GoRovers

Because of a recent "Increased Emissions" warning, I took my '04 525 (CPO, 52k miles) to the local BMW dealer (Long Beach, Calif.) this morning. I happened to mention to the SA about my intermittent driver's side / front speaker cut-out problem (see my Forum topic on that subject here), and he looked at my Blackberry 8830 on his desk and said:

"You use a BlackBerry? Those are NOT on BMW's approved list of cell phones for a reason! The likely reason your speaker is cutting out is because the high amount of onboard memory on PDAs like yours will overload the car's TCU, often causing damage to the TCU's software. All sorts of problems can result."

I replied that my BB (I recently had BlueTooth enabled on the car) pairs wonderfully, and that my contact list is only a few dozen entries long. He replied: "It makes no difference how many contacts you have, it's the huge PDA memory that freaks out the TCU."

I asked him for BMW-published documentation of this, and he said there is none. I mentioned that the speaker cut-out problem began occurring soon after his service department installed the AUX (for my iPod) input in the glovebox and upgraded the car's software. He said: "Not related."

(I've noticed that I can sometimes correct the intermittent left/front speaker cut-out by opening/closing my driver's side door, so perhaps it's just a loose speaker wire issue. I'm planning on getting my windows tinted soon, and if the tint installer removes the left/front door panel, maybe I'll peek at the speaker wire connections at that point...)

Any advice on how I should respond to this SA?

beaker

Sure - ask him where his information comes from. He's obviously pulling it out of thin air, but it would be interesting to see what he has to say. If there isn't any published information about it, then he must have heard it from someone. Ask who.

It may be worth getting a 1 day subscription to www.bmwtis.com and research it yourself just to be sure, but I can't see any way he's right. Memory is a passive device - it stores and retrieves information. That's it. Try leaving your BB home for a few days and see if it happens anyway - I'm guessing it will. If you can't leave it at home, get one of those lead lined bags for film and stick the BB in it. Don't forget the tin foil hat for yourself as well.

Whenever I'm working with a SA that says something I don't buy, I ask him to put it in writing and sign his name to it. If he isn't willing to do that (none of them have yet), then he isn't very confident in his position.

Let us know how it works out, and feel free to tell him "The internet says your full of shit".

Rudy

Take the easy route...

Send him this link:
http://www.wireless4bmw.com/phones2.html

BlackBerrys are approved for use by BMW -- what else needs to be said to cut through his total BS?

kscarrol

While I'll agree in general, do be careful because if this SA wants to be an ass about it, the Blackberry 8830 that the poster is using is not on the approved list. While the other approved BBs have comparable memory and this would blow his half baked theory out of the water, he may latch on to the fact that the 8830 is not apporved...

flyingpuck

Sounds as if your SA has a PHD....you know, Piled Higher and Deeper!

luigi524td

I've heard about BB's sucking atoms right out of the sky and they also disable Logic7 systems ... right after they defeat air traffic control systems when used within 3 miles of the tower -- but only on a moonlit night!

beaker

Bah - that's no big deal. All you have to do is reroute the encryptions and encode the firewall. That'll fix it.

Rudy

I was thinking that same thing but it's worth a try since his position seems to be that "all PDA's cause problems"...

This guy reminds me of the stupid (I'm trying to be nice) Honda mechanic that kept telling me that the GPS satellites were "wrong" when the car wan't changing to daylight/summer time on the correct date (after they changed the dates last year.) For the life of me, I couldn't convince him that the car was performing the correction for time zone and daylight time, not the satellites but this guy just dug in and stuck with his story. Between this experience and a couple other Honda dealer experiences, I'm no longer a Honda customer...

UUronL

Tell him you'll have to go over his head for resolution if he continues to cling to such nonsense. The issues at hand have clearly already traversed that path...


Oh... and you could likely pass the BB off as one of the supported models. I'd bet against him being able to confidently refute your claim that it was one of the models on the list.

Landa220

Boy am I glad to see this topic.

I am having the same issue with my SA.

Please see the following posts for details :
http://forums.e60.net/index.php?showtopic=54735 &
http://forums.e60.net/index.php?showtopic=54797

In a nutshell, my vehicle won't uplink data to BMW Assist. Recently I couldn't have my doors unlocked remotely by them 'cause the vehicle wouldn't communicate.

Previously I was in for this communication failure service and the SA did just what yours did. As he was taking my information, looked down and saw my Treo and said "that's your problem" He indicated that since my Treo was not officially compatible, it causes the TCU to act up. Okay, really.

I agree with you. This doesn't make since. It seems to me that BMW's computers should not be rendered useless because an owner has a phone other than the sparse few they consider compatible. That's not good.

Sorry about your problems, but it's refreshing to see others with this problem. If we make enough noise, we might get this thing fixed.

Keep up posted as I will to you all.

Landa