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2013 Explorer XLT - Sync complete POS

gvladybug

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March 4, 2013
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City, State
Texas
Year, Model & Trim Level
2013 Explorer XLT
I have a 2013 Explorer XLT which I took delivery Feb 26th. It has less than 1300 miles on it and it has been in the shop 4 times.
Just some background.
I have MFT v3.5.1; Nav Card A4; and my phone I use is an iPhone 4s iOS 6.1.3

Since the day I took delivery of the car the entire Sync system has never worked. I didn't "order" this car but it was not the car I test drove as this car was in transit and had most of the options I wanted along with a few extras -- NAV being one of these extras I could care less about.

My problems are as follows:
* Regularly I get the reboot black screen stating "Performing scheduled system maintenance" when I say regularly; sometimes 2+ times a day (More if I go to the NAV screen)
* Clock resets to Noon randomly
* NAv thinks I'm in Detroit at what I'm guessing is the factory on The American Rd
* Touch screen will lock up and then unfreeze
* Bluetooth Phone used to work; but now it will dial out but they can't hear me
* Sometimes the phone will randomly call the last person I called -- I only know it's doing this when the radio stops and the phone starts ringing
* Backup camera will not come on until the phone is found
* When NAV has worked which is about 3 times it takes FOREVER to calculate the route -- I'm talking about 20 minutes
* Once the radio would not turn off and I had to just turn the volume down; after a "scheduled system maintenance" this seemed to fix itself
* Once it said that voice commands were not supported


Now I've had it in the shop 4 times for a total time of 9 days. Again it has less than 1300 miles on it!
They have said they reset it, said the Nav card was not in (totally not true unless it ejected itself); replaced a cable; replaced the entire sync system

Still my problems continue.....

So I called Ford Customer Care. I paid for a new car that WORKS that does what's advertised and not this LEMON!
I had a Regional Service Manager call me after a week I was able to talk to her today.
She said I should delete my phone from the system and see if this resolves the issues.
I did this and the "scheduled system maintenance" reboot occurred. Then I was back on The American Rd. I thought well that didn't do anything.
After it "found" itself after a couple of minutes and has been working okay since.

Now I can't confirm this has "fixed" the issue as it will need to run a couple of days to be sure, but this is not an acceptable solution.
I bought the car due to bluetooth phone connectivity. I had wanted a Subaru (less electronics) but my husband wanted all the bells and whistles of the Sync system.

Anyone else have these same issues?

I will be sending the Ford Regional Service Manager pictures of what is occurring and such, but this has not been fun and I certainly don't trust this car to work after all the issues I've had and as many times it's been "fixed".

Thx,
GvLadyBug
 



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That doesn't sound like much fun. I wish you better luck. Hopefully it keeps working.
 






Would your phone happen to be an iPhone?
 






sorry about your issues, but while Sync can be a bit buggy, that is not even close to normal behavior. There have been a few here that have had similar bad issues, but not many - most sync complaints boil down to little bugs. One issue is that the mechanics at Ford dealers for the most part seem to know very little about Sync.

You can try doing a master reset - that might fix your problem (it's an option in the settings). Just make sure you are parked when you do it and it will reboot itself. I suspect there are some serious problems there though so I kinda doubt that resetting it would fix it...
 






Would your phone happen to be an iPhone?

Quote from gvladybug - "I have MFT v3.5.1; Nav Card A4; and my phone I use is an iPhone 4s iOS 6.1.3"
 






I have had similar issues and am completely fed up. I have started the lemon law process and would advise you to do the same. In most states, you can be represented by a lawyer who regularly deals with these types of cases for no cost as they are paid by the car manufacturer. I started down the arbitration path and found it's heavily in Ford's favor so I stopped and contacted a lawyer.

Feel free to contact me via private message if you want more information.
 






Sync/MFT is total crap..... sure it works a majority of the time, but that is not really acceptable.

It is very sad and frustrates me more often than not. Even the voice recognition for Sync stinks and doesn't work all the time.... sometimes I have to call 4-5 times before it will work right.

I have had this issue with several different phones.

