New wrinkle: VIDA subscription denied Topic is solved

[leapdragon]

Hi all,

I've purchased VIDA subscriptions in the past through volvotechinfo.com and used them to do things like program my own keys, etc. It's never been a problem.

This time, however, volvotechinfo.com said that to combat vehicle fraud, they required VIN of the car in question to prove ownership before a subscription could be purchased. I happily provided this, but this morning have received an email saying that access to VIDA is denied due to VIN mismatch (though it's not clear what they're matching against) and now in volvotechinfo.com I just get red warning style text that says "You do not have access to VIDA."

I can provide title scans for both cars showing myself as owner at the same name and address as my volvotechinfo.com account, and have done to the volvotechinfo.com help email address but with no reply.

Anyone encountered this and found the way to get yourself back in the "good graces" of Volvo in the US?

[dikidera]

Time to go to the dealer.

[jonesg]

got a genuine volvo dice unit or a dicey one ?

[leapdragon]

Follow-up, problem has been resolved. Apparently this is a new policy, just introduced.

The answer is to use the "support" area (not the provided contact email) on volvotechinfo.com, find the place to open a ticket (you basically have to use their knowledge base search and get it to fail to find an answer for you in order to get the option to create a helpdesk ticket), then submit a scan of your car title, which should match the address on your account if you are to be approved as a car owner for VIDA access.

@jonesg, this particular error was encountered long before ever even firing up VIDA, on the volvotechinfo.com website where US users order a three-day subscription. Always before, you could go to the VIDA subscription area, specify that you were a car owner, and then purchase a subscription (I have used the $70ish 3-day subscription on multiple occasions, i.e. to program transponder keys, run software updates, etc. and do a few things in a batch).

This time for the first time, it said that before I could subscribe, I needed to provide a VIN to prove ownership. However, once I did provide the VIN, it removed the subscribe option altogether and replaced it with red text saying that VIDA wasn't available to me.

Sounds like the people reviewing these things are still getting up to speed, but for now at least the solution was to provide the aforementioned scan of my Volvo car title(s) via their help ticket system, with the titles showing my name and address (which matched the data in my volvotechinfo.com account).

Once they did get back to me and sort it all out they were apologetic, but it was a bit confusing to get that far.

[vtl]

VIDA Online is awfully buggy - a regular attribute of a product outsourced to the cheapest country possible. I stopped using it when it bricked wife's XC60. CEM pin cracker followed shortly, for the world of the free. There's enough third party software, free or paid, that can get job done, if pin is in hands.