Volvo Cars Reviews

Volvo Didn’t Disclose The Limited Life Of The Features

Ed in Minneapolis

When I bought my 2017 Volvo, the dealer failed to notify us that the Volvo On Call features would stop working this year. Their help page says an upgrade will be available. “ Q: When can I get the upgrade? A: The hardware and expected pricing / packages is expected in early '21.” It’s now early 2022 and I’m still waiting.

Version 5.8.2 is disappointing

WADE1217

The car’s built in nav interface rarely finds the destinations I am searching for. Because of this, I greatly prefer using the phone interface to search and send destinations to my V90’s nav unit. After this update , the app thinks I am in France instead of the US and I can no longer find the destinations I am searching for. I realized that the reason the nav search is broken is that the app no longer knows where I am when I am in the car. It now has a message explaining that for safety reasons the location is hidden and app to vehicle communication is disabled when the vehicle is in use. UGH! This is very disruptive change to the app and takes away much of its usefulness to me. Suggestion for the next update: If you feel the need to continue with the “safety” argument and keep communication and location hidden during use (I would like to know where valet drivers are taking my car), please enable the app to use the phone’s location instead to search for, select and send destinations to the car Navi while the car is in use (please). When the car is not in use, use the vehicle’s location just like it did before. Clarification: The developers have done a great job with this app but the new policy change preventing the app from working when the car is in use is very disappointing.

Ugh Really Volvo

Bergy764

Really tough app to write anything good about this app. Competence in “Engineering” applies to both mechanical and digital these days. Embedded systems are part and parcel with our lives and definitely on all vehicles.

Still Glitchy

DoingItFortheCountryBucks

The new update is not giving me any new problems but it perpetuates some old ones like not being able to accurately see the battery level or range while charging. Also, the developers seem to have brought back the option to clean the cabin air (separate from preconditioning) but it doesn’t actually work and Volvo’s chat support doesn’t know when it will be fixed. The option to just clean the air was great, then it was abruptly taken away in the latest major upgrade, and now it’s returned but only to tease the user. Pretty awful UX work if you ask me.

My app doesn’t look like this

Pink Pineapple Bakery

I just bought my 2022 xc60 and my app doesn’t look like this. It can lock/unlock and heat up remotely but that’s it. It’s updated too. Doesn’t make sense when the salesman told me all about all of the features and I don’t see any of them here.

Disappointing feature set

Jd7712

Vehicle state is consistently wrong. App will show(even after a restart) that the car is running when it’s not. That leads to panic trips to the garage to see if we left the car running. With remote start being managed thru an app( that has a fee) instead of a keyfob, I expect a higher level of functionality. At a minimum I need the ability to manage climate controls and seat and wheel heating. I don’t want to rely on the outside temp dropping below a threshold before I can make use of the heated seats.

Buggy and lacking

HLA4

Can’t even get the app to connect to the car given poor design interface with the Volvo XC40 Recharge “VOC devices” pairing process. And if you initiate pairing to new car from this app but the process fails for some reason, there is no cancel or “back” button. You get stuck in the “start pairing” screen and have to kill the app to cancel and reset.

Piece of Dog Doodoo

CityCoop

I am not sure how Volvo even let this app out the door. It is neither intuitive, nor useful. I am not sure who designed the app, but someone over the age of 30 should look at it and see if it makes sense. Where it says stop, it should say start. Worst of all, it doesn’t even work most of the time. The new Google interface is horrible and does not show status on the app ever. Recharge status has not even worked once! Please get rid of Google!

Underwhelming

Auset Seven

I am very surprised that this app is so rudimentary and has so many problems. Volvo is a luxury brand and I expected the app to behave better and have more functionality than the Honda I traded for my Volvo. The only functions performed from the app are remote start, lock/unlock, and flash lights. Unfortunately , the start feature only works about 50% of the time. Either I’m told the fuel is too low to start (which it isn’t), there is a problem with the engine, or the car is in power save mode (a feature that Should be controllable through the app). Also, the remote start is referred to as the climate system but, the in car climate settings cannot be manipulated from the app. I understand the vehicle learns the driver’s preferences but suppose a “comfortable” temperature for me today is different from what the system estimates. The app needs to allow for more control. There is just so much room for improvement.

Simply doesn’t work.

JustAnotherSF

Volvo cars are great, and the Volvo infotainment is getting better with AAOS – kudos where it’s due. But this Volvo app is useless – and it does NOT seem to be getting any better, which is really worrying. This app is at best unreliable, at worst doesn’t work altogether. I’m not talking about just this or that version but the whole of last year. Scroll through the past 12 months of reviews and you’ll find the vast majority of people gravely disappointed – and frustrated. It doesn’t work. Look at MyBMW, Mercedes me, and even MySubaru apps, they’re all crushing it with 4+ ratings. This isn’t rocket science, this is 2022. We’ve had reliable remote start technology for over twenty years now, iPhones have been around since 2007, and the latest cars come with always-on LTE and AAOS, not to mention the GCP Firebase-enabled backend you all seem to be using. You’ve got all the right ingredients for a stellar app, it hasn’t worked properly in 12 months now :( Dear Volvo responder, please do not copy-and-paste your canned “Thank you for sharing this feedback with us, we will forward your comments to your developers.” But rather – I ask you – share this feedback with your decision makers and executives instead. Because this is clearly not just a mere bug we’re talking about, but a fundamental problem with how this app is developed. Fix this, really fix this.

Volvo Cars Reviews – Page 5