Originally Posted by LexVan

_BK, thanks for the update. At this point, work with your service advisor, and see if he can present to PCNA to "good-will" the repair or share in the costs. Might need to call PCNA yourself, too. Are you the first owner. Have you ever owned Porsches before? These answers matter. There's no right or wrong answer. Depends how you frame them to PCNA. Be reasonable, articulate, persistant, and negotiate. Good luck.

Originally Posted by Hurricane

^ this is what I would do. Be polite and keep asking for help.

Originally Posted by LexVan

_BK, thanks for the update. At this point, work with your service advisor, and see if he can present to PCNA to "good-will" the repair or share in the costs. Might need to call PCNA yourself, too. Are you the first owner. Have you ever owned Porsches before? These answers matter. There's no right or wrong answer. Depends how you frame them to PCNA. Be reasonable, articulate, persistant, and negotiate. Good luck.

Originally Posted by _BK

A soul-crushing update. The honest guys from ASG looked at it and they are as perplexed as I am. They agreed with the dealer (ugh) that it is not the reverse light switch, which seems to be working. Rather, something seems not to be pushing against the plunger-type reverse switch. ASG could not see anything inside the transmission, like if a pin or something “broke off,” but admittedly it is very hard to see inside even with the tiny camera they have to check cylinders and such. It does not seem that anything broke inside there, though. Nothing feels or sounds wrong or different about the transmission from back when the switch worked. Note that even the dealer said the transmission appeared undamaged, it just seemed to be “missing something” that should be pushing the reverse switch. Put the car in reverse and nothing pushes the switch.

Yet neither ASG nor the dealer knows what it is. ASG said Porsche provides no breakdown schematics of the transmission and does not offer parts for it, only the whole unit. This is presumably what led to the dealer saying the only solution is an entirely new transmission.

So now I am at a loss. The car is relatively recently out of new car warranty, so I would have to foot the bill myself. It drives the same as ever, I just do not have a functioning reverse light switch, so I’m tempted to ignore it... but I really can’t. I could live without the mirror tilting, but I need reverse lights. I will get this fixed, but swapping transmissions seems like massive overkill, using a sledgehammer to kill a fly.

I went ahead and did the Porsche customer satisfaction survey, giving the dealer middling marks. The dealer (yes, it was Porsche Tysons) was adequate, but I feel like they kind of blew this off. An issue like this is objectively stupid, and it deserved more consideration and thoughtfulness than they gave it. Essentially, they just mentioned it to me when my oil change was done and had me decline the repair, as I’m sure they expected. Why not pull in a regional service rep, or a Porsche NA person when they come across something so outrageous? Why not do more to find the part to fix it, rather than tell me “the solution is to replace the entire transmission”? Why not see if this is an issue that has been addressed somewhere else?

On the customer satisfaction survey, I gave the brand itself very low marks, with an explanation that it makes no sense that a presumably tiny part should fail, and that when it does, the fix is completely out of proportion to the problem. I asked for someone from Porsche NA to contact me to figure out a more reasonable solution to fix it. Hopefully I will hear something. In the meantime, the guys at ASG are going to reach out to their transmission guys to see if they’ve ever heard of anything like this.

This is not the happy update I wanted, but I had to pass it along. The good news is that the car remains amazing to drive. I am super bummed about no reverse lights, so I will get it fixed, one way or another, and will update once I do.

TL, DR: Dealer was right, my problem is weird, I'm sad but will get it fixed regardless.