First Jan 2019 error - writing to MG to complain

[megamac]

I have joined a couple of MG forums on FB and it seems that 10 or more trophy connect facelift owners are having an intermittent issue with the wrong date announced at startup or during a journey. It seems to be linked to the car losing coverage with the integrated SIM.

Although it is mildly annoying to hear the wrong date, for me it also keeps popping the warning message on the dashboard, as if the car is way overdue for a service. Clearly when the date is re-established it thinks it’s been almost 4 years since the last service. I have to keep resetting the message for it to go away.

If anyone on the forum is experiencing the same issue and wants to be added to the formal letter of complaint to MG, demanding them to look at this,

please let me know.

Thanks
Nic

 

[tony powell]

Yes, you can add my name.

 

[JohnInFrance]

I have joined a couple of MG forums on FB and it seems that 10 or more trophy connect facelift owners are having an intermittent issue with the wrong date announced at startup or during a journey. It seems to be linked to the car losing coverage with the integrated SIM.

Although it is mildly annoying to hear the wrong date, for me it also keeps popping the warning message on the dashboard, as if the car is way overdue for a service. Clearly when the date is re-established it thinks it’s been almost 4 years since the last service. I have to keep resetting the message for it to go away.

If anyone on the forum is experiencing the same issue and wants to be added to the formal letter of complaint to MG, demanding them to look at this,View attachment 10887 please let me know.

Thanks
Nic

Hi Nick,

We just turned off the date announcement and the problem, whilst it dosen't go away, is masked (and of course there is the benefit of not having to hear the car tell us the weather and time each time we turn it on).

Have you also got the 'service vehicle soon' error coming up? (I notice the yellow triangle, top right). There is apparently a fix for that with a SW update and, if you do have that issue and get the fix applied, perhaps it will also sort out the date issue as well? Perhaps worth a chat with your dealer?

 

[megamac]

Hi John, we were at the dealer yesterday and they applied a software update (the latest one) that they said would fix the problem and of course it come back this morning with the wrong date.

The issue I believe is that the car starts off thinking that it is the 01-01-2019 and then syncs via the integrated SIM with the date updating to 13-09-2022, and all of a sudden the car thinks it is overdue a service as 3.5 years have passed without one.

That is the annoying bit. An unreliable service requirement alert, which really should be enabled in case something else goes wrong.

Let’s see what they say today. This is the 4th time we have taken the car to them to fix the issue, and each time takes hours out of our day to sort out.

They should really sort this bug out….

 

[JohnInFrance]

Hi John, we were at the dealer yesterday and they applied a software update (the latest one) that they said would fix the problem and of course it come back this morning with the wrong date.

The issue I believe is that the car starts off thinking that it is the 01-01-2019 and then syncs via the integrated SIM with the date updating to 13-09-2022, and all of a sudden the car thinks it is overdue a service as 3.5 years have passed without one.

That is the annoying bit. An unreliable service requirement alert, which really should be enabled in case something else goes wrong.

Let’s see what they say today. This is the 4th time we have taken the car to them to fix the issue, and each time takes hours out of our day to sort out.

They should really sort this bug out….

I do feel for you, we've had this issue since the car was a few weeks old but MG France and the dealer have no interest in fixing any of it, hence we just muted the announcement and reset the service indicator from the infotainmnet centre every few weeks.

 

[Proteus123]

I do not think the 2 issues are linked. I had been getting the 2019 on and off for a few weeks, however the service indicator seems to only happen at around 600-700 miles and appears to be more PDI related. Having reset the service timer, i haven't had that problem back, but still have gotten the 2019 error which I will live with as it is doesn't really bother me until I next go to the dealer.

 

[Maria]

I have joined a couple of MG forums on FB and it seems that 10 or more trophy connect facelift owners are having an intermittent issue with the wrong date announced at startup or during a journey. It seems to be linked to the car losing coverage with the integrated SIM.

Although it is mildly annoying to hear the wrong date, for me it also keeps popping the warning message on the dashboard, as if the car is way overdue for a service. Clearly when the date is re-established it thinks it’s been almost 4 years since the last service. I have to keep resetting the message for it to go away.

If anyone on the forum is experiencing the same issue and wants to be added to the formal letter of complaint to MG, demanding them to look at this,View attachment 10887 please let me know.

Thanks
Nic

Yes, you can add my name too please.

 

[Lightningman71]

Yes, you can add my name too please.

Ours has done the same, it also randomly happens whilst driving too.

 

[Whiskery]

Ours has done the same, it also randomly happens whilst driving too.

Here here and it can be a tad alarming for a couple of seconds until I realise what the error triangle is!

 

[Nicko]

Add mine as well. Exactly the same problem

 

[ady]

I have joined a couple of MG forums on FB and it seems that 10 or more trophy connect facelift owners are having an intermittent issue with the wrong date announced at startup or during a journey. It seems to be linked to the car losing coverage with the integrated SIM.

Although it is mildly annoying to hear the wrong date, for me it also keeps popping the warning message on the dashboard, as if the car is way overdue for a service. Clearly when the date is re-established it thinks it’s been almost 4 years since the last service. I have to keep resetting the message for it to go away.

