Faulty HU on my 2022 Baleno: Maruti refuses to honour extended warranty

I came to know that the warranty of infotainment is for two years and is not covered in the extended warranty and lo and behold my warranty will expire that week.

BHPian visakhmv recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Infotainment touch issue

So I'm forced to live with the defective touch screen of the car, Since mine is the Alpha variant it comes with the SmartPlay Pro+ system with 9 inch screen.

It all started this month, on May 7th when I turned on the car the touch screen was acting very weird. It was practically unusable, the screen was registering false touch input all over and touching everywhere. I was going somewhere unfamiliar and was using the navigation and it was zooming in and out changing the map view and starting and stopping the music. Because I was in a hurry I manged by locking the screen and relying on the head-up display which also shows navigation turns.

I bought the car in June 2022 so the 4th service was coming up so I promptly booked for a service the next day and took a video of the issue to show them.

By the next day the severity of the issue had reduced and it was happening intermittently. On the day of the service I explained everything to the service advisor, the problem was by this day the issue went away and they looked for few hours to reproduced it and couldn't.

I was partially relieved that the issue was gone and thought it might've happened because of the severe heat we were having. All was good for two weeks and rains have started so thought it won't happen again but it did, this time it wasn't as severe as before but I knew that the issue is still there.

I promptly talked to the warranty coordinator at maruti suzuki and told him about my unique warranty situation, as I came to know that the warranty of infotainment is for two years and is not covered in the extended warranty and lo and behold my warranty will expire that week.

The infotainment of my model is made by a company called Clarion which is a vendor for the SmartPlay Pro+ system, the warranty coordinator emailed Clarion and they asked the service center to do a swap test of the unit to make sure it wasn't an issue with the car. They managed to do the swap test and record a video of the issue and send it to them.

Now the explanation I got was that because the issue was found out this late of the warranty period I'm not getting the unit replaced or fixed and the options the warranty coordinator gave me was to replace the unit with a cheaper one or get it repaired but they don't have any means to get it repaired at the moment and he'll let me know if he gets any info on that.

The infotainment unit in Baleno has a lot of tight integration with the car, it shows the 360 camera, shows google maps navigation on the head-up unit as well as in the instrument cluster, shows trip details etc. I'll be missing out on all of these if I replaced it with a cheaper one and replacing the whole unit for 40-50K for a touch screen issue isn't something I'm willing to do.

So what I'm doing now is living with it as the issue is only happening once in a while and I can get by by locking the screen and unlocking it only when it's necessary and do everything else using the steering wheel controls.

I'm not sure what my other options are at this moment if the issue gets worse, I'm looking for someplace that works on the display the can fix it but not that hopeful.

Following up my previous post about the infotainment issue, now it has become unusable except for listening to music and 360 camera. Making calls is a hassle as it will touch and call other contacts when the phone screen is open.

Video

Viewing maps is the biggest problem at the moment. I still don't have a viable solution to this. I'll update when there is any changes.

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