The VIN associated with Entune may belong to another user

I got an e-mail from Entune with the contents below. This has happened to me before when I set up a new e-mail account just for the car and changed my Entune e-mail. However, this time I did not do anything in Entune to trigger this.

Subject: Your Toyota Entune and/or Plug-in Hybrid & EV Apps Account Status

Dear {Owner's Name},

Our systems indicate that the VIN (2T3YL4DV...001462) associated with your Toyota Entune account may belong to another user; therefore your Plug-in Hybrid & EV Apps have been temporarily deactivated. If you are still the owner of this vehicle, please contact the Toyota Customer Experience Center immediately at 1-800-331-4331 to reactivate your Plug-in Hybrid & EV Apps.

If you feel you received this email in error, please contact the Toyota Customer Experience Center at 1-800-331-4331.

Best Regards,
Toyota Entune Customer Support

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In response to this, I logged into My Entune and found that the Contract ID was missing from my account. I re-entered that information and now the Entune App is working on my iPhone. However, the historical Eco Dashboard data is gone. The effective date and the vehicle name on the Plug-In/EV Apps page in Entune is unchanged.

I called Customer Service but they were not open on Sunday afternoon. I'll call them later during business hours.

Any ideas what could have triggered this or if I will get the Eco Dashboard data back?

Edit: VIN partially redacted

I finally closed this case with Toyota but the result is not very satisfactory. When I first got the car I registered for Entune using my primary personal e-mail. After about a week, I decided to create a new gmail account just for the car so that all the Entune e-mails would go to a separate mailbox that could be accessed by more than one person if needed. However, I did not release or transfer the car in the process, I just registered the car again. This created a conflict that I resolved with Toyota at that time. However, the original Entune account still existed and the support person thinks that their system was doing some maintenance process and flagged the conflict again, which resulted in deleting all my Eco-Dashboard from May to Oct 6. Today, at the recommendation of Entune support I completely deleted the original unused account so that there was no more possibility of conflict.

I got this e-mail from Entune again. :evil: So, I called Toyota immediately this time. They informed me that there was an account created with my VIN with another person's name and e-mail. They told me that the SafetyConnect department could re-activate my EV Apps and lock out the other user, so they transferred me. The person in SafetyConnect said that they could not do that, so they transferred me again. I think they escalated the case because I got someone who needed to "research" the problem. Finally, they got a Product Specialist on the phone and he had me go to the car and make an active connection between my phone and the Apps in the car. Since I never use the Apps section on the NAV screen in the car, I had to install an update first. He told me that by using the Apps in the car, it would validate my account and possibly block the other user. He said it would take about an hour, but that my EV Apps would start working again. This appears to be nonsense. When I logged into MyEntune.com, I found that my SafetyConnect Contract ID was cleared, just like last time. I re-entered the Contract ID, selected the level of EV apps I wanted and logged out. I re-started the Entune app on on my phone, but it still did not show the EV Apps. Force-closing the app from the task manager (iOS 6) and starting the app again restored the EV features like Charge Management and Vehicle Finder.

I suppose the only good thing that came from this experience is that my ECO Dashboard data was not cleared this time. It appears that you don't need to call Customer Service to resolve this issue, just log back into MyEntune and re-enter your Contract ID. I don't know why they make it so easy for a new user to disrupt an existing user. They should make a new account provisional and not fully activate it until it is actually connected to the car. Only at that point should it disable or disrupt any existing account. I was unable to get them to understand this point. The product specialist just said that they had to handle the situation where if you sold the car they had to be able to set up the new owner. I think the burden of inconvenience should be on the new owner, not the existing owner who has people mis-typing VIN numbers or has somebody intentionally messing with them. <end rant>

This happened to me AGAIN last night. This morning I called the guy that helped me the last time. He previously gave me his direct number and told me to call him if it happened again. Apparently he was not working the day before Thanksgiving. In any case, I followed his previous procedure and opened the Entune app and used one of the Apps on the Nav screen. That is supposed to flag your account as the one that is actually valid in the Entune system when there is a conflict. However, I did not get the "Our systems have verified you as the legal owner of the Vehicle..." email after several hours. Finally, I logged into Entune and re-entered my SafetyConnect Contract ID, which had been cleared. After logging off from Entune, the EV Apps were immediately working on my iPhone. RavCharge also worked after re-entering credentials. About an hour after entering the Contract ID, I got the verified e-mail.

