I originally posted this on Reddit in r/Subaru_Outback on August 24, 2026. I’m the same person who wrote that post. I’m keeping a copy here as an extra record, in case Reddit ever removes it for any reason.
Bought the 2026 OB Wilderness for my ski trips on March 2026. Did a few round trips to Lake Tahoe but did not really test driving it on snow since it was late season.
My previous car was a 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee 4×4. 10 years of owning that car bought me many trips to service centers and quite some maintenance knowledge, not in a good way. It was fun driving it despite all the small issues until final kick (“pentastar tick” engine issue). When looking for the next car my ski friends recommended me Subaru, especially on how the service center and customer service always go above and beyond.
So I bought the new OB wilderness, happily drove it for 3 months then the head unit is dead. Search “Subaru Operating System Issue 2026” on Google and Reddit there are a few posts and comments talking about this (mine included). Service center checked car and decided it’s not fixable. I asked them to replace the head unit if it’s not fixable but they said I would need to involve Subaru of America to further investigate this. Then I filed case with SOA. The case investigator was surprisingly not helpful. He first claimed he could not get the service center to reply to any of his emails or calls. Then after a few days I decided to call the service center myself and asked them to check if they missed any emails from SOA. Service center said no email about my case. Then I emailed the case investigator telling him the Service Center never got his email. 30 minutes later Service Center called me that they just received the email from SOA about 5 minutes ago and that was the first email they were noticed of my case. I don’t know who lied here but anyways the case started to move. I offered SOA I can drive the car to the same or another subaru service center to recheck. But only half a day later, I received this email from SOA:
The case investigator basically just said, there’s nothing they can do.
I was more than angry after wasting 2 weeks with this guy and called SOA again asking to escalate the case to his supervisor. So the case was transferred to a “Senior Customer Advocacy Specialist”. Then it’s just standard follow up process but I can feel the new case investigator is much more professional and efficient. She later provided me 2 options: repurchase by Subaru, or keep fixing the car plus some cash settlement.
This is how much damage the first case investigator had made. All my request at the beginning is just fixing the car. He single-handedly made it a Lemon Law case, or cash settlement plus fixing the car.
At this point I was too exhausted. I just want to get rid of this car asap.
If the service center was as capable as others I read from reddit, they should had just fixed the issue at the very first place. If the first case investigator was as professional as the second one, I would just let them to schedule some further checks and likely fix the car.
Anyway just my last rumblings about this outback.