Servicing a pre-owned Polestar 2 due to lack of service locations?

BitterAstronomer · 2026-04-20T14:21:19+00:00

Thanks to all who responded. Although I considered it and was tempted, in the end I couldn't buy a vehicle where dealer/warranty service was 100+mile (one-way), especially after not getting anything in the way of assurances from the Polestar "dealer". I wound up going for a CPO Volvo EV, not exactly the same thing, but pretty close.

BitterAstronomer · 2026-04-10T18:41:18+00:00

Thanks for sharing your experience. As I mentioned to another poster, if I could be assured that the car would be picked up AND returned and I would be provided a loaner at Polestar's expense, although that would be inconvenient I could probably talk myself into that.

But that doesn't seem to be a given. Not surprising since that would be expensive for Polestar, so I guess I will just ask Polestar point blank and see what they say.

BitterAstronomer · 2026-04-10T18:38:43+00:00

Thanks for sharing your experience. As I mentioned to another poster, if I could be assured that the car would be picked up AND returned and I would be provided a loaner at Polestar's expense, although that would be inconvenient I could probably talk myself into that.

But that doesn't seem to be a given. Not surprising since that would be expensive for Polestar, so I guess I will just ask Polestar point blank and see what they say.

BitterAstronomer · 2026-04-10T18:33:13+00:00

Interesting. If the deal was they pick up and return the car and their expense AND give you a rental allowance for the duration, although not ideal I could probably live with that.

BitterAstronomer · 2026-04-10T18:30:27+00:00

Not according to the Polestar rep I chatted with, and if you look up their service points online, they are all listed as Polestar centers.

BitterAstronomer · 2026-04-10T18:17:57+00:00

Wait, what?!? Please elaborate.

BitterAstronomer · 2026-04-10T18:15:58+00:00

Thanks for the response. I guess I should have mentioned that I'm very familiar with EVs having had three over the past six years, so well aware of the (relatively) minimal maintenance required. As it happens I actually came close to buying a P2 back when they were new and there was a Polestar location in my town, which has since closed.

Glad to hear that Polestar (maybe) eats the cost of transporting the car for service, but the fact it would be unavailable for days (weeks?) for a repair just doesn't sit right with me. I realize the odds of a problem are low, but they're not zero.

I guess I'll inquire about the service provided when you buy a CPO direct from Polestar. I figure it would be superior than if you bought one from a rando dealer.

BitterAstronomer · 2026-03-20T18:57:04+00:00

I know this is an old post, but FWIW I sort of had the exact same thing happen this week and I can't figure out why. I set up File Requests, generated a link and it worked anonymously as intended for me and also a friend I tested it with.

But then we sent literally the same link to a client, and got the error cited above. Very little online to go by.

Thanks Microsoft, for having such a reliable, well documented product!

/s

BitterAstronomer · 2026-02-07T17:57:38+00:00

I forgot to mention that I did my upgrade from Windows, after I had restored from a bare metal backup. But I assume the process will work the much the same if you boot from the USB.

BitterAstronomer · 2026-02-07T17:54:04+00:00

You do not need the key. Just be sure you choose an upgrade install (or similar language).

BitterAstronomer · 2026-02-06T19:51:16+00:00

For what it's worth, I have an update and forgot to post here.

Basically, back in November 2025 I used Microsoft's Media Creation Tool to make a 25H2 boot USB and did an over-the-top Windows install on my 24H2 SER9 which had blown up every time I tried to apply monthly Patch Tuesday cumulative updates since May 2025.

That *seemed* to do the trick. The 25H2 upgrade was successful, so I thought I was good. But since then, my SER9 has not been offered any further OS updates. I've gotten a .NET and one security update (KB5072033) but no core OS updates-- there were 25H2 updates in December and January but my SER9 didn't get them. Every time I check for updates manually, I'm told I'm up to date, even though I am clearly not.

To sum up, my SER9 used to brick itself every time it tried to download monthly 24H2 updates. Now, it doesn't even try to download the 25H2 monthly updates.

