I had a little scare in my first week of ownership with my Audi A4. The shifter was stuck in park and the foot light wouldn't go off to acknowledge that I was pressing the brake. I checked the brake lights and they were out so I switched the brake light fuse(13) with another one of the same kind. Sure enough it solved the problem and the shifter is back to normal.

So this is a message to everyone who's shifter gets stuck in park:
Before you do anything complicated or spend x amount of dollars for some to diagnose the problem 1) Check to see if the brake lights work, 2) If not change fuse number 13 (it's a red #10 small fuze).

 

Good job, sir. I do a lot of troubleshooting at work(web sys admin) and I always try the easy things first. You just proved that that's the best way to approach a problem.

 

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Yeah it probably was #13 because obd would probably have more to do with the computer I'm guessing.

Jdahlen that was my main purpose for posting this because the internet is flooded with diagnosing this problem starting with the most complicated and most expensive. I saw one post say to take off the shifter apron...supposedly from an audi tech...

Also even if we are not mechanically inclined(I'm far from it) we can still eliminate the things that are easy before taking it to the shop and paying x amount to diagnose and fix.