Hopefully, this can help the expat in Salt Lake City with the VW oil light problem.
I had a similar problem with a 1994 Jetta III a few years back… oil light and alarm coming on and staying on while driving.
It first happened after an oil change, so we took the car back to them to look. They changed the oil again and said everything was fine… it wasn’t and the light came on again.
So, we took it to the VW dealership. They hooked it up to the diagnostic computer, nothing there… But they drove the car and witnessed that the light would come on after a while and their computer registered low oil pressure.
They replaced the switches… no luck.
They replaced the oil pump… no luck.
They changed the oil again…
Light came on a few days later.
Went back to the dealership. They took the engine apart to look at the bearings… everything fine there.
Finally, and get this, they referred to the VW corporate specs for that model of Jetta and found out that it requires higher weight oil. 15W or 20W. They had been putting in a standard 10W oil. They put in the correct oil and the light never came on again. This was proven to be the case when about 5 years later I had the oil changed and forgot to mention the higher oil weight requirement and 10W was used and a few days later on came the light and I had to have the oil changed again.
Problem solved.
Let me second that opinion - my '89 Jetta had the EXACT same problem. When I called to dealer to price out the oil pump, he said “this might sound like a dumb question, but what weight of oil are you using?” Told me to try 20w/50, and it fixed the problem.
Hopefully you guys can call Melissa back before the dealer scams her out of a new oil pump!