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Can't get the AT&T service activated

26K views 45 replies 22 participants last post by  yannus 
#1 ·
I went to https://www.att.com/shop/wireless/connected-car/honda.html to try to signup. Accepted my VIN, let me go all the way to the end of purchasing the free 3 month trial and then it failed and told me to call a number. I called that AT&T number and they said they can't help me, that only the dealership can help me.

Called the dealership, they said they can't help me, only the Honda people can and to press the blue button on the car.

Pressed the blue button on the car (wife did actually), one hour later, they are saying the dealership needs to send some stuff to AT&T.

So what the heck, who is right? and how can we get this solved?

Thanks.
 
#3 ·
No, I don't get any errors on the car itself. I'm attaching a picture of the error I get on AT&T.

Text Green Font Line Screenshot


My wife just got off the phone with Honda (well over an hour). They had to call the dealership to get some stuff from them, then they had to call AT&T and still they couldn't get it to work. This message I attached was during the phone call with Honda. They are going to call AT&T again and contact us again tomorrow.
 
#4 ·
No, I don't get any errors on the car itself. I'm attaching a picture of the error I get on AT&T.

View attachment 109353

My wife just got off the phone with Honda (well over an hour). They had to call the dealership to get some stuff from them, then they had to call AT&T and still they couldn't get it to work. This message I attached was during the phone call with Honda. They are going to call AT&T again and contact us again tomorrow.
This is strange my dealer had this already activated for me. Which makes me think it is a dealer issue.


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#7 ·
Just got it to work. I had not gone back to try the hotspot on the car so I tried it again and the signup website still failed, but I tried it to more times and then on one of those times it let me purchase a plan so I did.

In the end I lost the trial and wasted $20 worth of tethering on project fi (we bought the car out of state and kids watched PBS on the way back and today) but at least I have it working now.
 
#9 ·
After spending half an hour on the phone with AT&T this morning I was able to sign up for the 3-month/3-GB trial. When I tried to sign up via the website last night it failed, then I backtracked and logged in the the myvehicle account I had set up and it would hang loading the dashboard; called AT&T and they couldn't resolve it either but acknowledged there was a problem in their system. This morning I logged in to myvehicle account and this time my Odyssey showed up, but my only option was to buy a data plan. I removed the vehicle from my account, added it back and I was prompted to sign up for the trial. However, I ended up with the exact same place as OP did yesterday. I called AT&T and they were able to sign me up and it is reflected correctly under my account. So yes the customer trial does appear to be separate from the dealer demo allowance. Don't have my car with me right now but will report back once I get to test access.
 
#11 ·
Just curious why anyone would use this over spending that money to increase data on your existing device and sharing it. The car wifi supports tethering from other devices for internet it seems. Also when I was trying to use the wifi for a wireless media system I have to stream to connected devices, I actually found the wifi Honda used in the car terrible. Its a very old and slow wifi technology. Likely fine for your internet connected type devices, but a simple hotspot device actually works better and is more portable. (move to any car, move to your hotel room, etc).
 
#13 · (Edited)
Tethering over a "regular" mobile hotspot is cost-prohibitive for video streaming. Even though I can tether as much as needed on my phone (I work on the road a lot) and I am not directly responsible for the bill, it is a company phone and using it for large amounts of data unrelated to work is a sure way to attract attention for the wrong reason.

Why do you say the in-car WiFi is a very old and slow technology? It supports up to 802.11n at 2.4 GHz - although I wish I can choose to run it at 5 GHz because it does have a 5 GHz radio - technology-wise it is not bad. The implementation, however, isn't so great. It is typical to package WiFi and Bluetooth into a single RF module, that is what Murata did here (Murata is not a household name because it does not sell products to consumers, but it is one of the top suppliers of electronic components with an annual revenue over $10 billion, its RF modules are use by Samsung among others), but it is disappointing to see considerably lower WiFi performance when Bluetooth is also turned on but doing nothing. But on a second thought I have not proved that it is not my phone's fault. The other thing is how data packets are routed. For whatever reason it is not routed the same way as a phone on the AT&T network, instead everything has to travel through Jasper Technologies in the San Francisco Bay area. Even though I am on the east coast, when I try to access something on the same coast I end up making a round-trip to the west coast. The end result is latency that would be considered normal over a 3G network but excessive over LTE. If all that one cares about is the bandwidth and doesn't require low latency, then the in-car WiFi is actually not bad; but if one needs low latency, he needs to move to San Francisco.
 
#17 ·
Good luck. I've been on the phone with Honda and AT&T all week. They are escalated at both places. Honda can't really help, it is all on AT&Ts hands. They have our account so messed up that all the info is mine, including email for login yet when they notify anyone of stuff they notify my wife on her email.

Also my wife gets emails several times a day from them saying something along the lines of someone else is trying to register the car.

Finally, yesterday our internet in the car got cut off and when I called them they couldn't even find my account. When they found it they couldn't see that I had any plans even though I paid. And eventually they got it working but refused to explain what went wrong.
 
#18 ·
Thanks for the tip on using Chrome to do the setup. I was getting the same error message after setting up the account, I was using Firefox, then tried MS Edge, but neither worked. However, was not able to get the free trial, the account setup takes you directly to the monthly payment options. Decided this was not a bad deal for $20 a month, we have low data on our phones so this made sense for us rather than the tethering that others are doing.
 
