My wife bought a Polo with a DSG box two years ago. At the first Volkswagen dealer service she complained about an intermittent hesitation from the car when starting from a stop. The mechanic said there was nothing wrong because we could not demonstrate the problem.

One year later and ‘intermittent’ has become ‘more frequent’, but is still unpredictable. The car is now dangerous. Imagine you are the first car at a roundabout, having stopped for traffic. The car is in D (Drive). You press the accelerator, the engine revs increase but for several seconds, the car goes nowhere, then, with a screech of tyres it shoots forward. Eleven months after the first service we took the car back to the Volkswagen dealer who kept it for a few days but could not replicate the problem, though he did upgrade some software.

When my wife collected the Polo the hesitancy recurred as soon as she tried to drive away from the dealer's forecourt. She called a mechanic out and was able to demonstrate the problem to him. The dealer contacted Volkswagen, changed some different software, and told us they hoped to have solved the problem. They had not. Last week my wife and I were both in the car when the problem surfaced in a slightly different way. I started from standstill on level ground. The car moved forward a couple of feet, then stopped while the engine revs continued to increase to over 3,000 rpm. Not wishing to have the clutch engage at these high revs I backed off the accelerator and the car then moved forward. Fortunately we were not on a roundabout at the time. The car is still under warranty. Surely we cannot have the only car with a DSG gearbox that has encountered this problem?