Landa220

Okay guys, I'll keep you posted on this one.

Earlier this year I had the often reported "data transmission failure" on my vehicle. The vehicle service fault failed to report to the BMW service home base as required. Of course, due to my concern about being stranded somewhere and not being able to communicate with BMW Assist or service, I took the car in to my local dealer.

They immediately said it was probably caused by me using a Treo (phone) instead of an approved Motorola or something. The SA said it had been reported that phones other than those recommended has been tripping something in the TCU causing communication errors. (Yeah, right)

Anyway they kept the car for a couple of days testing and resetting it and said it was fine. My testing to send data to BMW seemed to work at that time as well.

Well yesterday I was washing the car and to make a long story short locked my keys inside the car. Did I mention I have Comfort Access which is supposed to help prevent this? Well, even though I was at home, I decided this was a good time to test BMW Assists remote unlock procedure. Better to try it now that when I REALLY need it.

Well needless to say after thirty or so minutes of trying, BMW Assist could not communicate with my car. They got no signal nor could they send a signal to my car to unlock it. Wow!

Soon after that I called my dealership service department for an appointment to get this taken care of. They noted it and have scheduled me for service. They also wanted me to check to see if I was getting any transmission faults. I checked and tried to send data upstream from the car and got the "data transmission failure" fault again.


If anyone has any experience with this error let me know if you eventually got it resolved (for good). I will keep you all posted on the repair procedure. Since I need a loaner vehicle it'll be a couple of weeks before I can get it in.

Got my fingers crossed. Maybe a software update coming?

Landa

jbsapphire

A real bummer that....good luck in getting it resolved. May I make a tiny suggestion, change phone??

pennetta

When you get your loaner try its data transmission and if it works pair your treo and see if it works after. If it still does then you have more ammunition for the dealer.
I have had both a treo 680 and 750 hooked up and my data transmission still worked.

Landa220

Good point.

However it did work after their first fix, for a while at least. Also, the vehicle's transmitting data is (or at least should be) independent of having a cell phone connected. It works with the vehicle's on-board phone.

I really don't think just because you use an "unsupported" phone your total vehicle communication system will fail. It just doesn't sound right that using any other phone will eventually render's everything from remote unlock to stolen vehicle tracking, etc. to be useless. I'm sure BMW's system should be more robust that that.

Hopefully