Has anybody found a way to bypass the whole ONSTAR deal and still be able to use the in-car phone? Perhaps a blue tooth hookup using your cellular phone?

My free year ends Jan 01, 2008. In 2007 I used maybe 50 minutes on the Onstar car phone and still have about 80 minutes left that will expire with the plan. It's nice having the phone in the car but hate giving Onstar $199 for another year and rarely ever use it.

We put the phones in our XLRs put on the Verizon plan that share the car phone minutes with our cell phone minutes. It is a lot cheaper than paying for Onstar phone minutes which do not roll over from year to year unless you purchase additional minutes. You must have a 2006 or newer XLR with the digital phone or have had the older analog phone upgraded to digital. We kept our Onstar services, but not the telephone part.

I have a 2006; was hoping to bypass the whole Onstar deal with the Verizon plan but no, ONstar is mandatory at a minimum $199 per year fee.

I have never used Onstar so hoping to find an alternative like bluetooth.

We put the phones in our XLRs put on the Verizon plan that share the car phone minutes with our cell phone minutes. It is a lot cheaper than paying for Onstar phone minutes which do not roll over from year to year unless you purchase additional minutes. You must have a 2006 or newer XLR with the digital phone or have had the older analog phone upgraded to digital. We kept our Onstar services, but not the telephone part.

Since I use my own cell phone with a BT headset most of the time, I find it less expensive to buy the occasional 30 minutes for $17.99 (with a 12 month expiration) from Onstar. With Verizon, you will pay $9.95/month to include your car phone on their family plan whether you use minutes or not. If you use your car phone a lot (more than 200 minutes/year) then Verizon makes sense.

My kids use their cell phones more than 200 minutes a week..! :eek :eek :eek

If you use your car phone a lot (more than 200 minutes/year) then Verizon makes sense.

If your using OnStar each year, I'd like to know why our minutes should even expire at all. We paid for them.Has anybody found a way to bypass the whole ONSTAR deal and still be able to use the in-car phone? Perhaps a blue tooth hookup using your cellular phone?

My free year ends Jan 01, 2008. In 2007 I used maybe 50 minutes on the Onstar car phone and still have about 80 minutes left that will expire with the plan. It's nice having the phone in the car but hate giving Onstar $199 for another year and rarely ever use it.

If you buy additional minutes each year, the unused minutes roll over. If you don't use the onstar phone, then the minutes expire at the end of a year. The only way to roll them over is to keep buying additional minutes. The cost per minute is a lot higher than sharing the minutes under my Verizon plan.

Has anybody found a way to bypass the whole ONSTAR deal and still be able to use the in-car phone? Perhaps a blue tooth hookup using your cellular phone?

Yes, it can be done.

Electrically, the way onstar is set up on the XLR is no different than any other Class2 vehicle... so its a matter of getting a blue-tooth kit and wiring it in. The only problem is that there are no "pre-made" wiring harnesses available... so it seems you have to hack-up the wiring to make it work.

I've been waiting to see if some manufacturer will put out a plug-n-play harness, but I've been waiting for some time now - I may just cut up the wires and get it in there soon. :(

I think my point is missed here, if you want to use the in-car cell phone you MUST have ONSTAR service at a minimum price of $199/year AND minutes are extra cost. I resent paying a $199 fee to use equipment GM installed in my car and I paid for!

If you don't want to buy extra cost minutes from ONSTAR you can opt for the Verizon plan which considers the in-car cell phone a second line. Personally, I don't need a second line as I rarely leave home without my Verizon phone. It would be nice though to be able to interface this phone with the in-car phone via Bluetooth for safe hands free use.

If you buy additional minutes each year, the unused minutes roll over. If you don't use the onstar phone, then the minutes expire at the end of a year. The only way to roll them over is to keep buying additional minutes. The cost per minute is a lot higher than sharing the minutes under my Verizon plan.

Yes that's true if you use the Onstar phone all the time. I found however, that people were complaining about voice quality with the OnStar phone when moving and especially with the top down. My BT headset does a much better job of filtering wind and cabin noise. Also, calls always come into my regular cell phone anyway. But I still keep 30 minutes on the OnStar phone just in case.

