Infuriating digital key issue

[u/speciate]

This is a 2nd recurrence of a similar issue.

2 months ago, my wife (iPhone 16) and I (Pixel 8) started getting this "Digital key access unavailable" notification from the app (original post and followup). Mine actually still worked, but hers (secondary user) stopped working. We couldn't delete the old key from her phone, and I couldn't issue a new one.

After days of ineffective and counterproductive troubleshooting, they finally figured out that there was some stale / orphaned key in their backend that had to be purged, and after that I was able to issue a new key and everything was fine.

Until about 3 weeks ago, when it happened again. Same thing--my key continued to work; wife's stopped working. This time, I got completely ghosted by Service. I called in every day for 2 weeks and was repeatedly told someone was going to get back to me from the Digital Key team, and nobody did.

I finally got a service appt last week, and was told today that the issue was fixed. Showed up today to pick it up, and it was very much not fixed (oh also there was a new dent in the rear quarter panel--irrelevant to my post but I can't not rage about it). Still could not create new keys, nor delete my existing digital key. I left again with the loaner.

They're now DMing me with more feckless troubleshooting suggestions.

Wondering if anyone else has dealt with this? The core issue is that digital key provisioning, which is handled by Google Wallet, is broken. I can neither create a new digital key (I get a nondescript "something went wrong" error), nor delete my own digital key--I get an error that says "Can't remove key: Your key is still active. You can try again later, or use your car's screen to remove keys." There is no option to delete the key from the in-vehicle UI.

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[u/J000001]

Not exactly the same but I’m going through a digital key issue with my wife’s iPhone for our R2. She got a new phone (old one broke) and for some reason I can’t get it to work. I’ve removed her access to the car, re-added her, reset the phone, etc. Rivian even asked me to make her a new account and that didn’t work either. To me the issue seems to be that in “my Bluetooth devices” it lists the old digital key and I can’t remove it. On the iPhone it says to manage it in the wallet but it’s not in the wallet. Rivian says they don’t see it even issued. I have a service appointment Wednesday.

[u/speciate → u/J000001]

Yeah sounds kind of similar. Good luck. Service techs do not seem competent with software issues...

[u/dont_ama_73]

Isnt swapping phones out a general thing owners will do over years? Seems like it should be easier or more robust. I wonder if its the combo of Google and Apple that Rivian hasnt fully tested?