Scandalous Behaviour
Discussion
I'm trying to bring to people's attention an issue which is seriously affecting the infotainment and central control systems in 3 different current models from a French car manufacturer, and is to all intents and purposes being covered up by them. In order not to break Rule 5 of Pistonhead's 'Rules of Posting' I'm not (yet) going to name them.
A few months ago, my sister took delivery of one of these French cars. In July this year, the infotainment screen presented a 'FOTA' (firmware over the air) message advising that a system update was required, which would take around 10 minutes to install. Two days later the screen was still saying 'Initializing......' and all functions provided via the screen, including radio, entertainment, GPS, maps, handsfree Bluetooth connection, driving aids, engine modes, parking sensors, system warnings, clock etc. were (and remain) unavailable.
My sister's husband called the manufacturer's hotline, and was advised there is a known issue with the firmware upgrade, and that they should take the car back to the dealer to get the firmware restored back to the previous version. They were then informed by the dealer that the firmware could not be installed, as the upgrade had destroyed the Bosch CPU that controls the system.
Upon calling the hotline again, they were told that 'many' customers had been affected by this upgrade. After some 24 further calls to the manufacturer (and many broken promises to investigate and call back), they admitted that there will be an indefinite delay in providing a replacement processor.
During subsequent investigations on various internet forums by my sister and her husband, they found that numerous owners across the UK and Europe have been affected by this.
The manufacturer's own forum pages relating to the subject have been taken down since they were first viewed by my brother in law.
The point I am making is that despite this known problem, rather than issue a recall, prevent further downloading of the defective firmware upgrade or stop supplying the affected vehicles, it seems the manufacturer is continuing to sell them to an unsuspecting public, and directing the available processors into cars for production, rather than making any available as spares to fix those already sold. Thereby leaving the owners of defective vehicles waiting for an indefinite period of time to be repaired, as well as continuing to allow innocent owners to 'brick' their infotainment systems by downloading an upgrade which is known to be defective.
As a subscriber to Which? magazine I've written to them twice, but they don't seem interested. My brother in law wrote to BBC Watchdog, and they don't seem interested, and he has heard of people who have contacted What Car? magazine, and even they don't seem to be interested. Short of picketing dealers, how on Earth are we supposed to get the message out to people?
A few months ago, my sister took delivery of one of these French cars. In July this year, the infotainment screen presented a 'FOTA' (firmware over the air) message advising that a system update was required, which would take around 10 minutes to install. Two days later the screen was still saying 'Initializing......' and all functions provided via the screen, including radio, entertainment, GPS, maps, handsfree Bluetooth connection, driving aids, engine modes, parking sensors, system warnings, clock etc. were (and remain) unavailable.
My sister's husband called the manufacturer's hotline, and was advised there is a known issue with the firmware upgrade, and that they should take the car back to the dealer to get the firmware restored back to the previous version. They were then informed by the dealer that the firmware could not be installed, as the upgrade had destroyed the Bosch CPU that controls the system.
Upon calling the hotline again, they were told that 'many' customers had been affected by this upgrade. After some 24 further calls to the manufacturer (and many broken promises to investigate and call back), they admitted that there will be an indefinite delay in providing a replacement processor.
During subsequent investigations on various internet forums by my sister and her husband, they found that numerous owners across the UK and Europe have been affected by this.
The manufacturer's own forum pages relating to the subject have been taken down since they were first viewed by my brother in law.
The point I am making is that despite this known problem, rather than issue a recall, prevent further downloading of the defective firmware upgrade or stop supplying the affected vehicles, it seems the manufacturer is continuing to sell them to an unsuspecting public, and directing the available processors into cars for production, rather than making any available as spares to fix those already sold. Thereby leaving the owners of defective vehicles waiting for an indefinite period of time to be repaired, as well as continuing to allow innocent owners to 'brick' their infotainment systems by downloading an upgrade which is known to be defective.
As a subscriber to Which? magazine I've written to them twice, but they don't seem interested. My brother in law wrote to BBC Watchdog, and they don't seem interested, and he has heard of people who have contacted What Car? magazine, and even they don't seem to be interested. Short of picketing dealers, how on Earth are we supposed to get the message out to people?
I know exactly who your talking about!!!!...mine had an OTA firmware recall for safety reasons at first service back in June...took over 2.5 hours to download via the slow wifi they use via the main dealer. My understanding is the slow wifi signal is direct from the manufacturer it's not possible to update via USB (which would have been faster). This is why they are frying the firmware(s) as the bandwidth is miniscule generating a lot of data corruption & broken ECU's due to dropped packets when it takes so long!
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