If anyone on the forum is experiencing the same issue and wants to be added to the formal letter of complaint to MG, demanding them to look at this,View attachment 10887 please let me know.

Thanks
Nic

Add me too.

 

[legollas]

I noticed that their support team doesnt reply to any e-mails. Is it just me or its a general issue?

 

[JohnInFrance]

I noticed that their support team doesnt reply to any e-mails. Is it just me or its a general issue?

No, it's not just you. Standard response here in France as well. I even have the head of MG France's direct email but he also ignores evrything.

 

[JohnInFrance]

Hi John, we were at the dealer yesterday and they applied a software update (the latest one) that they said would fix the problem and of course it come back this morning with the wrong date.

We had all of the software updated on ours last week - of course, it didn't clear the problem and the next day the little yellow triangle was back.

Oh well, whilst it's not really a big deal, it's just darn annoying as it can't be that difficult to address with a very minor code change.

 

[legollas]

Thats a really bad customer service for a new Brand that wants to some european market share. Have you seen their Google reviews? Everyone complains about the same thing.

 

[JCFlippen]

I read somewhere that customer service in China is non existent. If you look at the command structure of MG UK the most senior positions are all Chinese Nationals. I think this maybe what influences the radio silence culture.

 

[legollas]

I am now rethinking if i should have ordered my zs...

 

[JohnInFrance]

I am now rethinking if i should have ordered my zs...

It's a brave decision going for any EV in Portugal - we visited in ours last month and we found pubic charging quite difficult and costly.

Obviously if you can charge at home that's a huge benefit, but I guess with Portugal's relativly small population spread over a large area there is only so much infrastructure investment that makes any kind of sense.

So should you cancel? Well, the ZS really is a good car for the money when compared to other EVs. We are all quick to complain about the problems, but rarely give lots of praise. Yes, ours has suffered from the 'generic' problems (poor customer service, 'clicky' steering, the service triangle), but the problems have, or are, being fixed, it just seems a bit of an uphill struggle at times as the dealerships suffer from the same lack of info from 'MG Central' as we the customers do. It's the age old dilemma I guess; one can do a million things right and nobody notices, but do one thing wrong and reputations are ruined overnight.

All cars, especially EVs, suffer from faults and particually software faults - just google VW ID3 software faults for example. The simple thing is we are expecting so much change in such short timescales things get overlooked and testing gets pared back to meet aggressive launch and delivery deadlines. If the ZS had proper OTA software update functionality as we were initially led to believe, things would be fixed more seamlessly, perhaps without us even noticing (look at how many releases Tesla push out over a year!), but because every update means a trip to the dealer's it's more noticeable.

Despite 'all' it's faults, I'd recommend the ZS as a useable and great 'value' EV - we purchased ours as a second car just to test the water. We like it so much it's become our daily and we've clocked up 13,500kms in 6 months - a huge amount when we expected it to be around 5000 kms per year! And the cost to run? Incuding public charging it's around 4 cents per KM - so it's saving us heaps and it's comfortable too - what's not to like?

 

[legollas]

It's a brave decision going for any EV in Portugal - we visited in ours last month and we found pubic charging quite difficult and costly.

Obviously if you can charge at home that's a huge benefit, but I guess with Portugal's relativly small population spread over a large area there is only so much infrastructure investment that makes any kind of sense.

So should you cancel? Well, the ZS really is a good car for the money when compared to other EVs. We are all quick to complain about the problems, but rarely give lots of praise. Yes, ours has suffered from the 'generic' problems (poor customer service, 'clicky' steering, the service triangle), but the problems have, or are, being fixed, it just seems a bit of an uphill struggle at times as the dealerships suffer from the same lack of info from 'MG Central' as we the customers do. It's the age old dilemma I guess; one can do a million things right and nobody notices, but do one thing wrong and reputations are ruined overnight.

All cars, especially EVs, suffer from faults and particually software faults - just google VW ID3 software faults for example. The simple thing is we are expecting so much change in such short timescales things get overlooked and testing gets pared back to meet aggressive launch and delivery deadlines. If the ZS had proper OTA software update functionality as we were initially led to believe, things would be fixed more seamlessly, perhaps without us even noticing (look at how many releases Tesla push out over a year!), but because every update means a trip to the dealer's it's more noticeable.

Despite 'all' it's faults, I'd recommend the ZS as a useable and great 'value' EV - we purchased ours as a second car just to test the water. We like it so much it's become our daily and we've clocked up 13,500kms in 6 months - a huge amount when we expected it to be around 5000 kms per year! And the cost to run? Incuding public charging it's around 4 cents per KM - so it's saving us heaps and it's comfortable too - what's not to like?

Thanks for your feedback!
I agree with everything you just wrote.

But it's disappointing to be willing to spend loads of money on a product from a brand that doesn't even reply to its customers. For me, that's the bare minimum level of customer service.
I can tell you that I've already sent more than 10 emails to them and received zero answers...
If they don't reply now, imagine when we have a problem that needs to be resolved asap.

I have seen that the software is not their best selling point. That's another thing that I don't understand. We should be able to update the software ourselves, like we do with our mobile phones, for example.

 

[Vipar]

Add my name please.