Entune - class action suit, anyone?

So, have you gotten Toyota to log these complaints in a database either by making sure that service writers know or calling Toyota customer care?

Personally, from me having received numerous class action settlement notices and a few settlements, most of them are worthless other than enrich the lawyers. The only settlement I've ever gotten that was IMHO good was the 06-09 Prius HID settlement. The check covered the amount I paid for 2 Philips D4R bulbs I bought from Amazon.

The rest were either not worth my time to even do the homework or I got so little money, that it doing the work was a questionable use of my time.

 

To basically quote from one of my posts on MNL:
For the Prius, we've sort have been encouraged to log a formal complaint by the (at the time) Prius Product Manager (a marketing guy).

See posts at Toyota Unveils Entune, App-Ready Sync Fighter, At CES | PriusChat, Prius Brake Recall – A Little More Information | Page 2 | PriusChat Prius Brake Recall – A Little More Information | Page 3 | PriusChat.

To quote from one of the posts:

If you care about this subject, you can listen to Episode 50 with Toyota's Doug Coleman | What Drives Us. Just skip to the 47 minute mark and listen for maybe the next 8 minutes or so...

Erica is now the Prius Product Manager and she sometimes posts here as Prius Team, as she and Doug did before.

 

I'd ask Toyota and/or the dealer if the entune upgrade sent to the Prius owners would work for you & what would be the downside if you tried it. Hope you didn't submit the Customer Satisfaction survey.

 

Why not submit the survey?

Here is my "review" of entune on the Apple iTunes App Store:

Garbage. Rarely works on iPhone with new Prius V Premium HDD. (not working at all for the past day.) Toyota needs to apologize and compensate its AT package customers. They sold something that does not work.

Using either an iPhone 4, 4s, or 3GS, we have the same problems with Prius V AT package (Premium HDD Navigation with JBL). I have spent in excess of 20 hours this week debugging and on the phone with Toyota or Sirius support. I can get the entune features to work sometimes. Mostly, I get "iPod authorization failed" or "you must have an application running to connect" (or something like that), or "communications failure, try again" or everything looks OK but no sound from Pandora or iHeartRadio, or XM Fuel Prices says I have no subscription even though traffic and the other XM apps do work, or Bing returns no matches unless you use a voice query on the same search term, then it does work, etc. The dealer and I spent 3 hours this evening, and he could not get either my phone or his to work consistently. So we then tried another Prius V with the DA system, and he still could not get the Internet connected to use apps. Neither could I. So I went back to my car, and after deleting all config info on it, deleting the BT config on my phone, logging out of entune, relaunching entune and then redoing everything, I got my car working with my iPhone 4s. But, after a bit, I lost my Pandora and iHeart Radio sound again. Sad, sad state of affairs. The only bright spot -- XM Fuel Prices are working again. Thank you Sirius support.

UPDATE!
I now know that to keep Entune working, you MUST AVOID the USB cable connection.

Entune does work on iPhone iOS 5.1.1 with the Premium HDD only if you do not plug in USB. If you do that, you get better iPod functionality. But on the next use (e.g., park, shop, then return and try to re-connect), chances are it will fail completely. When this does happen, you will probably get a message on the head unit saying that there must be an application running… Don't give up, you can clear up the problem by performing a soft reset of your iPhone (hold down the “home menu” button and the “power” button for about 10-15 seconds. Agreed this is not nice, but it's better than what I went through for a week before I knew the trick to success.

Additionally, I'm finding that Entune does not have to be in the foreground on the phone for successful operation. I first start Entune on the phone, then start the car. Info->Apps then works fine. I can park, use other apps on the phone, return and restart the car without bringing Entune back to the foreground, and everything still works. Just stay clear of USB connections.

 

I thought for class action to be successful, there's gotta be monetary damages. For example, HCH class action was about the car not getting stated MPG. If it advertises 50mpg and you're only getting 30mpg, that's .67 gallons of gas you have to buy. Five Guys gift card class action about them illegally charging its customers dormancy fee. Farmers class action was about excessive management service fees. I have never heard of any successful class action involving a product that failed to perform as intended. I remember there was a talk of class action a few years ago against HTC and Qualcomm regarding HTC failed to provide graphics drivers for the MSM7200 and MSM7500 CPU. Without the graphics driver, the phone's display and overall experience was horrible. Nothing came of it.

