So I have Toyota Entune Premium with navigation in my 4Runner. It's my first "integrated" voice system in a vehicle and I mostly love it. I can say stuff like "listen to Underground Garage" and it will find that station for me with no pre-programming necessary. While city street navigation is not as good as Google, I have found (at least out West) that offroad navigation, like forest service roads and practically down to cow trails, is phenomenal.
In the little over three years I've had the vehicle, it has always mostly functioned well. A few times a year it might freeze up and reset itself within a few minutes. Well, starting last month, the stupid thing freezes and resets randomly and frequently, and usually at the most inopportune times, like three minutes before I have to navigate through some complex offramp system in a big city. So off to the googles to see what's up. Sure enough, there is a TSB out on this and it's a pretty easy firmware fix. Yay! Or not.
The TSB is a free fix at the dealer... if it's brought in before the warranty is out. This started for me literally a couple of weeks after the 3 year warranty ended in March. Grrr. Then, going straight from Grrr to triple dog Grrr, reading the TSB, it's a super easy firmware fix. Easier to do than a router firmware update. Just download the update to a USB stick, put it in the system and hit "install". Only they don't let owners access the update file. You have to be a Toyota tech to logon to the web page to download the file.
So now I have to take the thing into the dealer and pay them $50 to stick a USB drive into the radio and click "install". Next time I'm in for an oil change, I'm going to try and sweet talk, whine, or grumble my way into some kind of discount for it. But what a stupid thing for them to do. Especially since they have sent out two OTA updates since I've owned the vehicle. If they don't want owners mucking with things (which I can understand, given some people's computer skills) there is no reason they couldn't have done this as a free OTA update. Quadruple dog Grrr.
/rant