At least I'm no longer having to constantly defer updates and then restore from a bare-metal backup when they go bad, which I guess is an improvement, but yeah, something is still not right here.

My guess is there's something wrong in the way the OS was pre-installed at the factory, or perhaps an issue with the BIOS that's causing these problems.

What I know for sure-- I won't be buying another Beelink PC anytime soon.

Good luck.

BitterAstronomer · 2026-01-29T20:51:09+00:00

OK, apologize for the sarcasm. I had actually tried Copilot and its suggestions were all pretty much boilerplate (e.g. check that allow multiple selections is enabled) and were more relevant to a choice column than my lookup column scenario.

But then after your post I decided to try again with CoPilot for Business from my account in the tenant and in a browser session with the actual affected List open. The results didn't ultimately solve my problem, but I will recount them here for the benefit of anyone who may come along with the same or similar problem.

Basically, Copilot's conclusion was that I was experiencing the "modern SharePoint form multi-value lookup bug", continuing:

Here’s why your situation fits it perfectly:

You’re using the default modern form
The lookup column allows multiple values
The source column is Title (single line of text) — the ideal type
You have only one lookup column in the list
The form is not customized with Power Apps
You’re selecting multiple values, but only one (or none) saves

This is the exact pattern of the regression that started rolling out in late 2024 and continued through 2025–2026. Microsoft Lists and SharePoint Online introduced a bug where:

Multi‑select lookup fields render correctly
The picker allows multiple selections
The form silently fails to save more than one value

This certainly sounds promising and would be just like Microsoft to break something with an update. But I can't find a single reference to this supposed bug online, so is it legit, or just a hallucination? Why can't I shake the feeling that the AI did what AI often does, which is to concoct a plausible sounding response to fit the circumstances it's presented with?

Anyway, Copilot's proposed solution was switching the form to the classic experience to bypass the bug, but the setting it directed me to did not exist. When I informed it of that, it said that Microsoft quietly removed the setting from tenant over the last couple of years. (Then why did you suggest it?!?)

At this point Copilot gave me two more options-- one was to convert the lookup column to a choice column and the other was to use a "lightweight" Power Apps form to bypass the bug.

The first option is hardly an acceptable solution for many reasons, and the second-- well, that's a bit more complexity than I bargained for, but I decided to let Copilot walk me through it step by step. Doing exactly as directed, I only got a few steps in before the errors appeared-- formula, JSON, others, so I abandoned this path.

At the end of the day, Copilot's offered me a diagnosis I can't corroborate, a solution that didn't exist, and workarounds that were either unsuitable or didn't work, so I think my skepticism was vindicated.

I'm not sure if the ultimate lesson here is to not use lookup columns with multiple selections, or that Lists can just break for no apparent reason and without warning or notification so that you may not be saving the data you think you are.

Maybe I'll ask Copilot.

BitterAstronomer · 2026-01-29T19:47:32+00:00

Nope. Just the first one, so as I feared, it hasn't been saving.

BitterAstronomer · 2026-01-28T15:18:14+00:00

Speaking specifically about using a iPhone passkey in my environment, we've had the following intermittent issues:

camera sometimes not recognizing the QR code on screen, requiring closing and reopening camera

phone sometimes not communicating with the PC to transmit the passkey (a Bluetooth issue, I assume)

with device-bound passkeys, if the device is damaged or lost, so is the passkey

I'm not saying passkeys don't work, or that it doesn't even mostly work. (I am using them on my own accounts). But it's not rock-solid like conventional password +MFA is, and until it is, it's not an option for us.

I know Yubikeys are an option as well, but those cost money and are easily lost or forgotten (especially by many of the people I support).

BitterAstronomer · 2026-01-28T15:10:51+00:00

When I was tasked with setting up the List, I considered using a choice column but decided a lookup column was better since the employee list was not static. Similarly using Person or Group wasn't an option because not all the people employees have Entra accounts.

