Setting up (Activating) the OnStar communications by PanEuropean

5 minute read

Setting up (Activating) the OnStar communications

Compliments of PanEuropean @ vwvortex.com

10-26-2014

Well - I finally got the OnStar system fully activated and functional, and now have a phone number assigned to my car. It is NOT a quick process - at least, it was not for me - so my recommendation to new owners is that you plan to have at least an hour of time available when you get into the car and press the blue button.
My dealer explained that the setup process should be simple - "Just press the blue button, the operator will take the information from you" - and, in theory anyway, he was telling the truth. Reality was a little different.
For the first 3 days I had the car, no-one ever answered the phone at OnStar. I would press the button and get sort of a recorded message right away - "Hi, I'm Suzy Q and I work for OnStar, yada yada yada". I found out that I could skip that recorded message, and cause the car to call the OnStar center right away, by just pressing the blue button a second time. By the way, that message disappears once the service is activated, I think it is just there for salesmen to use on demonstration drives. It's generated from within the car, not from a phone call - the recorded message works even when the car is 5 stories down inside a nuclear shelter.
Anyway - after 3 days of driving around, looking for analog cell phone antennas, pushing the blue button and always getting a beeping sound but no answer, I took the car back to the dealer. I was wondering if the car was still in 'transport' mode (OnStar system disabled), but it was not. The Phaeton technician came out to my vehicle, arms full of seatcovers and floor mat covers, installed all the covers, sat in the car and pushed the blue button. The OnStar center answered the phone about 6 second later. Boy, was my face red....
I gave the operator all the details - my name, my wife's name, address, all that stuff. I was asked to pick a 4 digit PIN code for both myself and my wife (different codes), in case we ever call OnStar to get them to unlock the vehicle for us. The OnStar person told me that it would take about 3 days to get a phone number assigned to the car, and to enable personal calling, but in the meantime, we could use the blue button (OnStar help, VW Phaeton help) and the red button (emergency) anytime we wished. That whole phone call took about 25 minutes.
I called back today (pushed the blue button again) to inquire if a phone number had been assigned to my car. The person who answered transferred me to "technical assistance". This involved about 10 minutes of waiting on hold. The technical assistance guy could not figure out why he had no 'identification data' from my call - he thought I was calling from my home phone - and asked me to hang up and call back again, but this time to push the red button, not the blue button. OK, I did that, the red-button people answered after about a minute, but I went through another 10 minutes on hold to get to "technical assistance" once again. By good luck, I happened to connect to the same guy I spoke to the first time around, which saved explaining everything again.
He told me that it was now necessary to download a 'Software Update" to my car - this to enable personal calling, and to enhance some features of OnStar that have been improved in the past 13 months, since my car was manufactured. It took about 7 minutes to download the software. When all that was done, he gave me my car phone number, and told me where I was - exactly in front of my home, correct right to the house number. I was impressed.
The OnStar rep also apologized for all the time it had taken to get the system up and running - he did this proactively, as I had made no complaint at all at any time during the whole process - and he told me that in appreciation of my patience, he had gifted me an extra 60 minutes of personal calling (bringing my total up to 90 minutes, all good for one year).
All in all - very nice people at OnStar, very courteous, very gracious at all times, but it was quite a slow, cumbersome process to get everything hooked up. Make sure you don't have any deadlines to meet, or planes to catch before you push that blue button for the first time.
PanEuropean
PS: NONE of the OnStar people I spoke to knew what a Phaeton was - they all kept calling it a 'Phantom' - I told them it was a large Volkswagen. Maybe OnStar should include a webcam or something like that so their staff can see what's at the other end of the phone...