Not off to a good "start"....
Jan. 29th, 2019 07:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogWell, Eleanor's first ride home last night was fine. Car started and handled without incident, it fits in its bigger space in the garage, the new charging cord is on the better side to access the outlet,.... um, why won't it connect? Oh. Parking brake has to be engaged before you can charge the car. Mmmmmkay. (Alanis has the old-style foot pedal on the way left for this.)
All seemed well, so I toodled off to my 9:30 court this morning, with her planning on some errands before going to work at noon. Then the call came at 11: the engines turned on (yes, it has two- one gas, one electric), but idiot lights surrounded it on the dash and the thing wouldn't move. I was done with appointments for the day, and it looked like a promised French Toast Special of a snowstorm, due tonight, had seemingly gotten up early and snarled traffic on my way downtown (some) and back (worse)- so I figured I'd come home, try to fix the problem, and either switch cars or take her to work. Help was on the way! from Hyundai roadside assistance, so we had to time things delicately. Or not, as it turned out- Eleanor was also nursing a sinus infection, so after calling into work, she decided to bail on the day there and wait for the truck.
I gave it a try, too. Same thing. Turned right on, lights stayed on, wheels stayed put. I'd brought work home and started cranking it- and within an hour, truck guy showed up and cranked the car, as well. No idiot lights. Apparently, this car requires your foot to be on the brake when you turn it on; we've long been used to safety redundancy that makes you put your foot there before the transmission lever will move, but this seemed, well, odd. So they didn't have to tow it back to the dealer for service on its first full day in our possession.
This "feature" seemed ever odder, because the Big Deal with this thing is its remote capabilities. The salesperson spent close to the first half hour yesterday morning getting the BlueLink app installed on Eleanor's phone. No easy feat, that; took several tries and required a number of requests and resets of passwords. But she got 'er done. Today, though, the thought came by: why does the car require your foot to be on the brake to start it with the key fob when you can start it remotely from the next area code if you use the app?
Alas, there was no testing this hypothesis, because every time she logged in and tried to start it, it popped Error 12345 (not its real number, but it is the same one I have on my luggage). Now, after already having blown her morning on fun and games with both the dealer and the roadside assistance people, she was on to an afternoon on the phone with Blue Link support,....
who, I kid you not, recommended a reset of the entire car-to-phone communication system by resetting it. Using a paper clip.
This worked! At requiring complete resets of all her information on the server side, including perhaps a personal record for the most passwords requested for a single site in just over 24 hours. But not at remotely starting the damn car:P She's reported the 12345 code to them. It's bad; this we know. So bad, it has resulted in the issuance of a ticket- to an engineer, who will get it in 3-5 days, and will then get 3-5 days to respond to it. Fortunately, none of this is coming off the free three years of this hoity-toity service they provide. (After that, it looks to go up to around $200 a year for the two biggest components of it.)
I'm convinced that a car this complex should only be handed out to a new-to-them owner on a Saturday morning- so you can take all the time you need at the dealer to ask questions about How Things Work, and so you have until Monday morning to read through the materials and figure things out for yourselves before being pressed to leave for work less than 24 hours after driving it for the first time ever for realz.
All in all, we've had pretty good luck with car purchases. First new car I ever bought, four months into my career, was the '84 K-car that we kept until right before our move here a decade later. I bought that one, pre-Eleanor, from a Rochester Dodge dealer on a day almost as brutally cold as the one they've promised us for tomorrow- and it stalled out before it got to the next driveway on West Henrietta Road. I near-totaled a new Ford in another January, six years later, when a semi didn't see me passing him and merged into my engine block; and various cars have nagged us (named that one "Dorothy" for my mother), broke things on us ("Cruela de Bonneville"), and got hit and run by an asshat from New Hampshire (Heshie, my final Ford). But we've loved most of the rest; kept many for ages; donated a few near the end of their lives to friend, family or charity; and I wouldn't have managed my goofy two-city practice for this long if they hadn't reliable and comfortable way more often than they're not.
So we're hoping this is just a first-day Hyundai Jitter.
