There may be change to this with newer Bluez (hopefully with 4.5) but until then the command line thing ahould work. I can try it today with my car audio.
One thing you could try is clearing the Bluetooth cache. There’s a separate issue about it, with details: Removing Bluetooth device doesn't remove cache
Edit: The original bug is reproducible as-is with X10III running 4.4.0.72. Clearing the cache doesn’t affect the behavior. (Media controls and song info also works as before.)