mikemdd

I'm also happy Richie could help him. Now if someone could just explain what Richie actually does that no one else at Sirius Radio can apparently do, it would be most helpful to others who cannot get it fixed without Richie's help.

Cabo de Hornos

I can also report a successful fix of the Traffic Info outage. I did not request details of the cause. Richie did indicate that this is a brand new "back end" issue that the routine attempts employed by the CSRs and some Techs just will not fix. He called me at the pre-arranged time and in 5 minutes we were back in business. He did employ two flashes, but I was already seeing traffic info after the first one.

Kudos

feralc

I have never spoken to Richie
But the lady who helped me the last time was so incompetent that I decided to cancel, the cancelation person was as incompetent as the first one and they lost a customer.

Pnt2013

I can attest to Richie's skill. I also went through the same experience as everyone else. My traffic signal disappeared after "subscription updates" pushed by Sirius, and like the rest of the posters, after several attempts by listener service reps and a technical rep, involving signal refreshes and a "master signal reset" the problem was still unresolved. And like previous poster, I was told to take the car to a dealer for an MMI software update, too bad I had one in November and traffic was still working until the Sirius updates to my subscription. After trolling the web and the forums I found the recommendation to contact Richie here at Audiworld ( and Audi owners aren't alone this seems to happen with all brands that haxe SiriusXm traffic). Emailed Richie and we set up a time to fix the issue. He called and after about 6 minutes my traffic was back after another "subscription" update. He knows his stuff. Too bad not all Sirius techs are not as well trained or skilled. And it shouldn't take three calls to listener services to get to a tech rep. The upshot is if this traffic outage has happened to you, don't waste your time with anyone else at Sirius just email Richie.

Necser

Got a call from XM today with an offer to renew at 70% off after i cancelled.

All channels came back, not traffic. Just emailed Richie - hopefully he can help me too...

Necser

WOW!! Richie emailed me back with a minute saying that everything is now fixed and that i just need to do one last refresh request. Done refresh, got subscription update message on mmi within 1 minute and got the traffic back!!

Richie is the man!!! The most pleasant interaction with XM support staff i ever had in my life!

chicagoA6

The refresh worked for me also. I lost traffic about 3 weeks ago and finally got around to doing a refresh last week and traffic came back within 5 minutes.

maledictis

I use a Google Maps or Waze (which is now owned by Google) on my Android phone. I've been using both for a couple of years. I'm a new Audi driver.

When I fired up the Audi's navigation the first time I was like "Whoa..." It felt like I was stepping back several years to my old Garmin GPS. Slow, terrible UI, an absolute misery to use on a daily basis.

I much prefer the UI of both of the Android apps to the MMI. Entering destinations and waypoints is much easier/quicker on my phone. Voice recognition is much smarter. Reroutes are calculated faster in the apps. Traffic information is presented much more clearly and oh btw... it's FREE. No XM or other subscription required. Just a data network connection (which is 4G/LTE on my device). Map and destination database updates? FREE. And the updates come out constantly, not just once a year with an annual DVD-ROM.

I love my A7. Zero regrets with the purchase. But the MMI system is a huge step back from what I'm used to.

Why is there no touchscreen? My 2004 Honda Accord had this. The Chevys and Fords that I get from Hertz have touchscreens. The handwriting touchpad is primitive and just about impossible to use if you're left-handed. Entering letters and numbers with the dial? Are you kidding, Audi? I feel like I'm entering my winning score in Space Invaders at the mall arcade.

The voice recognition is terrible compared to my Android phone. "Pardon? Pardon?" It's terrible at parsing fluent speech even after doing the individual voice training. My untrained phone has > 98% transcription accuracy and I can say full or partial addresses with the street, city, state and Zip spoken in any order; it nails it every time.

Basically I just use the MMI to pipe the music from my phone via Bluetooth and for handsfree calling. The Bose sound is great.

I dial outbound calls on the phone's keypad because, again, the UI and the voice recognition are much better.

I'm using the free trial of T-Mobile service and XM Traffic until it runs out but I won't renew. What I have on my phone is soooo much better. 2G data service on a 2013 model, Audi? Really? Ridiculous.

I read that Audi is looking to replace the core of the MMI with a version of the Android OS, starting with the new A3. It can't come fast enough for me. Audi is great with motors and transmissions and brakes and car bodies but not so good with telematics and multimedia - better for them to farm that out to others.

Obviously they realize that.

Necser

Hi there. I think AUDI MMI features are extremely competitive with the rest. You feed Satellite views to the map - I have it always on. I have 3G and its enough for the satellite or finding the nearest starbucks on Google. 2G when you are trying to use At&T sims.

I don't particularly like the UI on the MMI, but its best you can do without the touchscreen. I use voice all the time to enter the address (you say the full address and separately by Street, city, state, etc - here Audi is ahead of all the competitors. If you like entering destinations on anything other than audi, and then send it to Audi online account which is accessed on your MMI.

I don't understand why AUDI has to use Sirius for traffic, when it can easily take that from Google. Must be some agreement between them.

Anyway I chose Audi for its features when I bought it last year - I have every option you can get in A7. No other competitor had similar features & the price was right - my short list was Panamera, CLS, GrandCoupe.

The new more user friendly interface and "like human" voice interaction with Siri will come from Apple CarPlay http://www.apple.com/ios/carplay/. Unfortunately I don't see Audi on the list of integrators at the bottom of the page. Audi must think that they already have something amazing Well not too long to wait for an Android version of carplay, which is great, as competition creates amazing products. I'm sure iOS & Android will take it to the next level within next generation of vehicles.

snagitseven

As discussed (sometimes passionately) in other threads, Audi has announced it's partnership with the upcoming Google/Android system with no mention of what, if any, integration there will be with Apple devices.