All seemed well, so I toodled off to my 9:30 court this morning, with her planning on some errands before going to work at noon. Then the call came at 11: the engines turned on (yes, it has two- one gas, one electric), but idiot lights surrounded it on the dash and the thing wouldn't move. I was done with appointments for the day, and it looked like a promised French Toast Special of a snowstorm, due tonight, had seemingly gotten up early and snarled traffic on my way downtown (some) and back (worse)- so I figured I'd come home, try to fix the problem, and either switch cars or take her to work. Help was on the way! from Hyundai roadside assistance, so we had to time things delicately. Or not, as it turned out- Eleanor was also nursing a sinus infection, so after calling into work, she decided to bail on the day there and wait for the truck.
I gave it a try, too. Same thing. Turned right on, lights stayed on, wheels stayed put. I'd brought work home and started cranking it- and within an hour, truck guy showed up and cranked the car, as well. No idiot lights. Apparently, this car requires your foot to be on the brake when you turn it on; we've long been used to safety redundancy that makes you put your foot there before the transmission lever will move, but this seemed, well, odd. So they didn't have to tow it back to the dealer for service on its first full day in our possession.
This "feature" seemed ever odder, because the Big Deal with this thing is its remote capabilities. The salesperson spent close to the first half hour yesterday morning getting the BlueLink app installed on Eleanor's phone. No easy feat, that; took several tries and required a number of requests and resets of passwords. But she got 'er done. Today, though, the thought came by: why does the car require your foot to be on the brake to start it with the key fob when you can start it remotely from the next area code if you use the app?
Alas, there was no testing this hypothesis, because every time she logged in and tried to start it, it popped Error 12345 (not its real number, but it is the same one I have on my luggage). Now, after already having blown her morning on fun and games with both the dealer and the roadside assistance people, she was on to an afternoon on the phone with Blue Link support,....
who, I kid you not, recommended a reset of the entire car-to-phone communication system by resetting it. Using a paper clip.
This worked! At requiring complete resets of all her information on the server side, including perhaps a personal record for the most passwords requested for a single site in just over 24 hours. But not at remotely starting the damn car:P She's reported the 12345 code to them. It's bad; this we know. So bad, it has resulted in the issuance of a ticket- to an engineer, who will get it in 3-5 days, and will then get 3-5 days to respond to it. Fortunately, none of this is coming off the free three years of this hoity-toity service they provide. (After that, it looks to go up to around $200 a year for the two biggest components of it.)
I'm convinced that a car this complex should only be handed out to a new-to-them owner on a Saturday morning- so you can take all the time you need at the dealer to ask questions about How Things Work, and so you have until Monday morning to read through the materials and figure things out for yourselves before being pressed to leave for work less than 24 hours after driving it for the first time ever for realz.
All in all, we've had pretty good luck with car purchases. First new car I ever bought, four months into my career, was the '84 K-car that we kept until right before our move here a decade later. I bought that one, pre-Eleanor, from a Rochester Dodge dealer on a day almost as brutally cold as the one they've promised us for tomorrow- and it stalled out before it got to the next driveway on West Henrietta Road. I near-totaled a new Ford in another January, six years later, when a semi didn't see me passing him and merged into my engine block; and various cars have nagged us (named that one "Dorothy" for my mother), broke things on us ("Cruela de Bonneville"), and got hit and run by an asshat from New Hampshire (Heshie, my final Ford). But we've loved most of the rest; kept many for ages; donated a few near the end of their lives to friend, family or charity; and I wouldn't have managed my goofy two-city practice for this long if they hadn't reliable and comfortable way more often than they're not.
So we're hoping this is just a first-day Hyundai Jitter.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-30 05:12 am (UTC)One of the requirements for it to start remotely is that it be locked, perhaps in case someone wants to make-off with an unlocked running car. And there are a couple of other pre-conditions that I forget. Mental checklist required, as all it will do is not start and tell you without saying why.
The car is thoroughly tech-geeked-out. Fine with me, a tech-geek. My wife, not so much.