The answer ultimately is to have BT capability in the XLR. My wife's 2005 Acura RL does and it works great. One address book, calls come in to the car audio system etc. I'm quite surprised Cadillac didn't catch on with this - the 2008 models are out and still no BT capability. Hmmm - sounds like they want those Onstar calling dollars.

I think my point is missed here, if you want to use the in-car cell phone you MUST have ONSTAR service at a minimum price of $199/year AND minutes are extra cost. I resent paying a $199 fee to use equipment GM installed in my car and I paid for!

If you don't want to buy extra cost minutes from ONSTAR you can opt for the Verizon plan which considers the in-car cell phone a second line. Personally, I don't need a second line as I rarely leave home without my Verizon phone. It would be nice though to be able to interface this phone with the in-car phone via Bluetooth for safe hands free use.

No - your point is quite valid. GM should separate the OnStar plans and have one just for the phone but I do not think they would ever do that.

Personally, I like OnStar from the 'insurance' standpoint - insurance meaning accident protect (airbag deployment) and car theft. A police chief friend of mind says that they are having great success locating stolen vehicles with the help of onstar.

[/URL] (http://www.smileycentral.com/?partner=ZSzeb001_ZS) Yea, I guess we did kinda go in another direction. Sorry..............Your point is very valid.
However...................Here in California next June, you must have hands free phones in your car or park it............no more driving with one hand, sooooooooooooo we must take advantage of our intergrated phones in our XLR's.
We probably will have make up artists/food servers that we have in the right hand seat for feeding us [URL="http://www.smileycentral.com/?partner=ZSzeb001_ZS"]http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/8/8_5_18.gif (http://www.smileycentral.com/?partner=ZSzeb001_ZS)
and putting on eye liner and lipstick, and a hooker in the trunk for scrathing itches.
Let's not forget personal nose pickershttp://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/10/10_13_22.gif (http://www.smileycentral.com/?partner=ZSzeb001_ZS) and last but not least, those personal shoppers for the Divashttp://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/15/15_9_27.gif (http://www.smileycentral.com/?partner=ZSzeb001_ZS)Where going to need a XLR station wagon to carry all those people.
What's a gal to do?





http://www.smileycentral.com/sig.jsp?pc=ZSzeb114&pp=ZS (http://smiley.smileycentral.com/download/index.jhtml?partner=ZSzeb114_ZS&utm_id=7922)

Not to worry, Standyby ... Diva's know how to multi-task :yesnod

And, LinSue has a John Deere that can haul things home for her ...! :glol

As for the phone thing .... personally, I have the phone in the car ... but I don't hardly ever use it .. I like being in the car away from phones, tv's, vcr's, tivos. etc ... I figure everything can just wait until I get back home ......... except, of course, when I'm the navigator, and then it's text, text text ... :crazy just ask MotorBoat - who couldn't make heads or tails of my ramblings on the way home from BG! :glol

I had the Verizon option also ....

Not to worry, Standyby ... Diva's know how to multi-task :yesnod

And, LinSue has a John Deere that can haul things home for her ...! :glol

As for the phone thing .... personally, I have the phone in the car ... but I don't hardly ever use it .. I like being in the car away from phones, tv's, vcr's, tivos. etc ... I figure everything can just wait until I get back home ......... except, of course, when I'm the navigator, and then it's text, text text ... :crazy just ask MotorBoat - who couldn't make heads or tails of my ramblings on the way home from BG! :glol

I had the Verizon option also ....
Tell me..
I had never had a TEXT or send one till I started getting some from Ruth Ann.
I never did figure out how to answer the text so I just called her on the phone...

As slow as I type I think it is faster and I need a TEXT dictionary just to figure out what she was asking/tellings me.... Hell I don't have a good grasp of the English dictionary yet...
I think Ruth Ann should start a NEW post with all the TEXT stuff in it so when we read something on the forum that has it we can look back to find out what was said...

motorboat

Tell me..
I had never had a TEXT or send one till I started getting some from Ruth Ann.
I never did figure out how to answer the text so I just called her on the phone...

