My wife is currently in London for the week and has just had this well-known error message pop up on her Mk3 Fabia 1.0TSi DSG

She's understandably a bit worried whether it's ok to drive it all the way back (to Devon).

From what Googling I've done, it looks like it should be ok, but just wanted to get confirmation from the experts on here.

Yes it's fine to drive.

Just had our Fabia done at our local Indy for £180

2 hours ago, logiclee said:

Yes it's fine to drive.

Just had our Fabia done at our local Indy for £180

Thanks for confirming. She did say it seemed fine going up the M1 to daughter's house in Hemel.

Fortunately, it's still in warranty (registered Sept 22, so not yet 3 years old) so we'll take it to a Skoda main dealer to have it fixed.

I've had this error pop-up a couple of times. Each time the fault has cleared after driving the car for a short distance (20 metres or so). I don't know what triggers it, but it does seem related to reversing the car before turning off the engine and ignition; however, any attempt to deliberately trigger the fault never works.

The biggest problem is that the car's central locking doesn't work when the fault is shown, and for my car that means going round the outside to the passenger door, levering off the keyhole cover, and manually locking the car that way.

Car booked into an approved Skoda repair centre for later this month, to be fixed under warranty.

Thanks to all who have responded.

Just a quick update to say that the faulty micro switch was replaced by a VW/Skoda dealer under warranty.

Let's hope it doesn't go wrong again - the warranty finishes in September.

edit: Forgot to mention in my original post that the most irritating thing about the fault is that the car refused to start, because it thought it wasn't in park (when it was). My wife had to wiggle the gear selector back and forth many times before it eventually let her start it. Irritating in the extreme.

Edited 26 July, 202526 Jul by cliveb

On 02/07/2025 at 19:51, logiclee said:

Yes it's fine to drive.

Just had our Fabia done at our local Indy for £180

Hi

Could you kindly PM me the indy that did the fabia microswitch for you? Dealers saying approx 450. Can't afford that for a design flaw by VG

12 hours ago, TheCobraMan said:

Hi

Could you kindly PM me the indy that did the fabia microswitch for you? Dealers saying approx 450. Can't afford that for a design flaw by VG

https://www.premierservicecentreltd.co.uk/

On 15/12/2025 at 18:12, TheCobraMan said:

Hi

Could you kindly PM me the indy that did the fabia microswitch for you? Dealers saying approx 450. Can't afford that for a design flaw by VG

Sorry for the delay in replying - I've been on holiday.

The microswitch was fixed under warranty by a Skoda main dealer, so I'm afraid there isn't an independent I can suggest.

We were lucky that there was still 1 month left on the warranty when the issue arose.