[NY-Rob]

I have had the $20/month "unlimited data" plan for the Bolt's wi-fi hotspot since I bought my Bolt in 2017, that was a better plan vs. AT&T's cell data plan... so I didn't pay for data on my phone. Eventually over time that lead to me having a almost $400 credit on my AT&T Pay-As-You-Go phone.

So, called OnStar and have now discontinued the Bolt's $20/month "unlimited data" plan for the hotspot and put mobile data on my AT&T phone to work off some of the $400 account credit.
Funny thing is... outside of my Bolt all the mobile apps worked well on my phone... but continuously failed once inside the Bolt. I was also getting the "This internet connection is not stable at this time" when I did a Google search via Android Auto.
It turns out that the OnStar folks only disabled the connection between the Bolt's wi-fi hotspot and the internet, but left the now dumb and blind hotspot transmitter turned on which of course my phone connected to since it was the strongest signal it saw. So my phone was basically connected to a non-data carrying radio transceiver which caused all the mobile apps to fail.


The fix is to log in to the "My Chevrolet" app and actually disable the wi-fi hotspot from there.
That will force your phone to use it's mobile data connection rather then the deaf/dumb Bolt hotspot.


Hope this helps someone with this stupid OnStar head-scratcher

 

[GetOffYourGas]

Yeah, that "feature" is obnoxious. I turned mine off as soon as I learned about this trick.

Regarding your phone, you can also simply tell the phone to "forget this network" and it won't try connecting any more. But yeah, disabling it completely is a better solution.

 

[NY-Rob]

^ yup, did the "forget this network" thing on my phone ... but I figured it's just better to turn it off completely so others who ride with me won't try to use the "dummy" Bolt hotspot. Android also seems to have an annoying tendency to "forget" preferences after system updates, so I didn't want to deal with it again down the line.



Funny thing is... at $20/month for unlimited data the OnStar plan is significantly cheaper then unlimited data plan on the AT&T Pay-As-You-Go plan. But, AT&T won't shift my almost $400 credit to any of the other (monthly plan) phones we have with them and they won't let me use it towards a quarterly payment on the Go Phone so I'm forced to use it up eventually or it will keep growing as I hardly ever use it for calls.

 

[Loco]

so, renaming my hotspot "WTFULookinAt" when I first bought the car was a bad thing"? Good thing I turned all that off after the trial

 

[drdiesel1]

You can turn the Wi-Fi off in the settings menu as well.

 

[gallen]

I have tried that several times but the wifi signal is still there hogging a channel. Calling OnStar can get it turned off, but it seems to have a habit of coming back on eventually. So now I just ignore it. Life goes on...

 

[Bolt2019]

so, renaming my hotspot "WTFULookinAt" when I first bought the car was a bad thing"? Good thing I turned all that off after the trial

I'm changing the default name! I like it.


drdiesel1: It seems to me that there are two wifi radios. One to provide a wifi hotspot using the internal Onstar cell service. The other to connect out to a wifi hotspot. The Onstar one can be controlled by the myChevrolet app or web control page. The other is in the settings menu. Of course they just had to make them both the same name.
So really the only thing you can do with the non-Onstar one is connect to your phone or house wifi and check for updates. Likes that gonna happen.

 

[raitchison]

You can turn the Wi-Fi off in the settings menu as well.

I'm pretty sure the Wi-Fi setting in the settings menu just turns off the Wi-Fi client, not the built-in hotspot. I know because for the longest time I could not turn off the hotspot and I tried this setting. Since my car isn't properly communicating with OnStar I couldn't do it with the app either. Eventually I was able to get one of the OnStar techs (who was working on my communications problem) to turn off the hotspot remotely.

 

[bro1999]

FYI, the "unlimited Onstar data plan" is now $25/month, not $20.

 

[NY-Rob]

^ Hopefully I can convince them to give it to me (longtime customer) at the old $20 price when my phone credits run out in 11 months.



We'll see....