First, this is a great forum. You long term posters have some amazing information.

I found this web sight about a year ago and have been actively lurking though it since. I was going to buy a Z1 back when they first came out and held out. Did buy Ducati headlight flasher, anticipating the purchase. It still sits here on my office shelf.

Anyways, now that most of the bugs and bypass issues seem to be resolved I'm ready to buy.

What are the recommended places on the net to buy, that will back the product sale.

You can find these units on Ebay for around $1500.00. With the SquareTrade 3 year warranty it adds around $129.00.

Who's bought from Ebay and your experiences, both good and bad.

I am a little leary on Ebay for this item. I purchased a Compustar Alarm, about a year ago from an Ebay dealer who had some 10,000 plus sales, figuring he would be around if I ever had a problem. Low and behold around the first of the year the guys disappears, and I am now forced to source out another solution to a faulty unit. I really don't want to go through this with the Z2.

Although I have not called on any of the so called Auth.Pioneer E-sellers, I would like to know who really is willing to discount, so that I am not wasting valuable time. Your experiences with them, warranty returns, both through the e-seller and Pioneer.

I'd like to make this purchase in the next couple of days so that I can install it the following weekend.

Again, thanks guys for such a great sight, and looking forward to your informative answers.

there fine as long as you dont live in a hot area. theres quite a few of us dealing with the unit freezing while booting due to hard drives that are not holding up. this is the most commonly reported problem with the z1/2 and it has effected probably about 30-35% of the units that are out.

its not really ready for prime time in my opinion.

30-35%??? 1 out of 3??? That is a slight exaggeration. That would be like 5-10 THOUSAND of them, if not more. I know there are a couple dozen on this board, but where are the other many-thousand?

I don't know how many of these units have been sold world wide over the past year or so but, I image it could be over 100K. A fraction of that number have problems. An even smaller number of the English speaking customers would ever have the time or inclination to find this site. I would guess that a majority of those who experience problems return the units to their point of purchase or Pioneer without ever knowing about this site. Lets face it, a large proportion of the users here are hands on type of folk that like to do things themselves. I don't think that's true of all electronics consumers. I think most just get their unit installed and don't have a clue as to how to strip a wire and disassemble a dash. They don't want the trouble and don't have the patience. So, those types of consumers would not be represented here with usernames but they are out there and their numbers would be greater then represented here.

Also, this site (and others like it) exhibit what those of us in research call a bias of data collection. That being, there is a disproportionate number of problems expressed here because that is one of the main points/advantages of a forum. Most folks, other than those in the install business or others that have a special interest (hobbyists), will seek out and find a site such as this merely to report everything is AOK with their unit.

I've assemble a list of users with the freeze issue as posted on one of the freeze threads (http://avic411.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7000). Currently there are 40 unique users reporting the issue on that thread (I haven't bothered with all the other Freeze threads...could be over 100 users for all I know). If I were to do an a priori power analysis with an estimated sample size of the total number of Z1/Z2 owners on this site (those with the problem, those without...these people would be our sample population), I could apply those results over a large population of subjects and maintain a confidence interval of .95, and determine if there is statistical significance to 40+ users with the freeze problem. So mods, any idea how many Z1/Z2 users you've got on here? Of course, you can bet Pioneer has done their stats work on this if customer support folks are telling customers this is a known issue.

hey 1 out of 3 is my guess thats it like or dont lol

get in the freezing threads and youll see allot of people sending in there units to pioneer who send them back saying no problem found and quite a few people who get new units have the problem pop up again.

reason is its people that live in hot areas, we all dont live in sunny California or Arizona florida ect ect and those of you who dont wont ever see a problem. the ones that do are having issues its plain and simple laptop hard drives dont do well in heat and the avic does not get rid of the heat once its trapped in the unit.

we have hard drive based nav units at work and not one has failed do to heat related issues but stick a z1/z2 in any of our cars and my guess is 1 out of 3 [possibly more] will have issues within 6 months. my unit started having issues after 2 months it started booting just fine in 100+ weather and then a song skipped in the library and then a rare freeze in the boot screen then it got worse fast till the dang thing woulnt boot for beans in 80 degree weather. after doing a few updates its now more solid and boots most every time unless its really hot outside. I can take my hard drive hold it in the direct path of the AC for 5 minutes stick it back in and the unit boots perfect..

Pioneer jumped the gun with a hard drive based nav unit and if you live in a hot area be prepared for HD failure

Having the freeze issue on the newer Z2's is Sad.

They should have had the opportunity to rectify any issues from the Z1 units and correct them by the time the Z2's were in production.

Ironically I have a Z1 and do not have any freeze issues with my unit.

On the bright side, I haven't had my unit freeze since I did the update on Tuesday/Wednesday this last week. And temp here in Houston have been around 100F all week long. My update took two days and hitting the "retry" button well over 300 times (I stopped counting at 200). I paid $210 for the upgrade CD on Amazon. If the freeze issue stops it will have been worth it. If not, oh well...it's just money. However, I think it's only a matter of time unit the unit gets crazy from the heat once again.

it sucks having to pay so much, since mines a z2 i just did the free update in the bypass files section.

the update does make a difference and mine only locked up once afterwards.

Well, this thread got high-jacked to temp problems...

MadMonkey was asking about EBay sellers. I personnally wouldn't buy an expensive electronic system from an EBay seller but apparently a lot of people have and it's been successful. One recent post is:

http://www.avic411.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8934

EBay is safer than Craig's List so you'll probably be fine. There are methods to protect yourself so good luck. I'm an almost 2 year owner of a Z1 and very pleased. Just waiting for the DVD to be released from Pioneer to update it now that it's confirmed it will still work with the new 2 wire by-pass.

