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.
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.
Not to mention that it’s clear that they don’t want to sell cars to individuals anymore. That’s what all these subscription models point to. They are hoping to sell fleets of autonomous cars to corporations and cities, and us plebes can rent them when we need them. The upside for the manufacturer is that now they have the ecosystem to charge an extra $5 for A/C per ride, $3 for the radio, and $10 to roll down the windows.
Ew. Sounds gross, so it probably isn’t far off.
I have no actual proof. This is just what I am guessing they are planning. I could be totally wrong, I just don’t think that’s likely.
I hate everything about the idea of paying a subscription for a…{checks notes}…car. It’s already bad enough when people are paying monthly for car payment or lease payment, now they get hit with a subscription for software?
I hate this timeline.
just passing by, just wanted to say i liked your content a lot.
- your username, ‘Charles Darwin’.
- the ‘checks notes’, bc you feel like a tired medician raising a brow when reading the umpteenth diagnosis report of ‘stupidity’ in this world.
- the ‘i hate this timeline’, bc our actions made us end in one of the world’s bad ends.
so please, take my upvote and my upcomment, and have a nice day.
Now kiss
it’s admiration, not necrophilia! Charles Darwin is dead!
No need to kink shame
Since they’re kink shaming themselves, I can only surmise that shame is another one of their kinks, in which case shame
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masochistic self-kink shaming? i’ll take it!
what if i feel a sadistic kink about king shaming others’ kinks? my kink should be respected then, right? evil laugh
What if I told you that you can get rid of all those monthly payments by signing up for our service. For only one all inclusive monthly fee you can pay all of them, including a service fee. Terms and conditions apply. Sign up today!
ain’t that a bargain ?
Uhh, you forgot about your insurance cost, tag fee, and driver’s license fee.
Man we keep running into each other.
What’s wrong with leasing a depreciating asset? Never own large assets that are sure to lose value. Even if it’s like a work truck that makes you money, let someone else’s books take the loss.
With vehicles, lessors get you on the overage miles. Negotiate it. When you turn the lease over, tell them you need to lease another one and you’ll do it with them if they waive the overage. If they won’t do it, go somewhere else. They won’t let you walk out the door without hacking away much or all of the overage.
?
I was not taking issue with leases, just commenting on the notion of a cost over and above a lease/car payment.
Just a reminder that if consumers hate it enough, they can have the power to change those decisions. If they or content or “don’t care” they are passively agreeing and allowing it continue. Let your voices be heard, share articles like the Mozilla investigating car companies that collect your sex life and biometrics. Let your representatives know.
The only thing that matters is voting with your wallet
The problem is all the other people voting the wrong way with their bigger wallets.
That’s business. Bmw isn’t a cost effective brand in the first place, so anyone on a budget shouldn’t complain in the first place
Mostly, but never discount the power of well-wielded shame
They didn’t feel shame, the bad PR caused people to do the aforementioned voting with their wallets.
The topic had moved to generalities; we were no discussing this specific case
Okay and, generally, companies are not motivated by shame, they register the financial/legal/regulatory impact as a result of their misdeeds being known.
That’s a non-nuanced take. A- properly wielded shame isn’t targeted at corporations usually, it’s targeted at the individual members responsible for corporations. B- corporate culture and “decorum” culture have made shame almost exclusively the domain of religion. Whatever example you’re thinking of as corporate shaming, that’s not what I’m referring to. I’m talking about the lost art of shame.
Rarely do decision makers have the latitude to make sweeping changes to corporate structure and direction based on their personal feelings. A board of directors would remove such leadership.
Give me an example of what you’re talking about then, if I’m off piste.
Heated seats is my goto example as an attack on ownership. Good to see it stop but I don’t want your proprietary software or SaS either. Give me a dumb car with no computer.
Seems to be harder and harder to get a new car without all those “smart” features. Soon, it might be impossible to find one at all, just like it’s impossible to find consumer-grade dumb tv in the market right now.
I think they need the smart features to get a 5 star safety rating.
Euro7 regulation requires cars to be able to make emergency calls automatically on collision, so car makers use the opportunity to include 24/7 cellular connectivity into their new cars.
Such subscription models essentially beg to be hacked and/or for third parties to come up with entire replacement computers for the vehicle that bypass entirely all of the locks.
Subaru did this with remote start. Instead of just selling you the damn option you have to pay a subscription. Fuck that I’ll just walk outside and start the car…
Someone must’ve found an easy way to jailbreak their cars
I was going to say it wasn’t that people hated them, I was thinking it was BMW users either didn’t want to pay or found a buddy to do it for free.
Yeah I don’t think the headline means they hated the heated seats, but that they hated the subscription.
Subscription based models is how they kill the second hand car market. No one will touch a BMW with a subscription off lease.
does BMW make money on second hand cars then? probably just parts…
BMW parts are bonkers expensive. I have a Cooper and whenever something goes wrong the repair is stilly expensive. Mini may be BMW’s cheaper brand when you drive off the lot. But ownership costs outside of warrantee are BMW through and through.
Parts is also where dealerships make most of their money
That and charging 2x for repairs.
Seems a little bit like when your cell phone carrier disables the tethering feature on your phone and wants to charge you money to enable that. For me, infuriating to know that I’d paid to have hardware capable of being a wifi hotspot, then to be charged to use it. The “service” being provided amounts to first-we-degrade-the-thing-you-paid-for, then we-charge-you-ransom-to-get-it-back.
