Just thought I'd share my little experience I just had that ALMOST cost me 300 dollars for a new fuel pump...

My problems:
-Misfires
-Hard starts hot or cold
-P0442
-Fuel pump intermittent
-WOT misfires
-ZERO pressure at the rail

These issues drove me nuts for the past 6 MONTHS. VAG-COM didn't show me much other than I wasn't getting enough fuel during start ups and at WOT. I just recently rebuilt my motor, bottom and top, and I went to start it... No fuel. I knew it was correlated with the fuel pump because when turning the key to KOEO (key on engine off), it didn't make noise. Like I said before, my long cranks before the rebuild, I was still getting intermittent fuel pump engagement so I was still able to start it but that was after punching the steering wheel 37 times and kicking everything that looked like it should get kicked.

I caved and knew I was just gunna have to bite the bullet and buy a new fuel pump. Right before I confirmed my order online I got a wild hair and a bottle of ideas and inspect the fuel lines thoroughly...

That's when I found my 6 month long, annoying problem which was present in the fuel return line at the front of the fuel filter... Massively kinked. I pulled it off and noticed that it truly is unnecessarily long. I'm guessing it's roughly 7 to 8 inches from the filter to the hardline that is routed from the front of the vehicle.

I pulled it off, heated the elbowed end up that clips to the filter, and pulled the clip out. I cut about 3 inches off, heated up where it was kinked, and rounded it back to normal as well as inserted the elbow clip back in. Let it cool off and then reversed the fuel line so that the elbowed clip was on the hardline, and the straight clip was into the filter.

I HAVE SO MUCH MORE THROTTLE RESPONSE AND FUEL PRESSURE the difference is literally noticeable especially when your car doesn't start but I saved 300 dollars today because of a kinked return hose that was disabling the fuel pump thought I'd share this just in case it would help someone else as it was a simple fix after showing the same symptoms of a bad pump.