The car that reminds you you’ve been a cheapskate

An Audi Q4 E-Tron owner in Denmark has been left feeling ‘mildly infuriated’ after being given a rude reminder of what happens when you don’t a tick an option box when making your new car purchase.

What should have been an exciting experience quickly turned into ‘option shaming’ for the Dane, who posted his story on Reddit before it was picked up by Carscoops.

It seems when the Redditor purchased his new Audi Q4 E-Tron, he didn’t take up the tri-zone climate control option, largely because of, according to him, the “size of my wallet”.

According to Carscoops, tri-zone climate control is a 5114 Kroner (around $AU1000) option in Denmark which, unless you absolutely need separate temperature and fan controls for the second row, seems a bit excessive.

Usually, when an option is not selected at time of purchased, the button that is used to use that option is left blank. Not so in the Q4 E-Tron, where the ‘Sync’ button remains firmly visible, prompting its new Danish owner to see what would happen if he pressed it, despite knowing the feature was not available.

The result was a rather unsubtle message on the Q4’s infotainment screen, reminding the new owner he’d been a bit of a, let’s say, tightarse when buying his brand new Q4.

“The function has not been purchased” read the message, leaving the new owner taken mildly aback and suggesting that maybe Audi should have taken the more traditional ‘blank button’ route.

“Blank buttons aren’t rude,” wrote the owner on the sub-Reddit r/mildlyinfuriating. “This one is reminding me that I’m cheap.”

'Cheap' is likely the operative word here. It wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest that replacing the ‘Sync’ button with a blank when the option isn’t taken up would cost far more than a simple line of code within Audi’s MMI operating system.

Additionally, by leaving the button in place, Audi has left the door open in the future for over-the-air purchases, assuming the hardware is there to control the rear-seat ventilation individually.

For the record, pricing in Denmark for a new Audi Q4 E-Tron starts at 364,990 Kroner (around $AU72,000). The electric SUV remains under consideration for Australia.