Update:  2012 March 27

Ford finally provided their promised update to the "MyFord Touch" system last week.

And it seems to have fixed our problems!!!! 

Still a couple of minor things, but very few and far between - and minor.

We've only connected one phone so far - maybe today is the time to be daring and chance adding the second one. 

Cross my fingers!

Why I’ll Never Buy or Lease Another Ford Vehicle

FORD TRAPPED US IN A LEASE TO A CAR EVEN THOUGH THEY KNEW FULL WELL THAT THEIR MYFORD TOUCH SYSTEM WAS (AND STILL IS!) DEFECTIVE.

Don't just take my word for it though check out just a few of the videos at the bottom of this article - I think Ford has been lying to us all along.

In case you might be thinking of purchasing a ford with MyFord Touch, you might want to read about our recent and current experience.

For the past couple of years we had a Ford Escape.  It was a good vehicle, and the phone Sync system was very good.

Then we made the mistake of “upgrading” to a 2011 Ford Edge with MyFord Touch.  This has been the worst car experience we have ever had in more than 35 years of owning cars.

This isn’t a formal review or comparison, this simply relates our experience with Ford and our 2011 Ford Edge with MyFord Touch.

As we both work in real estate, we had 2 major technology concerns.
1) Because Ontario, like so many jurisdictions, has made it illegal to hold a phone while driving, a hands-free system is a must, and we really liked how the Sync worked in the Escape.
2) We wanted to have a GPS integrated into the dash instead of plugged into the dash and suction-cupped to the window.

From the very beginning we’ve been having problems.

They’ve gotten worse and worse to the point of the car being virtually unusable.

We’ve had it in for service and they reload the same software over and over, and the only result is that we lose any settings that we’ve adjusted.

For about a month we called the MyFord Touch hot line every time we had a problem with it so that they could have a log of what we were trying to deal with –multiple times a day in some cases.

We’ve had to turn off the car and open the door at the next red light we come to so that we can reboot the system after it locks up so that you can adjust the temperature or the radio.
We had to stop the car 4 times on the way to visit friends to reboot the nav which kept freezing  on that trip.

The car only connects to the non-primary phone sporadically.  I’ve been driving when a call comes in and the car hasn’t bothered to connect, so I’m hunting on the various touch-screens to get the car to connect the phone so that I can answer (and yes, it’s multiple screens).  This seems like a worse driving hazard than just picking up the phone –  at least I know where that answer button is!

But what is even worse, is that the phone system through the MyFord Touch is very frustrating to use:  volume on both ends of the call goes up and down and blanks out at random.  Both sides are constantly asking the other to repeat.  Not only is it very frustrating, it’s very unprofessional.

There have been a whole raft of other problems with the MyFord Touch in our 2011 Ford Edge.

What have we tried to do about this?
1) We brought it back to the dealer several times in the first two weeks.  They reloaded the same software over and over.
2) We’ve been back to the dealer additional times, to the point where they admitted that Ford said that they are not allowed to try anything special to help with the MyFord Touch except to reinstall the software distributed by Ford.
3) We’ve called Ford at the MyFord Touch hotline many, many, many times.  The people who answer have unfailingly attempted to help, but there’s nothing they can do because no-one knows what the problem is.

And what has Ford done about this?  After the month of calling every day they finally sent us to the “Canadian escalation expert”.  No reply for a week, after them contacting the “expert” multiple times.  Finally got through, and she said she was the only one and she was away and to call her back after the next service visit and maybe there would be compensation.  I tried several times to call her back but was not able to reach her and I finally gave up.  By the end of the call she was in a shouting match that “… there is no way you can return the car.  You can read your contract, but you’ll see that you have to make payments for the full lease period and there is no way out…  [even if the car doesn’t work – she didn’t say this, but her tone and yelling did]”.  (She did apologize in a later call, but had no solution to offer except to say that maybe Ford would be able to provide “some compensation”

Ever since late October (we got the vehicle in September), the Ford line has been “there’s an update coming”.  It was supposed to be early 2012, now late first quarter…  When will it actually get here?  That is all the help that Ford has been willing to provide.

