First snowfall, brand new car, snow rips out side shield lining

[javo2999]

Picked up brand new 2016 A5 in October, it was Toronto's first snow fall on Monday night and it was a mix of rain and snow. Tuesday morning the side streets had not been plowed, the snow piled up in the middle of the side streets and since it rained the snow was heavy. As I was leaving my neighbourhood I needed to obviously drive over a few of these huge piles in order to get to the highway. Long story short, that night I was driving home and heard a scraping sound coming from my car, I figured it was just snow in the wheel well hanging on and rubbing against the tire, after about 5 minutes I realized this is either some really strong snow or its not snow at all and its something else. I checked and found my entire passenger side lining under the car ripped out and shredded. Included a picture to better explain the issue.

I cut off most of it to make sure it wouldn't gather anymore snow and potentially damage anything important. It's at the dealership right now, I called my sales guy to ask him what happens in a situation like this, he more or less told me if I wanted to get it fixed it will likely be out of pocket for me.

I am a little disappointed, do you think Audi should cover this? Whole family owns Audi/VW, I've went from a VW Jetta MkV to a Audi A4 B7 to this Audi A5, nothing like this has happened on any of those cars or any other in my driveway for that matter. I understand this being an issue if I had gone off roading or drove into mountains of snow but this car should be able to handle anything a Toronto road can throw at it, even if that means a little bit of piled up snow.

[bakedcorn]

I'd be irked as well if anything go into a flying rage if this happened to me.

I had a similar situation myself as the road was not cleared and i can hear the scraping underneath my vehicle but I was lucky - no damage.
From images seen on the inter-tubes, this factory skirt or shield is somewhat flimsy.

As for the dealer, its a coin toss, some may do it as goodwill and others may simply tell you, tough luck! Apologies as this does not help.

I'm curious to the cost of the replacement as you may want to look into one of these units as a possible alternative.
I'm still debating about getting one for the S3.

[McNeil]

All of mine ripped off last winter, the price to replace is steep!

[javo2999]

ECS tuning has the replacement skirt at $160, but that's US dollars and before shipping, god knows what the dealership actually charges. I wish they made metal skirts for the side shields but they don't, if they did I'd be first in line to buy them.

The shield is very flimsy, it's basically moulded foam wrapped with some carpet material, was easy to cut with dremel.

[WtA4WtQ5]

Sometimes tire shops jack up your car from the wrong spots and break/crack those panels (Don't even ask why i know this). Then they will catch snow and ice easier and break like the pic.

Gorilla Tape does a pretty good job holding them together to get through the winter. I would hate to put new ones on before winter. It is a 3D jigsaw puzzle to replace btw.