Honestly, I really like the explorer itself... but the tech is horrible and that is one of the reasons I bought it
 






At Ford, Quality is Job 1........Opps, Ford does not use this slogan any longer....And it shows..........my MFT is acting up again, now it's the clock all of a sudden has decided to not keep the correct time......certainly not a serious problem, but very aggrevating..........I certainly sympathize with you. Best regards Plum
 






I am in year 2 of MFT purgatory. I can only assume that anyone who claims to have 'no issues' with their MFT has major complancancy issues! i've performed EVERY single troubleshooting tip on this site. the issue is not my individual unit. it's poor design from top to bottom... a horrific experience from day 1.
 






Can the folks who are having issues with MFT let us know what kind of phone they're pairing? I've got a new Sport and so far I haven't had any problems. I have a Samsung Galaxy Nexus. I want to keep MFT working so if there is any correlation to the type of phone I'd like to get ahead of it and know what my future limitations are.

If you have problems with MFT, what kind of phone do you have paired?
 






Our blackberry torch, htc Thunderbolt, and Samsung Note II all work perfectly up to the point of sending text because we both think it's stupid to send text while driving and so we don't even try...

but we also believe it's first a car, and not our mobile computer - we have laptops, desktops, tablets, phones and 'phablets' for that :)

I promise you, this infotainment system is light years ahead of the 2011 Audi MMI we just traded in... so I guess it's all relative to your expectations...
 






There is a list of compatible phones that work with MFT, I can't remember where the link is, it's somewhere on this forum.
 






I am using an iPhone 5 but had the same issues with my iPhone 4S. I think the issues experienced are related to how much you use MFT. It does one thing at a time OK but when you try to do more than one thing like listen to music while using navigation or use the phone while adjusting the temperature, it gets slow.
 






I'm using a Nokia 800 and a Zune player with my MTF and so far I love it. I use voice commands to select artists and songs. No issues receiving and replying to text messages.
 






MFT is like that person you work with who you avoid dealing with as much as possible.

Then when something comes up and you have to deal with that person, when you are all done you are reminded why you try everything you can to avoid dealing with them
 






GVLadybug you have the grounds for Lemon Law replacement.

Its a slow process but it works I got mine replaced.

Make sure you take video to document evidence of these issues.

Video was huge in my case and theres no way to dispute it.

Plus 3 attempts to fix thats all you have to give them

Im with you 100%, I love my Explorer but MFT is destroying all confidence. I get in my wife's 2013 Acadia Denali with IntelliLink and everything works all the time.
 






Have you attempted to disconnet the negative lead from the battery for 30 seconds?
I did that because my Iphone 4S would not pair after initially working perfectly.

It fixed the issue. It's not really Fords fault, its crap Microsoft software.
 






I did over an hour battery disconnect, no better results

Even IVT was confused as to why that didn't wipe the memory.
 






Here is the compatibility info:
http://www.ford.com/technology/sync/
Go down to Phone Compatibility and then choose MFT (or whatever is your system).

I am still not happy and will check into a lawyer after this week.
I was on vacation so now I'm back and ready to get this resolved!!

How long does the lemon law process take?

I will take a video. I thought I had but when I went to send it to Ford I couldn't find it. I guess I didn't hit record :)

It's better now that I deleted my phone from the car, but not working 100%. I still have issues where I am randomly back in Detroit (but that lasts only a minute or so) and I have issues where it will flash "No Disk" but that lasts only a moment or two. But I can't connect my phone or it freaks out totally and is unusable; even though my phone and OS is on the compatible list.

I guess it's good to know that I am not alone.

Sgt1411 - Did you get your money back or your car replaced? If it was replaced; I'm assuming the second car didn't have these issues?

Thx!
 



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Ford Customer Care line requested I take my car back to my local service shop at the dealership.
I dropped it off and then yesterday the service guy called and said this is what Ford has asked me to do:
1. Shut off the devices WiFi.
2. Close all applications that are running in the background on the device.
3. If that doesn’t work then do a hard reboot on the apple iphone
4. If that doesn’t work do a master reset procedure on the touch screen of the vehicle
5. Then reload the phone.

I'm sure there are some negatives to doing a hard reboot of my iphone. And it's not realistic to have WIFI turned off each time I use the car nor shutdown any apps I have used. I regularly close my apps each night so they don't eat my battery so it's not like I have weeks or months of apps running...

But I will give this a try. Picking up my car within the hour so we shall see....

GVLadyBug
He wants me to try them one at a time.
 






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