#19 ·
For what its worth, I had the same issue. I call the number and talked to an AT&T rep. They tried to tell me that I could not get the 3 month/3GB of free trial but I just kept asking them nicely to check with others and they got it squared away. This is certainly an AT&T issue and has nothing to do with Honda or the dealership.
 
#21 ·
Also just got the AT&T hotspot to work, after several calls with them. Two of the most userful calls are:
1. In the first call, I asked them nicely that I just have a VIN number and my dealership says there's no phone number or whatsoever associated with the car. The rep put me on hold for a long time, talked with their technical department and looked up the phone number for me. But she says that my car is already activated and should be good to get data connection in trial mode. (I know it's not working though.)
2. In my second call, I used the phone number I got in my first call, asking them to activate trial for that phone number. The rep says that I could just do it online. I told them that the att.com/honda website doesn't work. The rep asked for my att.com/honda username and password (which is a high security risk if att administrators need user credentials to check into their accounts), I complained with them that they shouldn't have needed my credentials, but they insisted that they want to reproduce the problem first. So I changed my password to 'xxxxxx' and let them go with it. After about 20 minutes on hold, telling them my VIN number and etc. again, and receiving several notification emails from AT&T, my trial mode is finally activated and I could see it on my AT&T portal, and it does work on my car now. I spent some more time with the rep trying to figure out why there's such bug on the AT&T website, and the rep says it's both a server issue and permission issue, so I think AT&T is really incompetent in fixing their server backend / database this time.
 
#22 ·
When I was doing the online setup for the trial in chrome, I got a message it could not be activated at that time. In frustration, I repeatedly clicked to button to resubmit, and to my surprise after about five tries it was successful. Seems like an issue with their website. I'm really glad because I hate calling for this stuff, generally an exercise in frustration before anyone actually pays attention to what you are saying.
 
#24 ·
I think AT&T may have fixed the 3GB Trial Hotspot for Honda already. I had been trying to activate multiple times in the last several days with multiple browsers (Chrome, IE, and Firefox) without success. Today, I tried it a gain and it worked the first time using FireFox. However, I notice one odd thing that the phone # is now changed to different numbers. So, if you still are not able to activate the 3GB Trial then give it another attempt.
 
#25 ·
I got the 3gb trial activated, but it doesn't seem to work? They advertise that you can have up to 7 devices connected, but I can't figure out how to connect just one. When I go to "connections" and then "direct wifi," it shows a long network name that appears to be my honda/att wifi. But it's locked and I don't know the password? Any ideas on how/if we can change the network name and the password? Or what the next step is after you've "activated" the 3gb/3mo trial?? Thanks!
 
#27 ·
Glad to hear people are getting it working. Ours is stuck on dealer demo and the dealer had no answers for me other than to call AT&T. I'll activate the trial when school starts as we'll be using the van much more then.
 
#30 ·
After several unsuccessful attempts to activate my AT&T hot spot and several calls to both AT&T and Honda support I was finally able to activate the account with the free 3-month trail. I went to the following site https://myvehicle.att.com/#/login where I had previously registered for the service. I logged in with my user name and password. That took me to the “my vehicle account dashboard” page where I had the option to “Add new vehicle.” I clicked on the plus sign and asked the make of vehicle, VIN # and Country (USA or Canada). I filled in the information and submitted. A few seconds later, I received a response saying the account had been set up for 3-free months of services at no charge. I finalized the order and that was it. Simple. I am just very surprised that neither AT&T on Honda support has not been able to help its customers in the process.
 
#37 ·
I was speaking to a Honda customer satisfaction rep the other day and she said this is a known issue for some vans. She said it had something to do with how the dealer setup the demo service on some vans which marked said vans wrong in AT&Ts database. Honda and AT&T are working together on a solution but there is no ETA yet.


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#38 ·
Thanks to the help Mac from Walsh Honda in Macon, GA provided in the separate related thread, I think I've found the problem area... so hopefully heading towards a documented solution! Bottom line: my car doesn't have an MSISDN assigned. Same as another case that apparently got resolved.

You can check yours in the "hidden" diagnostic menu. Mine's currently all zeros. See directions on where to look for yours in the aforementioned thread.

If anyone else is having the AT&T "service not available" in a Touring/Elite, can you please also see if HondaLink works when you push the blue button? Also see if you have a blank page under settings --> subscriptions --> HondaLink. I'm assuming the issues are related, and it makes some sense that they would be: it's like having a cell signal but your phone not knowing what to do with it (and vice versa) - so therefore having no service!

If this is the problem and it leads to a corrective action/fix, I'll make sure EVERYONE (HondaLink, Honda, AT&T, and of course the OdyClub) knows "how to"!
 
#40 ·
My MSISDN is filled (not zeros) but I'm getting the same error. I got off the phone with ATT's support number that my phone listed for me to call and they said that mine should be working and that they will contact tech services then call me tomorrow evening. But, the long story, the first tech (sounds like she was in training), and knew exactly that my car was a 2018 odyssey without even asking, and that it should be active 48 after registering my car with att. However, the manager/QA manager came on the line and told me that it would only work at Least 48 hours after purchase so should be working by now. So, we'll see what happens. I'll update once mine has a solution.
 
#41 ·
So, the "manager" never did call me back as she said so I called them during the day to escalate to, apparently, Advanced Solutions Care-HD IoT Offline <DL-AdvancedSolutionsCare-HDIoTOffline@att.com>. They've been e-mailing back and forth and I "hope" this gets fixed. You would think that, by now, they would have a quick solution for this. Goodness, it's been 4 months already! Anyway, trudging along...
 
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