Hopefully Adam gets trained, and not fired. Perhaps he was not being mean, but just being honest (albeit severely mis-informed).

I see first-hand how hideous the job-market is. Every day it seems like I am trying to help someone who has fallen on hard times. These are good, hard-working folks--not bums. The way our economy (and government) is heading, the employment outlook just looks bleaker and bleaker.

It breaks my heart, and I hope we all will try to help any way that we can.

Chris

 

Though he obviously he did not get the proper training, Adam was not all wrong.

I had a similar experience with a public charge station. It tripped my check engine light. In my case the dealer had to reset the light. There was nothing wrong with the car, but apparently a slight voltage issue during the electronic handshake can do this.

We are in the early days of electric charge stations. Some glitches are to be expected I suppose. Not that that will make anyone happy.

 

Your experience dealing with OnStar is exactly the opposite of the two times I've called OnStar. Every time I've spoken to someone at OnStar the result has been very positive. I hope that your guy is retrained or finds alternate work.

WVhybrid

 

@ Brent,

We are very sorry to hear about the experience you had. I went ahead and looked, all of your comments from your phone conversation with VA Ian have been documented and we are definitely going to look into this for you. I see that you will be taking your vehicle in to the dealer to be looked at. Let us know how everything goes and like I said we will look in to this issue with OnStar for you.

 

Brent,

Sorry to hear that you've had this experience. I work on the OnStar Communications team here in Detroit. A number of people here have seen this post, and we're digging into it to see what went wrong, and I'll follow up with you as soon as I can.

Adam Denison
OnStar Communications

 

It is good to know that both the Volt Advisor and the OnStar Teams are here and paying attention!!!

Good work!

 

Thank you to both Trevor and Adam,

I did go by the dealership this morning, and as I assumed, it was a code related to a power issue (DTC P1E00).

So it looks like the Volt functioned as it was designed to. There was a power surge, or power issue at the charging station, and the car shut off the charge, to save the Volt from any damage. The check engine light was on, to let the driver know there was an issue, and the next time the car got good clean AC power, the car ran some test, showed everything was good, and turned the engine light off.

So in the future, there appears to be no reason to go to the dealership, unless the engine light remains on. Otherwise, the car's safety features worked as designed, A+ for that.

So the only negative part of this, was the poor OnStar tech I dealt with.

Brent

 

I was getting the same code on a regular basis back in January and kept taking it to the dealer. Neither of us really understood what was going on, but as you say, the car's safety features were working well. The more I dug into the problem, I came to learn that it was being caused or contributed to by electrical power problems originating with my electricity provider. Since that problem was corrected, I have never seen that code again.

# 565

 

Well, not sure if training is the issue either. Ironically, my son's name is Adam - and is into cars. He has a whole lot of "opinions" about car models (that he has never driven) and what is good and not good. He's 15 And he thinks he knows a lot more than he does.

Good luck with the resolution but Adam's opinions on Onstar are comments given by people who simply have no experience with a product but have a lot of opinions about it. It is hard to break such folks of that without some work - work on the part of peers, friends, family and at times, a helpful therapist. Please don't ding me for mentioning a therapist. They can do fantastic work for people who have issues within our culture and have a lot of pre-conceived notions. It's a matter of making someone aware of their own feelings and opinions and make changes in their outlook on life and how they deal with such a wide variety of people who make up our planet. Anyone with health insurance has access to support of therapists and I really hope more of us all get a chance to use them to help us along.

Enjoy the Volt - a very complete and successful Gen-1 vehicle.

 

Yea, you won't be able to train that out of that guy.

I'm all about putting people in the right job for them. He needs to go work for Nissan.

 

I had a similar situation happen to me once at a public charging stating I had used several times in the past (haven't been back to find out if it still works). I too immediately called on-star. This was on a Sunday so they passed me up to a tech level that actually told me what the codes meant. It basically failed to charge my Volt and based on the check engine light code that was thrown it discharged my battery below the optimum level. Although they couldn't give me any additional advice other than take it to the dealer the next day, they were at least friendly and seemed to know what a Volt was, lol.

I called my Volt advisor, Kimberley, the next day and she explained this can happen if the charging stations are not powered correctly and how they can actually discharge the car. This includes power outages at your home while plugged into a charger. The advice she gave was to unplug the charger if you lose power. I will be pay closer attention to my dash light as I started to take it for granted. Within about 3 days my check engine light went off.

So Kimberley if your reading this I still don't have my welcome kit

 

I wanted to give a follow up for those that read now, or in the future.

This morning I received a call from Terry I. (I don't want to post his last name publicly) @ OnStar. He oversees most of the every day operations of OnStar, such as the reps, how they are trained, how they interact with customers, pretty much everything customer facing. We had a real good 12-15 minute conversation. He was very alarmed at my experience, and assured me steps have already been taken to correct them, so others won't have a similar experience.

He was alerted to the problem by this posting, and then also anytime an OnStar call is escalated (A customer ask to speak to a manager/supervisor) the call is later reviewed by a team to see why it was escalated. He said he received this issue both ways within about an hour and a half yesterday.

So OnStar has a great process in place to review any potential issues, so that is great in my mind.

The one thing I do find a flaw in, was that it appears me reaching out to the VA team, didn't seem to escalate my issue to the powers that be at OnStar, or if they have, it wasn't as fast as this internet posting. I typically like to deal with things like this on a one on one basis, such as the VA's, verses posting something publicly, and airing dirty laundry.

Terry did provide me his contact info, and told me if ANYONE has any OnStar issues to pass his info along, so if anyone does have an issue with OnStar, feel free to PM me, and I'll pass his info along, I'm not going to post it here for obvious reasons.

So over all, I'm happy how OnStar has responded to this, and I feel things are resolved. I would like to see a better flow of info from the VA's to OnStar. To be fair, I'm not sure what was, or wasn't done, but this posting seemed to have gotten things moving faster then my call to the VA. And I would have expected the opposite. But it is clear Trevor, and others read these forums, and act on things when need be.

So a big thanks goes out to Trevor, and Adam @ OnStar for being members here.

Brent

 

@ Brent

Great to hear that OnStar got into contact with you. I do want to apologize for the speed of our escalation process. I can assure you it was escalated from our end, however I will make sure it is still addressed so our team can make the necessary improvements.

 

Thanks for the reminder panzer948, I will be sure to let Kimberly know you still have not received it.

 

At 9 pm Tuesday evening while parked in a mall garage , I attempted to satart my Volt. The steering wheel was frozen and the check engine light was on. Several attempts to unlock the wheel by powering off and on were unsuccessful and ultimately I got a message "initializing - please wait". After the power went on (after 30 seconds) the wheel was still frozen. I called OnStar, requested a flat bed truck and was given an ETA of 11 pm. At 11:30 an ordinary tow truck appeared. I refused to allow the tow as the owner's manual clearly states a flat bed is required. Fortunately by this time the engine light went off and I could drive home. I told OnStar to have the flatbed truck at my home at 9-9:30 am the next morning. The truck never arrived but I was able to drive to the dealer. OnStar is OK - the problem is with Chevy Roadside Assistance. This type of event never happened with my Mercedes' Roadside Assistance.

 

Hi 1795,

I see one of our VAs has gotten into contact with you regarding the issue you are experiencing. That is good that you were able to get it in to the dealer, however we are very sorry to hear that it was not transported there on a flatbed truck. Your VA will continue to work with you and your dealer until this concern is resolved. I will also make sure that your experience with Roadside is looked into and properly dealt with.