BMW Is Giving Up on Heated Seat Subscriptions Because People Hated Them::The blowback worked—but subscriptions for software-based new car features will continue, according to a BMW board member.
Did cars peak around 2016? That’s when you could get a plug in hybrid, with Bluetooth audio, a rear view camera, but no spyware or mandatory subscriptions. Sure they’d pester you to get SiriusXM but you could just say no.
Pretty sure signal lights are a subscription option, and nobody that drives a Beemer has subscribed.
If you ever feel like your just a cog spinning endlessly in a machine with no real purpose in your career, remember that there is a man in Germany who has a job installing turn signals on BMWs.
Going forward, BMW says it will continue to offer subscription-based services but only for software options, like driver assistance and digital assistant services, which is completely understandable.
The fuck it is. You offer car features at time of sale. And if you want me to like your brand, at best you offer OTA or wifi updating for free to enhance the experience, and make me want to buy your next car.
You try and nickel and dime me for shit technology that has been around for 20 years, and I could give two fucks. I’ll plug in my phone, ignore your entire. Infotainment and actively campaign for it to fail and blow up in your face.
They’re just trying to recoup the cost of being forced to install turn signals even though their drivers don’t need them.
give up
No. That’s not what companies do.
BMW and Mercedes were the “leaders” in milking their customers and thus they got the most bad press. All BMW is doing is waiting until more companies start doing this and the whole idea of subscriptions in the car business becomes normalized to the public.
Unless consumers continue to shun this concept and the press blasts these companies for trying to push this nonsense, it will make a comeback in the years to come. Unfortunately, I simply do not think consumers will look at their long-term interests. Its like telling gamers not to pre-order the hottest upcoming releases because it encourages companies to release buggy software… all the pleading in the world ends up falling on deaf ears. Same too, I believe, will happen in the car market.
