Since I promised to close out the car story, I will sum it up with this: The VW dealer had my car for an entire week, primarily due to the fact that their mechanics replaced the DRIVER side airbag when the problem was clearly (and allegedly, written on the work order) with the PASSENGER side airbag. So now I have two new, hopefully functional airbags in my little Golf. When I tried to explain why this was somewhat troubling, the customer service rep assured me, "Oh no, don't worry, that was only human error! Nothing to be concerned about."

Um, okay.