September 2017 we took our 17 Forester into the dealer due to repeated issues with the radio/navi freezing. The dealer replaced the unit with a "new" one, or so we were told. We picked up the vehicle in the beginning of November 2017. Within a few days the radio froze again. This is very problematic for us because my wife travel 90% of her time for work. She reported the problem to the dealer and she was told to bring the car back.

While this was going on, I was reactivating our SirusXM. To my shock and disbelief, the rep for SXM reported that our "new" radio was registered to another individual. At that point, i made it a priority to return the car with my wife to discuss this "new" radio. At that point they acknowledged that the radio was refurbished and would order another refurbished radio. The dealer had our car from Nov 2017 till Jan 22, 2018. They stated they did a software update and tested the unit. They stated that the problem could have been from running the satellite radio and navi simultaneously and that is causing to much information into the unit which is causing it to freeze. They stated the update would minimize the "packets" of data to the unit, allowing one to use their radio and navi with no issues.

Feb 1, 2018, same issue and radio was replaced again. March 30, 2018, same issue and reported to dealer on April 2nd with video. We did not take car in because the dealer wanted to talk to field rep because they did not know what else to do. On April 6th, spoke to service manager and he stated that Subaru is telling him that the problem is due to having a RADAR DETECTOR. I almost fell out of my chair laughing. This seems like the most absurd thing I have ever heard. And silly me, I thought their original fix about the data packets being too large for the unit was plausible.

I am convinced Subaru thinks this is a joke and will not take the problem seriously. In just 3 years, we have had a '15 and '17 Forester...it will be the last if they do not remedy the problem.