Digxrayguy

it didnt get hijacked at all, i bought from one of the cheap sellers like ebay i didnt get the warranty and this is what i have to put up with. as will madmonkey if he buys one. if you do buy one check out the warranty very well shipping cost and any other cost you may have to pay if no problems are found.

my opinion is the avic is overpriced for a faulty unit and madmonkey hasnt bought yet and i hope he doesnt get burned by pioneer like me. these units cost way to much to be putting up with problems like these . if this was a rare problem so be it hey i got a bad unit but its not the case this problem is widespread.

fact is as i quoted earlier these bogus nav units have upgraded laptop hard drives that dont do well in heat and once they get hot the unit cannot disapate the heat it has absorber through its surrounding.

Yup, good point. MadMonkey, I purchased my unit and all the accessories for it off of ebay (although it was a local power seller/electronics shop who had the auction with a feedback rating in the 10K area). My unit is a refurb, but other than the heat issues I've been very pleased. I don't attribute the freeze problem to it being a refurb because others on here that have purchased brand new units from authorized dealers have had the same issue. However, I think mine was originally purchased at a circuit city in Pennsylvania and then returned there and then returned to Pioneer. I know this because when I got the unit it had a CC in the address book as well as the original purchasers home address registered. It also included the original owners music collection and the calibration was not set. Evidently it had been driven a little over 300 miles and the previous owner liked gansta rap.

big pimpin bridge4d

Outhouse, didn't realze that's where you were going with the post so I take back the hi-jack comment.

I hear what you're saying about the price but bottom line is there's nothing out there that's better at a lower price. I put mine in a 2007 Denali (moved from a Suburban) and I looked at the factory NAV, wasn't impressed. Thoght more of the Pioneer with the built in HD.

no problem i never liked GM,s nav and i think there is an improvement with the z1 or2 over GM. GM was such a pain to get to do anything. love the new 07 denali sold them for a year when they first came out the power is something else.

i went with a HD based nav for all the rite reasons our new infiniti,s have got great nav units that dont skip a beat that are hard drive based.

im working on a cure for this it just sucks that i even have to. I know allot of GM rides are suffering this problem and i wonder if there cutting out the center beam behind the unit or just breaking the plastic behind the unit so it fits. mine the plastic is removed and the wires are all bunched up behind the unit and im sure thats blocking the airflow but when your unit doesnt boot on a 80 degree day with the windows down i think theres much more to it. hence my irratable rambling about hard drives.

i didnt mean to go sideways in here its just im venting trying to make the z2 work and two hoping theres others beside me that would like to have a solution.

might want to check out the seagate EE25 series HD. +85C temp operation, compared to 50 or 55C operation of most hd's.

how difficult is it to replace the HD? anyone have a thread on replacing it?

very simple

look here: http://www.avic411.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=728

and here: http://www.avic411.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7306

Forgive my ignorance on hardware, but the Seagate is a SATA interface and the stock Toshiba is an ATA-100. Will and SATA drive work?

no

Short and to the point, thanks. I also found this seagate drive, same series but it says it's an ATA-100 44pin IDC interface. This one matches the Toshiba's specs with the exception of rpm and size, so I guess it should work. If my unit starts freezing up again looks like a possibility with it 185F op temp.

http://www.techforless.com/cgi-bin/tech ... oogle_base

these hard drives pop out with a T8 in about 15 seconds or so

we out to start a new thread BEST HARD DRIVE REPLACEMENT FOR Z1/Z2 but i think you nailed it

looks good!

still have to image off your old HD after using an unlocking service? looks a bit painful. how much time does it take to transfer the old image to a new drive?

Well I wanted to thank the few of you that basically hijacked the thread.

In the future all make you a recommendation,(you might be new to the internet, or at least you act like you are) before you decide to start posting a reply re-read the post. I never once asked what problems you were having with the unit. I know how to use the search button, and frankly there are enough posts on problems to fill a volume of the encyclopedia.

The question was on Internet e-tailers and ebay stores.

So, going back to my original request and for the reading impaired;

I would like information on the actual stores that sell on the Internet, that are both approved by pioneer and not approved by pioneer.

Your experience buying from the these etailers, (not the problems you have had with the unit, the hard drive, freezing, overheating, etc...etc...etc...)[/b]

Warranty suggestions etc...

I hope that spells it out in more plain English.

lol if you were a part of your own thread this wouldnt have happened now would it. ??? sorry we went over you head

there only 2 stores online that sell cheaper then 1500 bucks for new units.

one site sells them for 1348 or something close and i believe there a scam so i didnt bite. [non pioneer approved]

the other bad site is camerapro and they use a cheap price to lure you in and even if you call they will say its in stock and the price is good but the unit wont arrive and they will say order cancelled out of stock but they will send you anything else you may order its a typical bait and switch website.

the rest of the sites selling z2,s around 1500 and up are pretty decent, stay with a company with a decent reputation and a price about or around 1500 and you have your best deal.

hay wait why im a helping you?? your rude you start a thread and disapear then pop in out of the blue and start complaining like a 3 year old girl who dropped her icecream. your subject states lurking now ready to buy,,, sorry [really freakin sorry] we went above and beyond trying to let you know all about the unit your about to get stuck with while you were out

hay wait why im a helping you?? your rude you start a thread and disapear then pop in out of the blue and start complaining like a 3 year old girl who dropped her icecream.

Again, posting a comment that really was not necessary. I'm a defense contractor and was called away on emergency bz. for the D.O.D. Sorry I could not sit in front of my computer 24/7 waiting with baited breath to respond to every-ones posts, one by one.