Defective module causing issues with Ford Connectivity

mixduptransistor

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They thought my issue was with the antenna, too, but they replaced the antenna and it was not the issue
They had to replace the TCU. The tech hooked up to the car and the error was that the provisioning state of the TCU was "UNPROVISIONED" and it would not communicate and no amount of re-flashing the TCU would get it into a provisioned state. Replacing the TCU woke everything up immediately

If I were you I'd take the car to the dealer and leave it. Make them give you a loaner, and leave the car and start the clock on the 30 days. Don't pick it up until it's fixed. Do that TOMORROW and start the clock on them
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Thank you @mixduptransistor! I have left it at the dealership (still not fixed).

So an update from this latest round of attempts:

Dealership tried the new steps Global Technical Assistance had provided, which predictably didn't work. While I was there, I got an email from a FordPass team member that the "engineering team had sent a new signal to the vehicle" and to do another master reset. So we did that again, but it also did not change anything. I'm pretty sure my Mach-E will hold the record from the number of master resets by the end of this!

Anyway the dealership was about to start taking apart some of the panels to get to some of the equipment but then was told to try an RFA update (I believe this one: https://www.macheforum.com/site/thr...kup-code-needed-and-or-key-not-detected.5268/), which they tried. I had to go back to the dealership to activate the vehicle again yesterday, but still no luck.

Because the RFA update didn't work, the dealership says they need to get next steps from Ford per the warranty coverage. I understand this but at the same time it's frustrating because I think all signs points towards the TCU. I'm a little perplexed why at this point Ford won't just sign-off replacing that unit if that's where all the signals point to, rather than racking up more service hours and sending the customer through more loopholes.

I got a hold of a Customer Relations team member last week as well who did mention talking about purchase back options. We agreed to talk this week if the Friday trip was unsuccessful, so hopefully he is able to help me out. I don't want to go that route, but I feel like Ford needs to be on the hook for this to be motivated to resolve it in a timely fashion.

I should note that the dealership honestly has been great and sympathetic this whole time but I'm not sure how successful this model will be going forward with all of the tech embedded in cars nowadays. From my narrow view of this, Ford needs to re-haul it's support and service teams, because the lack of accountability/urgency from corporate's support is surprising.
 

mixduptransistor

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Well, I suspect they have a shortage of modules. They got a new TCU for me but the service manager said he did an "emergency order" and they got one overnight. Another guy in a different thread said he's waiting on one but Ford doesn't know when they will have one for him. Just an FYI, lemon laws don't care about parts availability, if they just can't get a part if your car is in service it is still counting against the lemon law timeframe

Don't get too anxious, but do have the lemon law buyback in your back pocket. At the very worst you just get a new Mach E, but by holding that over their head they will probably move heaven and hell to get your car fixed
 
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Well, I suspect they have a shortage of modules. They got a new TCU for me but the service manager said he did an "emergency order" and they got one overnight. Another guy in a different thread said he's waiting on one but Ford doesn't know when they will have one for him. Just an FYI, lemon laws don't care about parts availability, if they just can't get a part if your car is in service it is still counting against the lemon law timeframe

Don't get too anxious, but do have the lemon law buyback in your back pocket. At the very worst you just get a new Mach E, but by holding that over their head they will probably move heaven and hell to get your car fixed
Yeah, I'm definitely fine with waiting due to availability, I just want to get the order in rather than wait another month while they toy around.

And yeah that's my thinking. Ideally would not like to go through the hassle but good to know have it as an option to get things moving.
 
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No meaningful update here unfortunately, but I did have one of their customer experience specialists tell me that I am "overthinking" this issue when I was pressing about the timeline for escalation and such.

Honestly the Mach-E is an awesome car but Ford has truly provided me the worst customer support I've ever had and the specialist I've been working with has been very condescending and seemingly only interested in the bare minimum. I have already advised one friend to hold off buying the car until Ford gets a handle on this new software and while I want to enjoy this car, it's hard for me to see myself buy another car from Ford in the future.
 


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No meaningful update here unfortunately, but I did have one of their customer experience specialists tell me that I am "overthinking" this issue when I was pressing about the timeline for escalation and such.

