My January 2010 L&K Estate has a Columbus head unit with the inbuilt HDD. Since new it has had problems with overloud traffic announcements.

The volume for traffic announcements has been set to minimum using the menu under the “Tone” button.

Under "Setup" there is an option to leave the TP station set to automatic or select your favourite from the drop down list. In my case this just offers Heart and Capital but none of the BBC TP local stations. Selecting Heart or Capital does not as you might think stop traffic broadcasts from the BBC TP stations.

Where I live near junction 3 of the M25 in north west kent TP broadcasts are received from at least three BBC local radio stations. I should be able to restrict it to one (favourite) but the facility simply doesn’t work.

The car has been back to the supplying dealer for two days but they can’t offer a solution but acknowledge that if you listen to a speech station where the volume tends to be set higher than for a music station, there is a problem. SUK have tried a Columbus unit fitted to one of their cars and also agree there is a fault. SUK referred it to the factory who evidently don’t consider it a priority fix. SUK have now closed the call and simply told me to ask the dealer if a solution has been found when the car has its first service next year.

I contacted the Telegraph’s Honest John and it seems VAG simply don’t modify these units for the UK market. So a £1500.00 head unit does not work properly, hardly a recipe for a Happy Skoda Driver.

I expect if it were possible to enter “service mode” there may be a way to fix the problem but unfortunately on these later units that seems to be impossible.

Just turn TP off and use TIM - much better and more relevant to the route that you are on. TP has always and always will be useless especially if its into BBC as you get traffic all over the country.

Could you give some more info on what exactly TIM is? Does this relate to the traffic information messages (oo, T-I-M...?) that are displayed when the 'traffic' button is pressed? I've been wondering about this for a couple of weeks, as when navigating the other day I got an audible message saying there was a problem on my route, albeit a couple of minutes too late. When NOT navigating, it seem quite happy to let me drive into a large traffic jam on the motorway which clearly has the little car icons on the road meaning it is a 'known' jam??

Must get hold of a manual

Could you give some more info on what exactly TIM is? Does this relate to the traffic information messages (oo, T-I-M...?) that are displayed when the 'traffic' button is pressed? I've been wondering about this for a couple of weeks, as when navigating the other day I got an audible message saying there was a problem on my route, albeit a couple of minutes too late. When NOT navigating, it seem quite happy to let me drive into a large traffic jam on the motorway which clearly has the little car icons on the road meaning it is a 'known' jam??

Must get hold of a manual

Sorry not TIM, I meant TMC which is the traffic button. This will only announce or re route when actually navigating.

You can still get a list up of traffic problems by pressing the button.

Have you tried a firmware update for your unit. Mine I believe is on 1104 so I will put TP on tomorrow and see what the volume is like. Perhaps somebody on 2XXX fw test and post the results.

I dont have a problem with TP, it was very loud initially but if you turn the volume down whilst the announcment is playing then the volume setting you leave it at will be the new default.

You cannot set a favourite TP station, what you see is a favourite TMC station which is totally different and nothing to do with TP. TMC is what gets displayed when you press the Traffic button, TP is signal sent via RDS Eon and the radio will switch to any station its currently receiving the TP signal from regardless of where it is.

Ta Mike.

Same problem on my bolero - whatever I do with the settings the tp announcements are always bloody loud!

If there is a fix I'd be interested..

yep, that works fine for the rest of the journey. following morning, its LOUD AGAIN.

Yup, tried to set the initial volume but it always comes back TOO LOUD. Apologies for shouting

Yup, tried to set the initial volume but it always comes back TOO LOUD. Apologies for shouting

anybody know if this issue ever got resolved ? It does my head in, and sometimes the TA comes on so loud it scares the ---- out of me. I've given up and turned RDS off !