Originally Posted by shadowman

Paddle shifters are gear limiters as someone pointed out.

All it does is lock out the remaining gears for use. You should be able to force car to downshift by shifting (-) on the paddle shifter.

For example, My car is currently in 6th gear and I wanted to go 4th. I can do so by "downshifting" or limiting the gear to 4 by tapping twice on the (-) paddle. This will cause the ECU to lockout the 6th and 5th gear on the tranny. But the ECU can still decide to use 4th and 3rd and 2nd and 1st from the tranny.

If you still can't do that with your paddle shifter, then it can be the paddle shifter that bad on the switch side inside the steering wheel or some other issue. If you don't use it that often, save the money and avoid fixing it at dealer.