Honestly the Mach-E is an awesome car but Ford has truly provided me the worst customer support I've ever had and the specialist I've been working with has been very condescending and seemingly only interested in the bare minimum. I have already advised one friend to hold off buying the car until Ford gets a handle on this new software and while I want to enjoy this car, it's hard for me to see myself buy another car from Ford in the future.
You have a Ford specialist working with you?
 
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You have a Ford specialist working with you?
Yep! I have been communicating with a "Customer Experience Specialist" and the dealership. The Service Manager at the dealership has been extremely proactive, emphatic, has a sense of urgency, and is great at giving detailed updates from his end. The Customer Experience Specialist has been the opposite.

I do have positive news though! The FordPass Guide who originally had been communicating with me before escalating it to the customer experience specialist had a new cloud signal sent to my Mach-E this week (this had already happened before a few times to no success). This time, the cloud signal helped, as now the Remote Start Commands work and System Updates no longer throws an error that vehicle connectivity is not enabled.

After we tested that out, the FordPass Guide gave me a call to schedule some time with an Enterprise Connectivity Quality Lead to go over the outstanding PaaK setup issues (which still did not work after the new cloud signal). He was able to explain what the fix was specifically for and now is in communication with the PaaK team which is looking at the ticket. They've said they'll have an update by the end of the week on where we are with it and have everything they need to diagnose it.

I'm much happier since they have finally resolved 2 of the 3 issues, plus it sounds like urgency is being applied to the PaaK setup issue and I'm finally talking to someone who is able to able move things forward. That said, it's clear now that the teams at Ford do not talk to each other, you're stuck waiting for the right person to stumble onto your ticket, and the teams seem ill-prepared for supporting the Mach-E.

For example, when I was on with the Quality Lead, they had me perform another Master Reset, which caused the Connected Navigation to be greyed out and under Connected Services the feature to go into a cancellation pending state. Because Connected Navigation is handled by the Marketing Program Headquarters, I had to separately call them to get the cancellation removed (which stays, even after 48 hours). When I call the number provided, it first redirects me to Customer Support at which I have to ask to get routed back to Marketing. Once I get them on the call, they the representative is shocked to hear the Mach-E has Connected Navigation (she seemed to think only the F-150 does) and when we finally get past that part, they don't have documented the fix they did last time. So after a 50 minute call, still no fix until a few hours later when they're able to do whatever they did.

I'm really excited that these troubles will behind me soon (fingers crossed) but I would hope Ford is working on simplifying and bringing transparency to the support process. I think most everyone on these forums can agree Ford made a great car but support and transparency across the board has been a huge weakness. Having to communicate mainly by phone, with up to 5 different teams, and no ability to track where a ticket was is a problem that I hope they fix :)
 

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Yep! I have been communicating with a "Customer Experience Specialist" and the dealership. The Service Manager at the dealership has been extremely proactive, emphatic, has a sense of urgency, and is great at giving detailed updates from his end. The Customer Experience Specialist has been the opposite.

I do have positive news though! The FordPass Guide who originally had been communicating with me before escalating it to the customer experience specialist had a new cloud signal sent to my Mach-E this week (this had already happened before a few times to no success). This time, the cloud signal helped, as now the Remote Start Commands work and System Updates no longer throws an error that vehicle connectivity is not enabled.

After we tested that out, the FordPass Guide gave me a call to schedule some time with an Enterprise Connectivity Quality Lead to go over the outstanding PaaK setup issues (which still did not work after the new cloud signal). He was able to explain what the fix was specifically for and now is in communication with the PaaK team which is looking at the ticket. They've said they'll have an update by the end of the week on where we are with it and have everything they need to diagnose it.

I'm much happier since they have finally resolved 2 of the 3 issues, plus it sounds like urgency is being applied to the PaaK setup issue and I'm finally talking to someone who is able to able move things forward. That said, it's clear now that the teams at Ford do not talk to each other, you're stuck waiting for the right person to stumble onto your ticket, and the teams seem ill-prepared for supporting the Mach-E.

