"Keyless Start Faulty" warning, driving me nuts!

Hello - Have a 2015 Sportwagen S 6MT with just under 30k miles. For the past month or so I have been receiving a "Keyless Start Faulty" warning (with a lovely "ding!") on the dash, and a yellow exclamation point warning light. The warning re-occurs every time I open / close the door (driver's), every time I open a window (any), when I come to a stop, when I set off and when I lock/unlock the doors with the fob or the driver door panel. Luckily the incessant beeping stops once I get on the highway / am driving continuously.

The car runs and drives perfectly and I would be OK living without the keyless door opening - I have no problem pushing a button on the fob / keeping the car unlocked. I just want the dinging and warning message to go away!

I have a RossTech cable and it tells me that the fault is originating from the Driver door antenna. I was able to disable the KESSY system but not the system that warns me that there is a fault with the KESSY system. For that I need a security code that I cannot find.

So my questions are thus: Has anyone had this problem? If so, what did you do about it? Is it possible to simply disable the warnings using VCDS?
I'm told by my dealer that I likely need to replace the entire door handle (ie, special tools and paintwork required). The car is Malone#2 (so fun!) and I'm wary of factory diagnostic equipment. I may flash back to stock and have the dealer take care of this under warranty unless you kind folks have a better solution for me! I would rather save increasing my re-flash count for any potential future serious problems, not this little luxury feature problem.
Thanks
-E

Do you have some kind of extended warranty? I don’t think it would be covered under the factory warranty, if they will fix it under warranty I would let them. I wouldn’t bother flashing back to stock. If they check it won’t matter what the current tune is in my opinion. VW servers will check the flash count and if it doesn’t match it will get TD1 flag. In my opinion they have no reason to mess with all of that for your issue. And even if they do check I don’t think VW would deny that kind of claim based on tunes.


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The number of flashes isn't the thing. It is if the count matches up with what they have on record. Even being off by only one is enough for the TD1 flag, from my reading. It probably would go "in your record" and could be used against you later, if not this time.

Ok, fair enough - I knew I signed up for potential warranty issues when I flashed it. Gotta pay to play - can't deny that I love the extra power and torque without losing fuel economy.

Warranty / dealer issues aside, any suggestions for how to diagnose and fix this problem? Many others have pointed to the KESSY antenna under the rear bumper, but my VCDS scan tells me it's an antenna in the driver door. Is this antenna truly a part of the door handle?

Side note: I was planning on installing dynamat sound insulation to the front doors so I may have an answer to that once I remove the door panels.

Are you able to pull off the door card and poke around?

Do some searches on mk7 specific forums (this places is kinda stale with MK7/MBQ specific tricks and DIYs) you won't be the first person to pull the cards off to root around.

Pulling the door panel is on the list for this weekend. Need to get the other project running so I can get the garage space first... Good tip on the MK7 threads (vortex, golfmk7.com, etc...) have a lot of good stuff on this. TDIclub has been awesome for teaching me about my '01 ALH -I really appreciate the community's effort to put together great DIYs. Sadly there aren't many tdi MK7s out there and they are still pretty new (ie, not broken yet). Lucky our tdi suppliers have been on the ball stocking MK7 stuff (IDparts!).

Just saw that I never closed this out: If anyone else is having this issue it was a faulty antenna in the driver door handle. The dealer replaced the entire handle under warranty. No need to remove the door card, but they did need special tools to remove the door handle from the outside. And the replacement handle had to be painted to match the body so I'm pretty glad it was still within the warranty period! I suspect the problem was caused by the insane amount of salt that NH DOT dumps on the interstate whenever there is any hint of a chance of winter precipitation.