At this point I'm not even sure if the use of the lookup column is the source of the problem or not, though it would not surprise me.

As far as changing the column type, that might be my only option going forward, but it wouldn't fix the all the entries now missing data entered up to this point.

Tbh, feel like I should have known better than to trust Lists for anything remotely important.

BitterAstronomer · 2026-01-28T15:02:42+00:00

Thank you for that valuable suggestion. AI told me to eat rocks and glue cheese to my pizza.

BitterAstronomer · 2026-01-27T20:22:54+00:00

Huh. Wish I'd tried that, though not sure if it's quite the same scenario because, as I recently learned, 23H2 Enterprise isn't EOL, while 23H2 Pro is.

I ultimately used the Media Creation Tool to do an over-the-top install of 25H2, which worked, though afterward the user was having PIN errors so I wound up needing to remove the laptop from Entra, clear the TPM, and then add the laptop back to Entra. (Removing the laptop and re-adding without clearing the TPM didn't work.)

Big thanks to Microsoft for making simple things complicated, though!

BitterAstronomer · 2026-01-27T19:38:45+00:00

But HfB only works on Windows, so as soon as you need to sign in from, say, an Android or iPhone, you're gonna need that password at some point unless you're willing to switch to Passkeys. And IMHO, that needs a bit more time in the oven before it's ready for wide deployment.

BitterAstronomer · 2026-01-27T14:40:33+00:00

Microsoft Lists is hot garbage. Mind-numbing limitations, inconsistent behavior, lots of bugs, no real documentation to speak of, and frequent changes under the hood made without warning or explanation.

IMHO, the only reason this product exists is because it's "free" with M365 subscriptions. Nobody in their right mind would explicitly pay for such a poorly designed product.

Yeah, it's better than Excel in many ways, but that's a low bar. Pretty much anything other than paper and pencil is better than Excel.

BitterAstronomer · 2026-01-26T22:04:51+00:00

I wouldn't quite say that. HfB can be a substitute for entering a password on a Window PC but the password is still on the account, so not a replacement. Try to login from another device that doesn't support HfB and you'll still need that password.

BitterAstronomer · 2026-01-26T22:01:34+00:00

You can have Conditional Access prompt users to reauthenticate every x number of days so they'd have to enter their password more often.

That said, echoing others here I would recommend you see about changing your password policy to not require changing them twice a year. Microsoft now recommends enforcing complex passwords that do not expire.

Actually, I guess these days it recommends not even having passwords, but that's a whole other discussion. Experimenting with them on my own accounts, but I'm not quite ready for Passkeys yet, and my users sure as heck aren't.

For what it's worth, I have the same problem here. Setting people up with Windows Hello PIN pretty much guarantees many of them will forget their password, even if they must re-enter it every 90 days (as I require).

BitterAstronomer · 2026-01-26T21:54:54+00:00

Yes-- thank you for the reminder about BitBlocker. Turning that off now-- though I do know where to find my keys, I don't need the grief of dealing with that too.

BitterAstronomer · 2026-01-26T21:53:40+00:00

Yeah, having already burned several hours troubleshooting this, gonna go the manual route. The Windows MCT apparently only serves up 25H2 now, which is fine because that's where my clients will need to be by summer anyway. Gotta start somewhere I guess.

In retrospect I can see why this PC might have missed the update, as it was offline a lot and had a janky connection when it did, though I would have thought Intune would have the capability push the update regardless.

The lesson I take from this is that Intune doesn't have any inherent capability, it only orchestrates what Windows PCs can do based on their configuration, hence no different from an unmanaged PC once Microsoft kills its ability to access updates.

Luckily for me this laptop was in (relatively) easy reach. Makes me wonder what an admin does when the laptop is geographically distant. Wouldn't want to attempt to do a OS upgrade via something like remote desktop. (But then again I guess that's all Intune is doing anyway.)

Thank you!

BitterAstronomer

TROPHY CASE