I have some info for you guys that want to get the lights working. I had mine installed at Best Buy because I didn't want to screw up the wires. After they installed it, same problem.
When lights go on the LCD goes black. It has something to do with the dimming unit in the Tributes. After about 2 days of Best Buy trying there was no success. They could either leave the LCD on and I couldnt see the buttons or the LCD turns off when the headlights come on.

Heres what I did. I diconnected the dimming wire from the unit. I removed the face plate. If you look at the back of the face plate, you can see the lights themselves. I identified the ones for the LCD and the ones for the buttons. All of the bottuns are in series and all of the LCD's are in series. The ground side of the lights is the larger area. The hot side is the narrow one running to each light. Where the lights cross over a circuit there is a 000 resistor to bridge it. I simply soldiered a small jumper from the hot side of the button series to the hot side of the LCD series. I soldered into the 000 resistors that were exposed. took a few minutes and now I have lights all the time.

The onyl problem is that it's faint, but enough I can read whats going on.

 

Can you post a picture? I'm not too sure I understand what it is you did exactly......

 

I didn't know that the buttons had lights! Wonder why there's not a certian wire to hook up 12V especially for that?
I'll take a look see and maybe to the solder idea.