This happened to me again today. It is easily fixed by logging into www.myentune.com and re-entering the SafetyConnect Contract ID. I called Toyota customer service and logged a complaint that it is too easy for somebody to cause me this inconvenience by just logging into a web site and entering my VIN number. They said they created a case and will review their procedures and evaluate what changes can be made to the enrollment process.

This happened to me again over the weekend. I'm so tired of this. It's not really that big of a deal because it's easy to fix on my own. It's just so disappointing that Toyota's system allows this to keep happening. I don't know if I should even bother to complain to the Customer Experience Center any more. It just feels so pointless. They said they would escalate it last time and that the "proper people would evaluate the situation" but obviously nothing has changed.

As far as I can see, you're the only only one it keeps happening to. That suggests to me that there's probably one person out there who keeps entering your number. Toyota needs to track that person down and make cc them stop...and of course, program the system not to accept an already assigned VIN.

davewill said:

As far as I can see, you're the only only one it keeps happening to. That suggests to me that there's probably one person out there who keeps entering your number. Toyota needs to track that person down and make cc them stop...and of course, program the system not to accept an already assigned VIN.

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Agreed. I just wish there was a way that they could "lock" my VIN from new signups. I understand that there needs to be a way for a new owner to register a second hand car, but it's not that much of an inconvenience to make the new owner prove purchase or posession. Especially compared to the repeated inconvenience to an existing owner in my situation.

I am going through a similar disaster! I got the dreaded email mentioned here this afternoon.

Since Thursday my entune will no longer update to reveal battery status, vehicle location, remote climate, etc... I can only use the basic entune apps Pandora, open table) even though the advanced ones are present within the application on my phone.

Also Sirius XM does not have reception in my car except for a few channels...

jonnyt650 said:

I am going through a similar disaster! I got the dreaded email mentioned here this afternoon.

Since Thursday my entune will no longer update to reveal battery status, vehicle location, remote climate, etc... I can only use the basic entune apps Pandora, open table) even though the advanced ones are present within the application on my phone.

Also Sirius XM does not have reception in my car except for a few channels...

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Log in to myentune.com and see if you SafetyConnect Contract ID is missing. If it is missing, enter it again and Entune should start working again. This is what keeps happening to me.

The XM channels missing is baffling. It should be unrelated though. I would expect it to be all or none.

Today I decided to try out the RavCharge app that I'd seen so many people here recommend. I texted my email address to the phone number listed in the App in order to send commands via MMS. A couple hours later I get an email from Toyota stating:

"Our systems indicate that the VIN associated with your Entune® App Suite account may belong to another user; therefore your Plug-in Hybrid & EV Apps have been temporarily deactivated. If you are still the owner of this vehicle, please contact the Toyota Customer Experience Center immediately at 1-800-331-4331 to reactivate your Plug-in Hybrid & EV Apps."

Has this happened to anyone else? I don't ever recall seeing other people talking about this?

This has nothing to do with RavCharge. I know of one other person (miimura) who's had this "VIN belongs to another user" error with his Entune account, and I think the issue predated him signing up for RavCharge (is that correct?) Regardless, hundreds of other people have signed up for RavCharge with no such issue, so it looks like the timing is just an odd coincidence in this case. Thanks for signing up for RavCharge, and I'll make sure to get you all set up with SMS commands and all of the app's other features when your Entune problems are resolved.