For example, when I was on with the Quality Lead, they had me perform another Master Reset, which caused the Connected Navigation to be greyed out and under Connected Services the feature to go into a cancellation pending state. Because Connected Navigation is handled by the Marketing Program Headquarters, I had to separately call them to get the cancellation removed (which stays, even after 48 hours). When I call the number provided, it first redirects me to Customer Support at which I have to ask to get routed back to Marketing. Once I get them on the call, they the representative is shocked to hear the Mach-E has Connected Navigation (she seemed to think only the F-150 does) and when we finally get past that part, they don't have documented the fix they did last time. So after a 50 minute call, still no fix until a few hours later when they're able to do whatever they did.

I'm really excited that these troubles will behind me soon (fingers crossed) but I would hope Ford is working on simplifying and bringing transparency to the support process. I think most everyone on these forums can agree Ford made a great car but support and transparency across the board has been a huge weakness. Having to communicate mainly by phone, with up to 5 different teams, and no ability to track where a ticket was is a problem that I hope they fix :)
Wow! That’s great. I’m glad to hear that they’ve resolved the issues but it still sounds like a lot of broken processes and bureaucratic nonsense to go through ?
 

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Check out my last 2 posts in this thread: https://www.macheforum.com/site/threads/modem-“disabled”.4703/post-166919

if you car was built in Jan/early Feb, you could have a unit that wasn't activated at the factory. Just got a call about it today. The Ford Pass said they’ll coordinated getting the engineers and the dealer together and walk them through activating the modem.
What's the best number / address to contact to get that started? I've spoken with a few low-level folks already with no progress and would prefer to skip the part where they have me reset everything again.
 

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What's the best number / address to contact to get that started? I've spoken with a few low-level folks already with no progress and would prefer to skip the part where they have me reset everything again.
I just called the 800-883-2966. You can ask the to see if your vehicle was included in the list of vehicles that came out of the factory with non-activated TCUs (or modems). I’ve been working with them for a while. While its been slow, they have been calling me back and checking in regularly.
 
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Check out my last 2 posts in this thread: https://www.macheforum.com/site/threads/modem-“disabled”.4703/post-166919

if you car was built in Jan/early Feb, you could have a unit that wasn't activated at the factory. Just got a call about it today. The Ford Pass said they’ll coordinated getting the engineers and the dealer together and walk them through activating the modem.
Thank you for this! So initially things worked but then went haywire after the master resets (as instructed by Ford). Because of that, I don't think that it wasn't activated but instead probably got stuck in a bad state. It sounds like they have a lead now though on what the issue is so hopefully should have an update soon.


What's the best number / address to contact to get that started? I've spoken with a few low-level folks already with no progress and would prefer to skip the part where they have me reset everything again.
The number that @Tmarch provided is for FordPass specifically, which is the team that seemed the most capable with these connectivity issues. There's also Customer Relations (1-866-631-3788), but my experience was very frustrating with them. They have multiple technical support teams that don't really communicate with each other so I don't think you'll get a fix through one of those other teams if it's related to the domain under the FordPass team.

As far as getting progress, it sucks but I think the best you can do is keep pushing with the case number they give you. I just did typical PM stuff where I'd ask for updates at X intervals (even if there is no update), what progress has been made since last update, and what can I do to move things forward (and speed up the process). Eventually, it seems like the ticket was open long enough for a higher-up to come in and grab it before I felt like there was actually attention on it.
 
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Finally the last update! The FordPass engineering team got on the phone with the technician at the dealership and they were finally able to get the last issue resolved. I was able to setup PaaK with the car.

From what I understand, they re-ran the initialization of the RFA and/or "PaaK' module, which I believe earlier had failed but they managed to get it working this time. This was done through one of the apps made available to the dealership. The Connectivity Quality Lead who I was in contact with mentioned that they have to do research on "what the app does and how it was able to address the issue", so not sure Ford is even clear what happened.

Super happy with the Mach-E but Ford really needs to fix the support escalation procedures and communicate better. Would love to see a ticketing system overhaul (web portal please?) and better communication between the teams. Leaving a customer in limbo for over a month with terrible communication (until an escalation point finally takes the ticket) is a way to lose repeat business.

Anyway, hopefully this helps anyone who runs into this issue!
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