Yeah, I told the guy the whole system was too complicated and not strong enough. In fact here's the wording of my second mail to Seat UK:
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"Thanks for the call this morning. Please find the pictures you asked for below. The first picture shows the peg in situ, the second has the broken part sat in original position so that you can see what the peg looks like. As you can see, it's a very simple part that just pulls out of the parcel shelf stiffening bar. If it was available as a spare part it would take seconds to replace.
There are two issues at work here, the weakness if this part and the weakness of the retaining spring clips in the load-bay side panels. Looking at the load-bay clips it does not look like the clips themselves have broken, rather that they have come loose from the panel. Overall, I think a simpler, more robust system would have been better.
In the short term, I think the most immediate issue is getting these plastic pegs supplied as a separate part. I have already heard from a couple of other owners who have broken these pegs and, considering how early in the Mk3 ST's life-cycle it is, I suspect it's going to be a common
problem for years to come. Replacing the whole shelf assembly every time a peg breaks simply isn't an option here.
Longer term I think it would be a good idea to strengthen the part. All areas of the part are hollowed out, including the underside of the end piece which has snapped, and I think it has weakened the part too much. Even if it were solid I still think it would be too weak, the end pin is just too thin, but any strengthening would be welcome.
I have not seen how the spring clips are attached to the rear of the load-bay panels but clearly, there is a weakness there. Sandy at Livingston Seat told me that these clips used to be part of the panel and they have been made a separate part to reduce the cost of replacement. He also gave the impression that the failure of the clips on the Mk3 ST was a common occurrence. As soon as I said the shelf was sticking he knew exactly what the cause would be.
Like I say, I have not seen how the spring-clips are attached but it obviously isn't strongly enough.
In the longer term, a simpler system would be a lot better. A simple bar in the shelf that hooked onto 'Shepard-crook' style cups in the end of the runners would work fine and be much more robust. Having lots of clever features in a car is impressive in the showroom but if owners end up getting a lot of aggravation from them it's costly for you and puts buyers off the brand. It doesn't bode well that this sort of failure, the load-bay spring-clips, has occurred in a car that had only done 3'950 miles."
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Right now I'm looking for the pegs and spring clips fixed but I'm concerned about what will happen years down the line. These crappy little clips are just going to keep breaking. I'm going to try and figure out a better solution than just replacing one set of crap parts with identical crap parts.
