We moved to a rural location 5 years ago and were told we needed 4WD for our snow season. This Forester was previously owned by friends and well maintained so we purchased it. Just slightly past warranty expiration, the module that controls the fobs and tire pressure warnings failed. The original owners had an identical failure. Subaru kindly covered that repair and time passed. Now after 20,000 more miles, it failed again and I was expecting some "sharing the love" with some type of policy exception to at least cover the cost of the parts.
After talking with various folks at their corporate office to no avail, I realized this is not a reliable or a robust vehicle and the car company does not care about owners. I'm heading out to the dealer (3 hour round trip), refusing the $600 part and will live with the horn honking car every time I manually unlock the vehicle, as the fobs don't work. Fortunately, this vehicle does include one manual door lock. Next, I'll go vehicle shopping.
Update from Jan 3, 2022: We finally has it fixed and needed to pull teeth to have this three time module failure replaced with warranty. It seems to be a less than 1 hour repair however they charge big labor dollars (close to $500) to replace the module and reprogram the system keys. Then they charge for the module about $164. The good news is the part number changed from ending in 00 to ending in 01. This may indicate an update etc. So far, it's still working. This is an outside car that doesn't have a daily garage stall and we live in the snow belt.
We moved to a rural location 5 years ago and were told we needed 4WD for our snow season. This Forester was previously owned by friends and well maintained so we purchased it. Just slightly past warranty expiration, the module that controls the fobs and tire pressure warnings failed. The original owners had an identical failure. Subaru kindly covered that repair and time passed. Now after 20,000 more miles, it failed again and I was expecting some "sharing the love" with some type of policy exception to at least cover the cost of the parts.
After talking with various folks at their corporate office to no avail, I realized this is not a reliable or a robust vehicle and the car company does not care about owners. I'm heading out to the dealer (3 hour round trip), refusing the $600 part and will live with the horn honking car every time I manually unlock the vehicle, as the fobs don't work. Fortunately, this vehicle does include one manual door lock. Next, I'll go vehicle shopping.
Update from Jan 3, 2022: We finally has it fixed and needed to pull teeth to have this three time module failure replaced with warranty. It seems to be a less than 1 hour repair however they charge big labor dollars (close to $500) to replace the module and reprogram the system keys. Then they charge for the module about $164. The good news is the part number changed from ending in 00 to ending in 01. This may indicate an update etc. So far, it's still working. This is an outside car that doesn't have a daily garage stall and we live in the snow belt.
- Frederick O., Bayfield, US