hi guys, first post and would like some advice.
I took the mrs 500 lounge into the local fiat garage as the blue and me system stopped working and the millage was flashing.
after some patronisation from the technician he said that ' the whole bluetooth multi media system needs replacing and this is whats also causing the flashing of the millage' he quoted £500. Is he wanting an expensive sale or is this correct?

has anyone experienced this and what happened? is this an expected price?

sorry about the exhausting questions
thanks

Just needs a software update and proxy alignment

Find another dealer and report first dealer to fiat

I smell bull****. The flashing mileage thing happens from time to time. Turn the car off, wait a couple of seconds and turn it on. Or take it to the dealer so they can do a "proxy alignment" which is Fiat-speak for utter ********. Flashing mileage just happens from time to time. There's no real fix. Deal with it. It's not damaging anything.

As for the blue&me, when you say stopped working, what exactly stopped working? Does the radio still work but not the steering wheel buttons? My advice would be to disconnect the battery and leave it for half an hour. It's possible to confuse blue&me sometimes and it just needs a hard reset to sort it. It is essentially just a windows CE PC after all. I'd disconnect the battery for half an hour before shelling out big money on a replacement. Doesn't cost anything and its solved every blue&me issue I've ever encountered.

jnoiles said:

I smell bull****. The flashing mileage thing happens from time to time. Turn the car off, wait a couple of seconds and turn it on. Or take it to the dealer so they can do a "proxy alignment" which is Fiat-speak for utter ********. Flashing mileage just happens from time to time. There's no real fix. Deal with it. It's not damaging anything.

As for the blue&me, when you say stopped working, what exactly stopped working? Does the radio still work but not the steering wheel buttons? My advice would be to disconnect the battery and leave it for half an hour. It's possible to confuse blue&me sometimes and it just needs a hard reset to sort it. It is essentially just a windows CE PC after all. I'd disconnect the battery for half an hour before shelling out big money on a replacement. Doesn't cost anything and its solved every blue&me issue I've ever encountered.

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I also smell poo poo. Proxy alignment perhaps for the flashing mileage and a reset for the B&M most likely. B&M units are expensive though.

thanks for the quick reply's, the music system is still working and the music controls on the steering wheel still work just the blue and me phone and i pod connector are not working. Thought it smelt like a bit of bulls***, so probably try another fiat dealer. going to try the things mentioned above first see if that helps.
As with the flashing millage, from previous searches i can see people experience the same problem, its only just started after two years and may not effect the running of the car but is a pain. fiat said its connected to the bluetooth!!!

hendyl said:

thanks for the quick reply's, the music system is still working and the music controls on the steering wheel still work just the blue and me phone and i pod connector are not working. Thought it smelt like a bit of bulls***, so probably try another fiat dealer. going to try the things mentioned above first see if that helps.
As with the flashing millage, from previous searches i can see people experience the same problem, its only just started after two years and may not effect the running of the car but is a pain. fiat said its connected to the bluetooth!!!

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Hmmmm that might not be a good sign re the blue and me. Have you checked that all the fuses are OK?

306maxi said:

Hmmmm that might not be a good sign re the blue and me. Have you checked that all the fuses are OK?

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urrrmmm no!!! will do that and the battery disconnection and were see what happens.

another question open to all. if the car itself is 4 years old but we've only owned it for 2 years should fiat extend the warrantee from when we own it?

hendyl said:

urrrmmm no!!! will do that and the battery disconnection and were see what happens.

another question open to all. if the car itself is 4 years old but we've only owned it for 2 years should fiat extend the warrantee from when we own it?

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No of course not. The warranty is 3 years from purchase date.

hendyl said:

another question open to all. if the car itself is 4 years old but we've only owned it for 2 years should fiat extend the warrantee from when we own it?

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306maxi said:

No of course not. The warranty is 3 years from purchase date.

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It's worse than that. As I understand it, the electrical ICE (which includes the B&M unit) is only covered for 12 months from the date of first registration.

Let's hope a simple battery disconnect will get everything back up & running.

jrkitching said:

It's worse than that. He's dead Jim!

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I'll get my coat

This is the thing with all this tech these days on new cars more things potentially to go wrong !! hope the battery trick works

It might be Proxi-Alignment related if the battery has been low and the CAN network has been disrupted, or if another ECU in the system is having a CAN issue which would cause the mileage to flash.

It might need a basic reset which can be done via the radio menu, but occasionally it can get stuck (eg. if a button is held down too long or if there's corrupted data on the Ipod/USB) and would need a 'proper' system reset via Examiner, but I would've expected a competant Fiat Tech to have done this before condemning the whole unit (though as has been said- some lazy Tech's believe Proxi Alignment solves every problem... it doesn't).

Name and shame the fiat dealer

thanks for the feed back, really quick, I'm going to try the above things and see what happens, if still no luck then ill see what fiat suggests and probably some strongly worded conversations!! I'm from Portsmouth so if anyone knows a good fiat dealer not near the farlinton roundabout then much appreciated.

Curious, have you tried pairing a non iphone phone with it? Does that work? I know my old iphone 3 was a pig of a thing. A later model and a blackberry worked fine.

hendyl said:

thanks for the quick reply's, the music system is still working and the music controls on the steering wheel still work just the blue and me phone and i pod connector are not working. Thought it smelt like a bit of bulls***, so probably try another fiat dealer. going to try the things mentioned above first see if that helps.
As with the flashing millage, from previous searches i can see people experience the same problem, its only just started after two years and may not effect the running of the car but is a pain. fiat said its connected to the bluetooth!!!

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To get my iphone3GS to work with B&Me I had to update my '09 with 5.5 via the USB. It took 2 attempts.
The iphone adaptor does not work on all of the older models e.g. a dealer that I know who sells a lot of '08 1.4 Sports could not his to work on some of the cars he was selling. It should be possible to get a list of which chasis numbers 'onwards' it will work with.

The flashing mileage problem. I got that a lot of the time on a '08. Only starting to get it now on the '09. On the B&Me that I have it has a revised interface compared with the '08. Get the impression they were improving it making it more resilent as time went on.
On 'later' 500 models the iphone adaptor is not needed.

From a personal viewpoint the USB 'key' does a perfect job. I would be curious on the 'real' benefits of the iphone adaptor and would prefer to leave the iphone as a dedicated phone / sat nav.

loveshandbags said:

From a personal viewpoint the USB 'key' does a perfect job. I would be curious on the 'real' benefits of the iphone adaptor and would prefer to leave the iphone as a dedicated phone / sat nav.

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I use the iphone to stream music from spotify and I also listen to digital radio stations over the net on the phone. I also like listening to a few stations from LA and New York. A USB stick is not going to help with that.

RUI said:

I use the iphone to stream music from spotify and I also listen to digital radio stations over the net on the phone. I also like listening to a few stations from LA and New York. A USB stick is not going to help with that.

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Very good point RUI. Particularily with the 'switching off' of analogue radio as we know it (2014 ?). Not that there are many cars out there with DAB or even DAB as an option. Article covering this about 2 weeks ago in 'In Gear' supplement in the Sunday times. Probably should be one for PJs wish list thread.

hendyl said:

thanks for the feed back, really quick, I'm going to try the above things and see what happens, if still no luck then ill see what fiat suggests and probably some strongly worded conversations!! I'm from Portsmouth so if anyone knows a good fiat dealer not near the farlinton roundabout then much appreciated.

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Sounds like the same dealer I bought my TA from.