New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…

Original story (published on June 15, 2021) follows:

Reports of a dedicated Spotify in-car player have been circulating for a couple of years now but it is only recently that the streaming service has actually begun to ship the cool piece of hardware.

Enter Spotify Car Thing which is a smart accessory that fills your car with music, news, entertainment, talk, and more. The device is undoubtedly meant to be an upgrade for older cars and does the job extremely well.

However, there are issues – not with Spotify Thing itself, but with those that are trying to get their hands on its limited stock.

A slew of recent complaints on Twitter and the official Spotify forums say that they’re unable to get Spotify Car Thing despite getting an email that says that they’re eligible for it.

spotify-car-thing-email
Source

@SpotifyCares I got an email saying I was eligible for a car thing and when I immediately tried to order, it said there were none available. Why am I being sent an email if there are none in stock?
Source

@SpotifyCares I just got my car thing email. But it says it’s’s sold out. Are there any other options here? Was really hoping to test this out and review! Thanks!
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The email contains a link that says “Get Car Thing”. However, clicking it is fruitless as it only directs peeps to a page that reads “Sorry, there aren’t any available Car Things at this time.”

But that’s not all. Some users don’t even get to see the ‘no Car Things available’ message and are instead fed an error that goes “Error 503 Backend fetch failed” or a page that asks users to take a “U-turn” as they’ve “hit a dead end”.

spotify-car-thing-error-503
Source

It can be said that the error is due to a server-side issue. But thankfully there is a workaround that seems to help.

Hey! I’m here to help. Could you try checking out Car Thing using a different browser or private window?
Source

There doesn’t seem to be any official acknowledgment from Spotify as of now but tweeting about it does result in a response from them asking complainants to DM. You are free to try your luck by doing the same.

Other than this, there really isn’t much to do other than waiting for Spotify to sort this mess out. Of course, we will continue tracking the matter for further developments so stay tuned to PiunikaWeb.

Update 1 (June 17)

07:03 pm (IST): Spotify has now confirmed that they’re investigating the issue.

Hi there, thanks for the heads-up. We’re investigating this as we speak. If anything else comes up, just let us know /AK
Source

Update 2 (March 14)

03:51 pm (IST): A user has allegedly said that Spotify has killed third-party connectivity support so that more users buy their Car Thing. Here’s the complete statement:

Spotify-connectivity-issue-car-thing
(Source)

PiunikaWeb started purely as an investigative tech journalism website with a main focus on ‘breaking’ or ‘exclusive’ news. In no time, our stories got picked up by the likes of Forbes, Fox News, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, MacRumors, and many others. Want to know more about us? Head here.

Zohaib Ahmed
824 Posts

Simply love being surrounded by technology as it's a constant reminder of how far humans have advanced as a race. Every new development feels exciting, which I convey to others through writing. And after a day's work, gaming just feels therapeutic.

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