Greetings all... hopefully someone here has info that will help my strange situation.
In January 2016, I bought a new RAM 2500HD BigHorn... Overall it's a beautiful truck, including the 8.4AN Radio (with HD Radio and Navigation). Although I never actually tried the HD radio explicitly (if it's not automatic?), my wife clearly asked the salesman what the "CD"-looking symbol on the radio was since there's no CD player, and the salesman demo'd the built-in navigation which would get rid of my dash-top GPS. And yes, the navigation app was pretty obvious in the menus as well...
A month or two into owning it, it went in for service, and they did a firmware update. A week after that, my wife asked where the navigation function went on the radio, and sure enough it's GONE. Coincidentally, so is the HD Radio symbol on the radio screen. I called the dealer and they swear up and down that we never had it, aren't entitled to it, etc... they REMOVED it, and now want $600 to reactivate the dormant functionality. I checked my window sticker (since I still had it) and it specifies an "8.4A radio" (which I think is the same radio before activating the navigation???). I feel that since it was sold to us with it working, they shouldn't disable it later -- it was part of the "whatever rolls off the lot" deal. Skimping $600 on a brand new $45K truck is absurd already, IMHO. They additionally swear that they COULDN'T downgrade the radio with firmware since its different hardware and the update program wouldn't have let them (true or no?).
SO: Is there a way to prove what the HARDWARE in my dash actually is, separately from the firmware version (that comes out of the software they loaded)? If what they say is true about not being able to load the wrong firmware, wouldn't that mean they actually physically downgraded my hardware by swapping the entire radio unit (sounds paranoid, I know, but so did downgrading functions like they did)? Since I don't think I took a photo of my dashboard while it WAS working, is there any suggested recourse for this? Yes, I still have my dash-top GPS, but this has me hot under the collar as absurdly bad business practice.
-Keith
In January 2016, I bought a new RAM 2500HD BigHorn... Overall it's a beautiful truck, including the 8.4AN Radio (with HD Radio and Navigation). Although I never actually tried the HD radio explicitly (if it's not automatic?), my wife clearly asked the salesman what the "CD"-looking symbol on the radio was since there's no CD player, and the salesman demo'd the built-in navigation which would get rid of my dash-top GPS. And yes, the navigation app was pretty obvious in the menus as well...
A month or two into owning it, it went in for service, and they did a firmware update. A week after that, my wife asked where the navigation function went on the radio, and sure enough it's GONE. Coincidentally, so is the HD Radio symbol on the radio screen. I called the dealer and they swear up and down that we never had it, aren't entitled to it, etc... they REMOVED it, and now want $600 to reactivate the dormant functionality. I checked my window sticker (since I still had it) and it specifies an "8.4A radio" (which I think is the same radio before activating the navigation???). I feel that since it was sold to us with it working, they shouldn't disable it later -- it was part of the "whatever rolls off the lot" deal. Skimping $600 on a brand new $45K truck is absurd already, IMHO. They additionally swear that they COULDN'T downgrade the radio with firmware since its different hardware and the update program wouldn't have let them (true or no?).
SO: Is there a way to prove what the HARDWARE in my dash actually is, separately from the firmware version (that comes out of the software they loaded)? If what they say is true about not being able to load the wrong firmware, wouldn't that mean they actually physically downgraded my hardware by swapping the entire radio unit (sounds paranoid, I know, but so did downgrading functions like they did)? Since I don't think I took a photo of my dashboard while it WAS working, is there any suggested recourse for this? Yes, I still have my dash-top GPS, but this has me hot under the collar as absurdly bad business practice.
-Keith