Will this update even fix our problem?

Ford won’t tell us what the fix will deal with (the reps are not allowed to tell people).  Ford has no idea what is causing the problems we’ve been having.  So we have to wait another couple of months for a “fix” that may not even fix our problems?

Our suspicion is that there’s a memory leak (yes, Sync is written by Microsoft).  Being in real estate, we have a great many contacts.  At least the Lexus system was honest and told us that we had “exceeded 1,000 contacts” and it couldn’t load any more.  We suspect that Sync isn’t bothering to notice and is just overwriting memory at random, and that all our strange happenings have been due to this.  ( Never had this problem with the same iphone in my old Ford Escape )

When we asked a rep in a recent call about this, he said that they couldn’t say what would be in the release.  But he suggested that we just put a subset of numbers into our “favorites”.  Makes sense, but editing a favorites list constantly adding, changing and removing numbers just so that the car will work???

Will Ford be fixing our problem when they finally release this update?  Our suspicion is NO, but Ford just wants us to suck it up and wait and see.

So what happens when the fix doesn’t work and they can’t use the “just wait another few months for the fix”?  Will they yell at us again that there’s no way out of our contract?

We’ve been stuck with this defective car for more than 5 months.  The Ford line is that they’ll fix the MyFord Touch in the update being released the end of March (but that is only the new target date).

Friends have been to dealers recently, and said the car looked OK but then asked about the problems with the MyFord Touch.  The salespeople respond “Oh, everything is fixed and works fine”.  When they say that it’s still not fine for us the salespeople change the subject or say it must just be a fluke…  So our friends just leave and go to another company.

Apparently Ford is planning to put the MyFord Touch into all of its cars.  Scary.

FORD TRAPPED US IN A LEASE TO A CAR EVEN THOUGH THEY KNEW THEIR MYFORD TOUCH SYSTEM WAS DEFECTIVE AND HAVE HAD THOUSANDS OF COMPLAINTS.

Perhaps you would be lucky and not have such a terrible experience.  Or perhaps not.  Good luck,
 Steve

Today I went on the web and of course for most or the problems that we had that Ford says has never happened before - I can find videos for most of the problems exactly like we had but they really are too many to even list.

Videos why not to buy a new Ford Edge or Explorer or Lincoln with MyFord Touch or MyLincoln touch

Videos of MyFord Touch not working

Don't take our word for it - check out all the videos on youtube showing how bad these cars are and still Ford dealerships are telling my friends that they've fixed the problems.  Not even close.

 Ford Mytouch navigation problem - Ford Mytough navigation problems

Here's even a report from Consumers recommending against it and they don't even realize when they are reviewing it that it doesn't work so this is a bad review even if it's was working. - Ford mytouch bad reviews from consumers

and radio problems - yFord Mytouch radio problems and everything locking up completely - Ford Mytouch safety hazard when most everything locks up completely - can't use the phone, can't adjust the stereo or the climate controls until after turning the car off - 

and this one is hilarious - we split our sides laughing only because we've had exact same experience many times in the few times when the navigation system even responds -Example of how un user-friendly ford my touch is when it works 

Here's One where Ford Mytouch locks up completely with no backup camera, no radio, no phone connections with only 8000 miles on the vehicle 

And of course you can supposedly use the voice command system to play your IPOD - Listen here to get how pleasant that experience will be

If you see a ford edge or ford focus or a ford explorer or any other ford product driving down the road you may want to give them a wide birth as there's a good chance they'll either be completly unstable with frustration or not looking at the road.

 Here's one with Myford Touch not working with no voice command button, radio not turning on and navigation not letting you type a street address - having to actually stop the car and try again but still not working.  We've had this happen too many times to count.

quote from the owner  "Rob Rice - kind of makes you mad spending so much money on such a crap car and can't eve listen to my radio"  That's exactly how we feel - it's an absolute piece of crap - he had this problem last June of 2011 and we are still having it on February 20 2012. How's that for a company that claims to care about their customers.

It's completely disgusting and everyone should know about it before they even think about buying a new ford.