issues at all. When using the built-in navigation after each double-pop the following would happen: 1. The SOS LED on the control panel in the roof would go out and come on again. 2. The message "SOS - Emergency call is activated" would appear on the left side of the virtual cockpit (see attached IMG_5638) 3. If using the virtual cockpit navigation screen it would report on the right-side "Navigation is currently unavailable". This message would be stuck for the remainder of the journey, and the navigation would no longer work on this screen, but was fine on the main infotainment screen. After 4 or 5 times of the popping happening, and points 1 and 2 above happening as well, it seems the system would give up and throw an alert, and then the following happened. 1. The emergency yellow triangle would appear on the dashboard, followed by an alert relating to the SOS system (see IMG_5639) 2. The vehicle status page would report "Error: emergency call. Please visit workshop" (see IMG_5640) 3. All on-line functions of the car would seem to be off-line at this point, user profiles not available, traffic alerts, etc 4. GPS location after about 10-15 minutes would also be completely off. So the navigation would show you in the completely wrong location, resulting in the navigation system going crazy constantly trying to re-route, to the point route guidance had to be turned off. 5. On at least one occasion the issue has also broken CarPlay, and SmartLink wasn't working at all (see IMG_5656). Other than some issues with the climate sync, bluetooth connection on start-up and issues with the Matrix LED lights I've not had too much trouble for the past 6 months. Although when I took the car into the dealer for the 3 issues above they didn't manage to fix any of them, despite saying a software update had fixed them all. I hadn't gone back to the dealer as I considered myself lucky that my issues were minor compared to what others were experiencing. I'll need to call them again, because this is now at the point where standard features of the car are simply not working, or are failing consistently.

I wrote to Skoda in April about this, and the response I got back was: I responded saying that owners in other European countries, with the same spec vehicle had this feature available in their respective stores, and was effectively told I was wrong.

It is a shame that a customer has to reject a car because the manufacturer is unable to resolve issues which should've been discovered and resolved during the testing of the software. I am now on my 3rd Octavia, having brought my first vRS back in 2011. I loved it so much I kept it 10 years, which is way longer than I have ever kept a car previously. I have found that Skoda UK customer service has declined in that time. With regards to the issues, I think the car software hasn't been properly implemented to handle right hand drive. The issues with the lights and climate sync seem to confirm this when you look at other forum posts and the workaround for climate sync. Again, to me it goes back to properly testing the software. I was hoping the big software update that is meant to be coming would fix everything, but then I read in another post that the "B" hardware version of the infotainment cannot handle the latest updates, which really isn't good for a car that's only 1 year old!

Did you ever get a fix for the issue?

So, an update... the car went in last week. A few hours later I was contacted by the dealer to state all the issues were fixed. Apparently, on the request of Skoda, they performed a reset, and a software update, and that had resolved all the issues. However, I quickly realised that the issues had not been fixed at all. I'm not sure what software was updated as the infotainment system is still showing the same versions. I also wasn't sure if they were testing the car without a user being logged in. As soon as I got the car back I re-connected my Skoda ID, and quickly noticed the issues with climate sync and bluetooth were still present. With regards to the lights they commented that they'd had a few customers complain about the matrix lights. They said they'd checked the alignment and it was fine. My response was that I didn't think it was related to the alignment, it was related to sections of lights being deactivated when it detected oncoming vehicles. They said that "maybe the camera isn't reacting quickly enough'... I've got a notification of an OTA update today as well, so I will see in the morning if that at least fixes the climate sync. On the updates... I told it to start the update when I got home, and then turned off the car. Will it perform the update in the background and have completed it by morning? Or do you need to keep the ignition on for the update to be performed?

I've stopped using it completely now, as it's not fair on other drivers. One of my friends has a Vauxhall with the Intelllux lights, which I believe are effectively the same as Skoda's Matrix system and he's been very impressed and not been flashed at all by oncoming drivers. For me it's frustrating that issues I've reported to the dealer are being treated as issues that have never been reported before, when it's clear many drivers are suffering from the same set of issues that are probably all down to poorly written software.

I got an OTA update as well yesterday. I'm on Hardware H56, Software 1668 and it hasn't fixed any of my issues either. My car goes into dealer next week for the issues to be looked at, and they've said there aren't any outstanding software updates. So I'm not expecting much to happen at this point. Are cars with H56 hardware limited to software 1668?

Here you go...

Hi All, I've had my Octavia since January, and have a few niggles with it, which I've contacted the dealer about. It's a 21 plate, but was built in July 2020. The issues are if I activate the automatic high-beam on the matrix lights it dazzles every oncoming driver. For Bluetooth it doesn't auto-connect to the phone unless I start the car with drivers door open. For the climate controls the SYNC function doesn't get remembered after the car is turned off. As this is all issues that have been discussed here I sent the dealer links to the issues here, along with my own videos of the climate and bluetooth issue: Climate Link Bluetooth Link Matrix Lights Link However, they've come back to say that they've been unable to find any issues relating to my vehicle. As I've sent them videos from the car they know I do have these issues. The software on my car is 1668, and I know some people are on later versions. Are some of the fixes of issues related to specific software/hardware versions on the car? The dealer is having the car for a day in May, and I do get on very well with them, I just don't want it to be a wasted day!

I asked Skoda support about getting Traffic Sign Recognition added to the UK store, and got the following response. Pretty much the response I expected to get.

I picked up an SEL First Edition a few weeks ago, but I haven't seen the Traffic Sign Recognition showing up anywhere in the store. Have you got a screenshot? It's something I wouldn't mind adding.

Many thanks for this John. That looks really neatly done, and as you say, easily removable too. Out of interest what are the pictures like on the rear camera? I'm very tempted to try this route of having a rear camera. As for the crash no-one was physically hurt, but emotionally I was pretty shaken for a while.,, this was on top of all the insurance issues to deal with. Getting a decent valuation for my vRS was a real challenge, but got there in the end.

I found the link from this thread here. The cable arrived yesterday so I'll try it and see if it works out ok in the next few days.