@fooljoe is correct. This has nothing to do with RavCharge. See this thread for more information. I have been having ongoing problems with this issue and it is being handled by a specific person at Toyota that is able to see some of the inner workings of the Entune EV Apps. I will PM you the e-mail for the person I'm working with. You can resolve this yourself as described in the other thread, but then they will probably not be able to see the root cause of the conflict.

Thanks for changing my topic headline. Looks like its not a RavCharge conflict, just a coincidence that it happened on the same day I tried the RavCharge app for the first time. Toyota was able to help me reactivate my Entunes account. Even though I'd set up my Entunes account a week ago, it seems someone tried setting up a new account with my VIN or it was a glitch in their registration process. Either way, the RavCharge app must not have had anything to do with it.

miimura, I could be wrong here but I am pretty sure the dealer has to register the sale, the car, and the persons info in order to use entune, safety connect, and the satellite radio.

The dealer you bought your car from could be cutting corners somehow by using your vin for every car they sell. Meaning when they sell a new car they enter your vin thinking the vin doesn't really matter. I don't know for sure, just a thought.

jimbo69ny said:

miimura, I could be wrong here but I am pretty sure the dealer has to register the sale, the car, and the persons info in order to use entune, safety connect, and the satellite radio.

The dealer you bought your car from could be cutting corners somehow by using your vin for every car they sell. Meaning when they sell a new car they enter your vin thinking the vin doesn't really matter. I don't know for sure, just a thought.

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This is the problem with the Entune registration process. While the dealer can certainly do it for you, anybody on the internet can start the registration process. Once they start the process, it puts the existing user into this conflict state indicated by the e-mail and their EV Apps functionality is disabled. In order to fully activate the EV Apps, you must have a valid Safety Connect Contract ID. This ID is provided when you activate the Safety Connect services which provide the SOS assistance and remote connectivity for the car. You must speak to a live operator that will initiate the contract for you. I don't know how they resolve conflicts of ownership, but that's a separate issue.

The fundamental problem is that the web based registration does not request the Contract ID when it encounters a car that is already registered in the system. This step alone would prevent someone who accidentally enters the wrong VIN or is intentionally messing with you from interrupting your connectivity.

This continues to happen to me. It just happened again tonight. I just go back into MyEntune.com and re-enter my SafetyConnect Contract ID and it's back to normal. I have just resigned myself to this routine. I have given up on Toyota fixing this issue, much like the wonky charge timer calculations.

It seems like someone has your vin number and is continually messing with you for some reason.

jimbo69ny said:

It seems like someone has your vin number and is continually messing with you for some reason.

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That is a distinct possibility, but Percy (Toyota Entune & Plugin Specialist) tells me that some of the times have been system glitches and the other times people have been using different real-sounding names and e-mail addresses to register my VIN. Each time has been different. Of course, he can't tell me who they are and sometimes he's not allowed to contact them either. Somebody higher up makes that decision.

This is continuing to happen to me. The latest twist is that I don't even get the e-mail that informs me of the conflict. When I try to use RavCharge it just sits there on a blank screen, probably waiting for a Toyota server response that will not be coming. The EV Apps are simply missing from the iPhone Entune App, with no error message or other notification. Logging into MyEntune.com shows that the car has no SafetyConnect Contract ID entered. When I put the ContractID back in and choose the level of service, it all works again.

According to the senior Toyota support rep I'm working with, it is just me that's having this problem, and they're mystified at why it is just me and why it happens so often. However, they are unwilling to change anything about the system to actually prevent the problem.

Here's where I need some help thinking through this problem. They say that they cannot change the system because they don't want it to be possible for an old owner to be able to continue to track the car after it is sold. Well, if the Contract ID is still valid, then the old owner can just re-input the ID and it will work again regardless of the new Entune registration. If they are going to invalidate my old Contract ID when the new owner registers for SafetyConnect, then why not incorporate the Entune account disable into the Contract ID invalidation? If the new owner delays registering for SafetyConnect, the old ID will probably never be invalidated and the old owner will continue to be able to re-enable the Entune EV Apps on the original account. Am I missing something?