My mom has this problem on one of the buttons in the Bonneville....its just the seek up button...LOL...its from 9 years of her using the damn thing. At night is the most annoying because when they light up, that one particular button is brighter than the rest because it has no paint over the part where light shines through...so you get a bright red light there...its really not a big deal though. During the day its hardly noticable.

 

in my defense they were like that before i got the car lol.
and yeah i wish they had some aftermarket ones bcuz i really want to get some but i dont wanna pay that much for just plain ones ya know =[ idk when i go look for a license plate filler at a salvage yard i guess i'll check out the steering wheel too of the car that i take it off of. but thanks for all your help guys i really appreciate it =D

 

Mine are in perfect condition and my car is an 01! lol but for some wierd reason my "seek" button has an orange backlight.

 

I have this same problem with my 5th gen my buttons are fading away. :'(

 

I was lucky enough to get some great ones on a part out, but before that I painted mine flat black... because I was dumb and didnt like the almost green color.... besides that the flat black will wear off too.... so idk haha

 

we use ours chibiblacksheep lol as for replacing them i wish u the best of luck and be careful for the air bag wires!

 

I've been using mine for 9 years... maybe you are just dirtier :P

 

I'm taking the same defense as SpinEm90. Mine were FUBAR before I bought it. My mom has an 02 TrailBlazer that had a couple of small spots rubbed off when she got it and still that's as bad as it is. While shopping I saw many a car that had the radio and AC controls rubbed almost completely off, one in particular, an 02 SS the AC buttons looked as if they were painted white there was no brown what so ever left on them. I hardly touch my radio buttons, maybe to turn up or down the volume from time to time but I keep it on the same station, my cruise buttons on the other hand do get a workout, but they look no worse then when I bought her a couple of months back.

Just sucks to have the rest of the car look nice and the steering wheel looks like....

 

same. mine were all the way clear when i picked up my 02 at an auction. Only 81k and i paid 2,500 but it did need some work. i taped off my steering wheel and used flat black, even though its paint you can still see some light come through. almost like a tint. then i used a really fine paint marker to draw two arrows and a +&-...it came out decent enough for me (:

 

I think it's from someone using cleaning fluid like Windex or degreaser.

If you're deciding whether to replace just the buttons or the entire steering wheel with a used one, take a look at this How-To that moderator Mickey wrote a while back. The button replacement is detailed in post #3.

https://montecarloforum.com/forum/fwd-tech-guides-95-07-62/remove-dash-hvac-controls-steering-wheel-buttons-6th-gen-9608/