Poor quality fuel warning?

[jeremyc]

OH's 2012 A1 TFSI is in for regular service and the technician is claiming there is "an error message saying you are using poor quality fuel".

Is there such a diagnostic, or is she being fed a line?

FWIW it's always fuelled with Shell Unleaded.

[shtu]

Has a slightly iffy smell to it, that one.

Barring the very rare mistakes with water\dirt in badly maintained tanks, or very old stuff being used from a bowser or something, all uk-sold fuel is more than good enough.

Are they recommending some sort of "treatment" to fix this "problem"?

[jeremyc]

shtu said:

Are they recommending some sort of "treatment" to fix this "problem"?

I smelt the same odour as you so told her to politely decline any further investigative or rectification work.

I was just curious as to whether there was such an error in the on board diagnostics. Or perhaps it got lost in translation and there have been errors associated with pre-ignition ("knock") logged.

The technicians advice was to try a different Shell station in case they had a bad batch.

Needless to say there were a litany of other elements of work suggested on top of the standard service, including £50 worth of new wipers, £50 worth of new tyre sealant (the existing one has passed it's "best by" date), an AC service and new first aid kit.

[shtu]

jeremyc said:

The technicians advice was to try a different Shell station in case they had a bad batch.

That's fair enough, then. Entirely possible, though incredibly rare.

Bear in mind the car logs all sorts of faults that never trip a "check" light, could be something like a bad batch, or even a random historic error that's still stored.

I'd not be worrying, tbh.