I FOUND THE FIX.
Yesterday I pulled out my speaker to use (Extreme 2) and it showed as connected BT but no sound coming from the unit. [I believe this was due to the most recent iPhone update as the issue was later corrected after first connecting to my laptop via BT then to my iPhone afterwards, which I will touch on later] Anyways…
So, the issue; My speaker powers on, connects to BT but no sounds coming out? We tried with 4 different iPhones, no avail. Then I look up how to factory reset. Here is where I messed up and I believe where most are getting lost. Instead of holding (volume +) and (play/pause) to reset, I mistakenly held the (JBL Connect +) and (Volume +) which seemed to have put the speaker in this weird mode where it would only power on when plugged into the wall and I could only get music to pay via 3.5mm jack. When it is in this mode, the unit only powers on while plugged in to the wall power socket, and the power button lights up white rather then the blue color I was used to seeing. I COULD NOT FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET OUT OF THIS MODE. Then, lightbulb moment.
I just repeated what I had done to cause the issue in the first place….
I plugged into wall to get power light to turn on(White), then I held the (JBL Connect +) and the (volume +) button until the speaker turned off. Unplugged the power cord, tapped power button and sure enough the speaker powered back on with the blue power light and allowed me to connect to bluetooth. (This is where I found out the initial issue may have been apple). Even after having power light blue, and having device showing as connected in my phone, still no music coming from speaker just like the night before. So this time, instead of iPhone I connected the speaker to my Microsoft laptop, played a youtube video for a few seconds and the sounds came perfectly through the speaker. Then, I connected my phone to the speaker and it is working perfectly again.
JBL Customer support was no help, they tried to figure it out for a minute on the phone and then tried to get me to send in my unit for them to look at even though I am outside of the 1 year warranty. They were trying to scam me into sending them my $400 speaker that was not broken so they can give me a “discount” on a new unit since my unit was out of 1 year factory warranty. I am glad I got it working but I will never purchase another JBL product again. I’ll save up a little extra and go Bose or Sonos from Costco as their customer service is night and day compared to the JBL I experienced. If you do decide to purchase JBL because they are affordable, I would suggest only purchasing from well known vendors who extend the warranty as JBL will be of no help to you if there ever comes a time you need to reach out to them. I’ve been using Costco for everything the last couple of years and they are the best, especially if you have the Citi card for extra extended warranty..
Glad I got the speaker working. It was looking like a bulky paperweight there for a bit.
I was very frustrated with this as we rarely use the speaker, it never leaves our home and it is supposed to be this rugged waterproof last through anything speaker that somehow stopped working when sitting on our shelf unused. I really hope this helps someone out there. I got real heated real quick and the resolution was SO SIMPLE. Good luck.