My wife's Octavia II had an odd fault the other day, whereby the buttons on the key stopped working. That's to say, they wouldn't open the car when it was locked. Wifey duly used the key itself to open the car and, I believe, failed to insert the key in the ignition within 15 seconds, causing the alarm to go off. Even when the key was in the ignition switch, a message came up on the display saying something like "Key not recognised".

Cue call to me to see what I could do. All I could suggest was re-seating the battery inside the key. In the event, this worked and all returned to normal.

I've searched and couldn't find anything about this problem on the forum, so thought it would be worth posting this up in case anyone experiences similar symptoms.

Aside from this minor glitch, we're delighted with the car (collected on March 1st, 1.8TSi manual estate).

regards

P.

I had a key go in a similar way - it turned out that the circuitry inside was corroded - looked like something like jam had got inside (I didn't ask my wife how that could happen) but Elmside Skoda gave me the benefit of the doubt and replaced it under warrenty.