 

By now, Toyota Customer Experience knows me like their own family. I bought the car last Sunday, and could not get entune working. So I started last Monday with their email support link. To date, no response to the first email, or to a second one last Thursday. They just don't respond. So, I began calling. Not once, not twice, but somewhere around 5 times, with three different support people. That ate up maybe 6-8 hours of my time. And after all that they turned it over to a dealership Customer Relations person who was supposed to call me and set uo a time and loaner vehicle so the service technicians could check out my Premium HDD system. But, when the call came back from the dealer, it was just a car salesman who wanted me to come by so he could show me how to download entune and set up a BT link. After much explaining, he put me in touch with his a Customer Relations advisor, who said she didn't really know how to use entune, but the salesman could help me. That was too much for me to swallow, so I drove the car 40 miles back to the dealer who sold the car, and then spent another 3 hours working with their salesman. No joy, he couldn't connect either -- not to my car or to two others he tried. I blew off steam with my dog at the beach (that's why I do love the car -- it's perfect for these outings), then headed home to try again the next day. I directly contacted the Service Manager at my nearby dealer (the one with the Customer Relations person) and explained that my Premium HDD either needed a software update or a new head unit or a new comm. antenna. He claims they can do all of the above, so I'm headed there at 10 am Monday. Meanwhile, I keep getting OTA updates to entune (3rd one last night), and entune is working more often. But then again, it worked part of last Sunday too, and part of last Thursday. As for Toyota Customer Experience, my experience with them is that calling them is a waste of time. They never once mentioned the OTA updates, never once mentioned there were any issues with entune, and never once offered useful advice. I guess it's too much to expect an "official" admission that entune is buggy, and Toyota is working on a series of fixes. Better to keep quiet and swap out a few head units than to end up in the WSJ with a scary headline like: "Toyota Admits to New Flaws in Electronics".

By compensation, I meant something like 2 extra years of Sirius XM radio, or even something as simple a free coffee mug that says "Toyota Really Does Care" and a Starbucks card with some coffee bucks.

 

Have you considered the glaring Entune denial-of-service security flaw. Anyone can read a VIN off your car, open an Entune Account (or use the one they already have), then register your VIN with their account. From that point on, you cannot use Entune. Your Entune has been "stolen". My wife did this to me by accident because the salesman told her the to get Entune working, she should register her phone with Entune when she got home. And yes, I did report this issue to the dealer and to Customer Relations -- but I doubt they understood -- or else they thought it was off subject and ignored my concern.

BTW, I'm posting here because I know of no such forum as toyota.com/chat/Prius

 

I'm at a loss to understand why anyone would want to "steal" my Entune, since it works (or not, as the case may be) only in my car.

At any rate, I assume the issue is that it's registered with your wife's phone and not yours? I believe that if she logs into her account at Entune™ Account Management she can transfer ownership to you.

 

Keep filing complaints with Toyota. Unless they have truly dropped the ball, they will fix it or compensate you.

Ford's drop in quality surveys was because of their initial release of MyFord, or whatever it's called, system. From what I understand it worked, but just had a lousy user interface. Toyota doesn't similiar headlines about how they've dropped in quality because of this.

 

We took care of that mistake last Monday. But my observation was that this is not proper software design. Anyone can register your car to their account, and then your entune will no longer work. It would be a mischievous denial of service (DOS) attack on your entune. Or, maybe someone just accidentally mistyped the VIN and ended up with yours.

Update: We used the car an hour ago, and Entune is again refusing to work. It's the same old "you must have a application running..." message after tapping Apps.

 

The way I got it to work was to upgrade the iPhone(4) to the Hotspot so it could connect via Bluetooth to the car. Made sure my Entunes ID and Password were loaded on nav via the Setup.

Now it works are intended (and advertised). I get in, phone automatically connects via Bluetooth. Once the phone connects, the internet apps are available on the screen. Touching Pandora, it takes about 30 seconds or less to connect to the internet. Same for Bing and Traffic.

When you get it working, it is pretty good with the traffic overlays and rerouting around traffic jams, using Bing to search for a place and then touching screen and having it nav to the selection. Pandora is a nice change of pace from XM as it plays lists based on artists vs. the stations of XM.

I think key for the iPhone is buy the tethering Hotspot service and setting it up to communicate via Bluetooth.

You might try restoring your car to factory defaults via the Setup and then doing the pairing and Entunes ID and PWD entry.

 

Hotspot is Bluetooth, USB or Wifi, however you hook up to your device. You can have five devices though the Apple guys will tell you that might be pushing it for the iPhone to dish broadband to five devices. It works great on two, my iPad and my HP Mini. The phone will ask you when you turn on the hotspot, Bluetooth, USB or Wifi.

It also is what works in the Prius which is the main reason I got it. Plugging and unplugging the USB was not elegant functionality and the Prius USB ports are not good. It would constantly say "power exceeded, shutting off USB" plus the pain of unplugging and plugging.

The whole Prius/Entune thing works well once I got it going with the Bluetooth hotspot. Nice feature is that Prius immediately pairs with the phone for calls etc. but does not go online until you request it by opening one of the internet apps, Bing, Traffice or Pandora.