Broken seat mechanism : A3 1.6 Sport 1998
 

The locking mechanism on my driver seat appears to have failed without
warning or provocation. The result is it will swing halfway forward
without having to lift the seat release. I'm worried this could be
dangerous in an emergency stop.
What appears to have happened is a feeble looking rod mechanism
(visible when the seat is forward at the rear corner of the seat base
fabric) has been bent by the pin on the seat back that is meant to
push it downwards. This rod looks like the activation for the locking
mechanism. This looks like shoddy engineering as the tolerance for
this to happen is only about 2mm and is possibly the result of the
spring loaded washer/quick clip (not sure the proper name) coming
loose.
Has any one else had the problem?