It’s frustrating since by using your tethered connection you’re using the same data that you already pay for. If there’s a limit on how much data, why does it matter how you use for it?
Because - assuming you don’t reach your data cap every month - you might be sharing your leftover data with somebody else who’s getting it “for free” as far as They (the carrier/provider) are concerned. They can’t control who/what devices connect to your hotspot, so They assume every tethered connection is siphoning data to a non-customer entity, potentially disincentivising “the leech” from subscribing to their own data plan.
If They can steer “the leech” towards becoming a paying customer, then they can harvest (more) data & device activity from both users AND they have more active data plans (paying account holders) to boast about to their real customers - the shareholders - than they would have otherwise.
It’s pretty simple really, you just have to think like an executive who’s fiduciarily beholden to lining the pockets of shareholders (as opposed to a business owner trying to provide a useful & mutually beneficial service to their customers). The latter do exist in the corporate world, but they are few and far between when you’re a publicly traded S-corp like most (maybe all?) of the major providers. It’s just the banality of societally-accepted evil at its finest (and yes; utter bullshit)
there was a subscription to pay for fucking heated seats?? even when you buy a car you dont buy a car
“Turning the engine on between midnight and 6AM is a premium feature. Subscribe now for only $29 per month. BMW. Sheer driving pleasure.”
“He’s losing blood!! Quickly, we need to get him to a hospital!!”
Car assistant: “Oh, boy. I smell an easy upsell.”
It was even dumber kinda. They decided that it was easier not too have options for heated or non heated seats so they made all cars with heated to simplify production and if you bought the xar with heated seats thats it you got heated seats no subscription but if you didnt and changed your mind you had too pay as a subscription for them too activate the heating your car was already equipped with.
They do those for all kinds of things. It just usually isn’t subscription based. That is their only mistake.
It’s cheaper to ship 100 cars with every feature than to have 100 completely custom cars even though some will have lower cost in nuts n bolts.
Or, hear me out on this, all cars with the hardware have that feature functional. Crazy, right?
This is what Subaru does. Buy an Outback or a Crosstrek and it comes with heated seats. Because it just does. They don’t make one that doesn’t. Here’s how they handle consumers who “don’t want” heated seats: Don’t press the heated seat button. Done.
It makes sense but why make it a subscription. Charge me a flat fee for an upgrade.
Good, good, don’t buy that shit people.
That’s a big giant “no shit” from me.
I just wonder how much of a market there is in fixing these issues for consumers. As in, giving people FULL ownership of their own cars…and to hell with ridiculous corporate “laws” like the DMCA.
Good fucking ridiculous
They’ll be back. And in greater numbers.
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“How do you know that people hated the heated seat subscription?”
BMW, if they were honest: “Ummmm… Jailbreaks? A lot of them? It’s impossible to enforce it because of them”
For once the car modding community got a giant W against a car maker
The gaming community could learn alot from BMW owners: when companies charge for bullshit services don’t pay for them and the company will stop doing it.
“but muh preorder!”
Yeah I hate it too
I mean why did anyone buy a BMW during that time? Just worldwide no one buy any BMWs for five or ten decades. Let the brand tank.
I think you misunderstand the kind of person the brand attracts
Hardly. I love BMW cars in terms of performance and other things. Never once thought ohh no I want heated seats, steering wheel or whatever. Just a nice car to drive. Yeh other cars are nice to drive but good luck finding rwd that’s not a supercar.
Your statement would probably apply better to new Range Rovers though.
I was just taking the piss. I don’t know anything about cars; I just take the train
Yh no worries, wish the train’s in the UK were good. Can’t beat them.
Because other cars have blinkers, and you buy a BMW because you are convinced you are buying a car without a turn signal
It’s interesting that people are surprised at these seatwarmers when they’ve only been offering indicators as aftermarket upgrades for decades and yet no BMW owner chose to buy them.
BMW owns MINI, and MINIs are special. I’m never gonna subscribe to heated seats or anything like that, but I’m also never gonna own a full sized vehicle if I can help it, and MINI makes some of the best compact cars on the market.
They’re no longer that compact.
And soon they’ll have subscription features!
https://www.carfax.com/blog/smallest-cars https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/advice/smallest-cars-on-the-market?slide=11 https://www.smallcarsoverview.com/smallest-cars.php
They’re still among the smallest cars in production. It’s an amusing narrative to say “MINIs are big now!” but it really doesn’t reflect reality. IIRC, the newest Cooper models are actually ever so slightly smaller than the last few.
the last compact minis were made decades ago and you can buy them without giving BMW a cent. “mini” is just marketing for giant tanks now
https://www.carfax.com/blog/smallest-cars https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/advice/smallest-cars-on-the-market?slide=11 https://www.smallcarsoverview.com/smallest-cars.php
They’re still among the smallest cars in production. It’s an amusing narrative to say “MINIs are big now!” but it really doesn’t reflect reality. IIRC, the newest Cooper models are actually ever so slightly smaller than the last few.
your second linked article begins “The newest are much larger than they used to be”.
the abject state of the USA car industry - that a “mini” is smaller than the even-bigger, also ridiculously over-sized cars on the road - does not change physics. or justify why you feel the need to choose between the terrible options that are the latest models offered by homicidal car manufacturers
