[ddelX52019G05]

My X5 is a November '18 build and the one-year complimentary subscription (ridiculous) for a phone based digital key reached its end late last month. An $82K car with a subscription for Android phone-based keys, yep! It took (hours over a few months) to get the thing to work and finally in March of 2019 I was able to get it working!

And yeah, it’s convenient to have a phone key as carrying it is easier than the bulky key fob, I was wondering how rationalize paying to renew but was pleasantly surprised to see BMW only wanted another $20 a year, okay so they got me, I’ll bite, jeez over the next three years they’ll ding for another $60 bucks…, the greedy bas$#*&%!

After going through the online renewal which seemed easy enough, I could pay just a little more to justify the hours of aggravation I’d spent in phone calls, trips to dealer, dealing with geniuses (who didn’t know much) to finally to get this feature work, I could keep it and have another year of convenience! Huh, victory!

Well not so fast..so I updated the services in iDrive, I could the see expiring key, but yep there was my shiny new digital key for 2020! Only problem was the connected Drive app on my phone...it still said the key was expiring Nov 15, 2019, so maybe give it day to sync, nope, no luck. Uninstalled/reinstalled the app only to be replaced by a message saying key usage was not possible and I should “factory reset” my phone to get the key to work. Factory resetting the phone every year seems like an odd way to issue a new key. What if I spend hours resetting and rebuilding my phone only to get the same error?

Called Connected Drive customer service, they didn’t know how to help and transferred me around to various agents finally suggesting I take it to the dealer service department. Not many customers use it, so I knew I’d be wasting there’s and my time. Nah I called back a few days later this time the Connected Drive team suggested I talk to a genius, the genius noted my ESA was not tied to my profile and would need to issue a ticket to get the back-end team to fix it, it would be a week or two, but they would get this fixed, finally progress, okay sure.

Yep three weeks later still not fixed, they got my $20 and I’m racking up minutes on calls to get the service to work again. Another 35 minutes on calls to Connected Drive supervisor yesterday and another ticket to “ass back-end” services team to fix the stupid key. Yes they are going to refund my $20, but don't want to screw up the process until they get it working. They going to need a couple more weeks to work on this..but will call me..sure bet they will.

Do we need to say the subscription models for services is huge mistake! Wasting my time, theirs and burning customer satisfaction, breaking things that finally worked. They got the taking the money part figured out but delivering the services, not so much.

Hope to share the tips and tricks if you use this service soon, not sure if digital key renewal actually means issuance of a new key or they just haven’t gotten around to getting this renewal process up and running. In the meantime the customers and BMW brand satisfaction is taking it in the “back-end”!