NHTSA Complaint #11427550 — 2018 AUDI Q7

Dear Leadership @ NHTSA, On July 5th, I reported an incident of Air conditioner not working on my Audi Q7 car with Dealer- Audi Bellevue, located at 1533 120th Ave NE, Bellevue Washington 98005. Findings from the service team was, faulty Control Module and it was replaced. However, this replacement did not fix the problem. Further Investigation led to puncture in the Condenser as the cause. I was told the Condenser had to be replaced. I spoke to my service advisor and Supervisor of the service advisor. My question to them was “How can the condenser get punctured, which is under the hood of the car. My car never met with any accident”? Per Dealer Supervisor, While driving rocks from the road, can make its way through the front grill and make a hole on the Condenser and this is a known issue. My concern is, if this is a known problem, why is Audi still sticking to this Design where it can let rocks pass through the front grill to make a dent on the Condenser. This is causing a huge inconvenience/hardship to customers like me. I had to spend $1,542.62 for the condenser replacement(though I had a Platinum extended warranty) and had to leave my car at the workshop for 11 days. Now that the Condenser is replaced and working fine, the issue does not resolve here, rocks can potentially come through the front grill and can make a dent on the condenser again. This is still an OPEN issue. If that happens again, I will have to go through the same cycle of hardship/hazard/inconvenience. From inspection standpoint, the punctured condenser should be available with my Dealer. I have not made a claim through insurance, so no inspection is made on this condenser. I am not certain when the rocks would have puncture the condenser and there is no indication when the condenser was punctured. Since I noticed my Air conditioner not working on June 27th, I believe this incident of condenser puncture could have happened a week before.