2012 Ford Focus Sync crashing

[SketchMaster]

I bought my focus back on Dec 31st, 2011 and not soon after I had an issue with the Sync system "crashing" (for lack of better term). Every third restart or so the system would select Fm radio and would not respond when I pressed the voice control or phone buttons, but after three minutes or so it would then respond to the commands. The biggest issue with this is the car would need to rebuild the voice command index for the MP3 player, pretty much making Sync useless for selecting tracks hands free until the 8-10 minutes it took to finish. One neat part of the unit crashing is the Sirus/XM radio will ignore the fact I don't have a subscription, it will display "Unsubscribed Receiver" but I just hit close and I can select any station I want.

I brought it back in and they could not recreate the problem, but I was told that it was a "known issue" and Ford/Microsoft was working on an update. Since it was a MS product, and I found that I was not the only person online having this issue I decided to wait. Work and life made the annoyance fade off for a while, and I pretty much just got used to it while I waited for the "update" since I otherwise really liked the car. Fast forward to the beginning of Dec 2012 and I finally brought the car in for service and told them it had almost been a full year and no hint of a patch has been announced. They got the sync tech to look at it and he did notice some odd errors in the Sync log, and so re-flashed the unit.

Still broken...

Brought it back in and Ford HQ told them to replace the whole control unit.

Still broken...

So I brought it back in a third time and they had me sit in the waiting room for two hours while they borrowed my phone to see what was going on. They said that with my iP4s and my Zune HD (yes, I own a Zune) together I have "too much data to index and they can't fix it". What they say is happening is sync will automatically go through all my devices and refresh the indexes, but it will wait until the next restart to use them. Because I have "so much data" sync has to pause and sort through it all after starting up, basically sync is choking on just under 30GB of music and the 130 or so contacts I have in my phone. They could even recreate the issue using three other cars they had sitting on the lot, as if to say "And don't bother trying to swap out the car for a new one.".

...Who the hell did Ford think was going to have anything less than that on average?! Anyone who can afford to buy a $20K+ car is going to have a full time job where they have a lot of contacts in their phone and a larger sized MP3 player.

So, here's the crappy part: I looked it up and the Colorado Lemon Law gives you one year to date to bring the car in four times in order to have a case, and since my dealership in the 11th hour has pretty much said they won't bother looking at it again I'm a bit SOL unless I can figure out how to make an argument.

 

[NutBucket]

What do you mean "won't bother"? That's bullshit. Did you call corporate? Try a different dealer? That's the lamest excuse I've heard.

EDIT: Maybe I wise not to buy a Focus

 

[Fritzo]

LOL- it's Microsoft. Of course it's buggy.

 

[Jimzz]

I thought the newwer sync's were custom and did not use as much MS now?

But contact corporate Ford and see if they can help.

 

[Theb]

Did they give you any clues as the the upper range of data sync could manage?

Can the index build on itself so you could start it with 10GB then add 5GB at a time until you're whole?

 

[nickbits]

I have 2009 sync.. It wouldn't work if I had too many files on my USB stick.. I don't remember the threshold. Haven't had issues with my 16GB stick.

 

[SketchMaster]

They won't bother for two reasons: They've found that it's probably my hardware "breaking" it, and they know that I know I can't try to call it a lemon until I get that fourth documented attempt. So they've pretty much given me the "works as designed". http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/translation

No hints on what the range was, but if I can't use my Zune to it's full potential I call shenanigans.

They were nice enough to give me a free rental while they tore the car apart, but I had to take all of yesterday off to go down there and let them use my phone.

...Since when I showed up at noon they had to figure out where the hell they put my car. Standing around while they tried to find the car was awesome, since part of the reason I took the day off was to try and recover from a cold. So I had to come back two hours later when they found it to sit in the waiting room and listen to screaming kids while I felt like crap. By the time they figured out the problem and told me why it was "broken" I was too damn tired to argue with them, I just wanted to go home and take some meds.

I'm partly better today so I'm catching up on work, tonight I'll call Ford since the paperwork is at home.

 

[Ferzerp]

You can't call it a lemon on those grounds anyway.... What gives you the idea that you can?

 

[Theb]

So you have to keep your driving music down to ~20Gb, but you have the option of crashing it and getting free Sirius/XM whenever you want.

Sounds like win.

 

[rcpratt]

I really cannot fathom why you would have not just reduced the amount of music that you were attempting to index, because it seemed pretty obvious that was the problem.

Alternatively, just play your music through bluetooth? At least on my 2011 Fusion (Sync, not MFT), it does not index via bluetooth. It might not be quite as convenient as having the voice control that USB provides, but it sounds like it would be a lot less obnoxious.