99 passat autom trans shift problems, cold or hot

[smaautomotiveforum]

hello,
the wife has a 99 passat, 1.8L auto transmission, with 55k miles. For a month now, when we start the car cold, the doggone thing will NOT shift out of first gear until the engine is hot (190F on the dash). Then it seemed to shift into 2nd, 3rd ok. But recently you can be driving along, and when you stop/start again, it randomly decides to stay in 1st gear. Not a good thing when accelerating thru an intersection, onto an interstate, etc. The great VW dealer has had the car twice, and cannot reproduce the problem. They will not acknowledge this is a problem, but this web forum has other strings of the same problem. Right now we told the dealer to KEEP IT until they can start it up and reproduce the problem.

Any ideas, guys? This is aggravating in every direction. Gotta get it fixed.

A satisfied customer will tell 6 people of their happiness. A dissatisfied customer will tell 20 people of their frustration. Hope I'm reaching well beyond 20 people.

Give a reply please.