As slow as I type I think it is faster and I need a TEXT dictionary just to figure out what she was asking/tellings me.... Hell I don't have a good grasp of the English dictionary yet...
I think Ruth Ann should start a NEW post with all the TEXT stuff in it so when we read something on the forum that has it we can look back to find out what was said...

motorboat

Haha ... you give me waaaay too much credit .... you should see my grandson text .... you'd think he had bionic thurmbs! :glol

I just love those commercials where that little girl defends her use of text messaging ... that would have so been me! :angel

TTFN (ta-ta for now)
YGF (your good friend)

:D

Ruth Ann

Well, I know in other GM vehicles with Delphi radios, there is a way to integrate a hands free bluetooth car kit into the radio. I'm not so sure with the Denso in the XLR.

i have the safe and sound plan just for the safety features and diagnostics, also if someone steals it they can gps it and find it.(hopefully), i use my cel phone most of the time when in the car, but there is a few times it is convenient to use the onstar phone so i buy a few minutes at a time, but i do resent the fact that i have to pay to upgrade a sytstem that onstar/gm installed in my xlr in the first place, oh i guess i am not paying for an upgraded phone i am paying for the years service in advance, thats how they put it anyway. so from what i am getting from the above posts when i upgrade my analog onstar phone to digital onstar, which they will do for $199.00 and that includes a year of the safe and sound plan, then i can call verizon and add that new digital phone to my family plan act?

i have the safe and sound plan just for the safety features and diagnostics, also if someone steals it they can gps it and find it.(hopefully), i use my cel phone most of the time when in the car, but there is a few times it is convenient to use the onstar phone so i buy a few minutes at a time, but i do resent the fact that i have to pay to upgrade a sytstem that onstar/gm installed in my xlr in the first place, oh i guess i am not paying for an upgraded phone i am paying for the years service in advance, thats how they put it anyway. so from what i am getting from the above posts when i upgrade my analog onstar phone to digital onstar, which they will do for $199.00 and that includes a year of the safe and sound plan, then i can call verizon and add that new digital phone to my family plan act?
You are correct, but on other threads, the warnings were found to be true when I upgraded to Digital this year (for $15.00 + Onstar renewal).

They will drop your remaining minutes. I was warned and I watched it happen. When I called them on it, they not only gave me my remaining minutes but an extra 60 minutes extra.

Word to the wise; confirm what minutes you have before the upgrade and then check a 48 hrs after to make sure they transferred them.

Yes that's true if you use the Onstar phone all the time. I found however, that people were complaining about voice quality with the OnStar phone when moving and especially with the top down. My BT headset does a much better job of filtering wind and cabin noise. Also, calls always come into my regular cell phone anyway. But I still keep 30 minutes on the OnStar phone just in case.

The answer ultimately is to have BT capability in the XLR. My wife's 2005 Acura RL does and it works great. One address book, calls come in to the car audio system etc. I'm quite surprised Cadillac didn't catch on with this - the 2008 models are out and still no BT capability. Hmmm - sounds like they want those Onstar calling dollars.

In conversations with the factory guys at RII they said they were working out the details on how the next version of Onstar and cell phone features would work in the XLR in 2009--I think.

They were also looking into what the next NAV system would be like. There have been serveral enhancements in this feature as well.

I think that they were at least considering downloading future NAV system upgrades directly to the car as they became available and getting out of the DVD disk shuffle process.

Yep, that figures because we are sharing DVD's and they are loosing money so it will be a download to a hard drive for $$$$$$. I bet this will work just like the hard drives on the cable boxes. We will have to disconnect the battery when it goes nuts to reset the hard drive.In conversations with the factory guys at RII they said they were working out the details on how the next version of Onstar and cell phone features would work in the XLR in 2009--I think.

They were also looking into what the next NAV system would be like. There have been serveral enhancements in this feature as well.

I think that they were at least considering downloading future NAV system upgrades directly to the car as they became available and getting out of the DVD disk shuffle process.

Yep, that figures because we are sharing DVD's and they are loosing money so it will be a download to a hard drive for $$$$$$. I bet this will work just like the hard drives on the cable boxes. We will have to disconnect the battery when it goes nuts to reset the hard drive.

Well, I think I like the idea of downloadable updates to the Nav system, and not having to play around with the disks ... the only disks that get shared now are the outdated ones anyway. I like sattilite radio for the same reasons .... all of those cd's make me :crazy ... but then .... if they do that and take out the disk holder ... how will we watch our movies :eek ahhh, so there just might be another method to their maddness! :D

Downloading to an internal hard drive is how the navigation system on the new generation of 2008 vehicles keeps updated. As a result there are no more outdated navigation disks. The new CTS has this capability.