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BMW heated seats subscription costs $18 per month in South Korea

motor1.com

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Re: BMW heated seats subscription costs $18 per month in South Korea

#281

Post by DesiLurker »

_ea1k wrote: post #214
winternett wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was ranting about this 2 years ago and a lot of people laughed it off... I cited an auto start feature o VOLVO cars that required a siriusXM membership. It's unfathomable that we reached this point of monthly subscriptions being implemented on things that we've already paid for. It's the first sign that we're in for a wave of not feudalism, but outright economic slavery. There is no rational consumer protection aga…

> I cited an auto start feature o VOLVO cars that required a siriusXM membership. As much as I dislike that kind of fee, it at least makes sense. The remote communication support isn't free.

well there is good faith implementation and a bad faith one. implicit in the clubbing of satellite radio & remote start is a bad faith revenue milking where they are trying to sell a rather undesirable feature with a very desirable one. I have a volvo and an older acura. I f*king hate this because my older acura can be remote started and volvo wont as I refuse to pay $15 a month for a already working & paid for feature they disabled after a few years.

what they really want is install a bunch of these leeching monthly subscriptions on your credit card that you forget about and they keep billing you for almost no marginal value.

Re: BMW heated seats subscription costs $18 per month in South Korea

#282

Post by ben_w »

panick21_ wrote: post #206
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #79

We are rapidly moving towards Feudalism. If someone can charge you for using things you already bought and 'own', then average man has no property rights. The fee could be increased at any time, or new fees could be introduced. As the housing crysis deepens, average person will never own a home either. So average person will be in the same position as a medieval serf, conpletely dependand on the whims of the lord, pr…

> We are rapidly moving towards Feudalism. I hate when people say that. This has literally nothing to do with the historic institution of feudalism. Its is the opposite of actually educating people on actual feudalism. Its just using historical terms that people call not to be 'bad' so you don't actually have to explain the problem. We are literally talking about people who can buy a BMW. Did BMW promise them heated…

> Many people manage to pay of their student loans and don't have to live in debt if they don't want to.

Probably varies a lot by location. IIRC, the UK government's own report on their current university fee/loan structure anticipates a large number of people paying off their loans so slowly that they will end up being written off.

I think this counts as both a stealth tax and stealth government borrowing.

Re: BMW heated seats subscription costs $18 per month in South Korea

#283

Post by scottLobster »

llllllllllllk wrote: post #237
bsedlm wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many people manage to pay of their student loans and don't have to live in debt if they don't want to. yikes... this strikes me as quite similar to this line of reasoning: "poor people are poor because they just don't want to work"

This is a weird take to read when you're someone who dropped out of college when the debt load got too scary and had learned enough to gain a marketable skill and enter industry. Paid my debt off in a couple years. This was less than a decade ago, too, I'm not that old. Tuition has been frozen at my university since I left so the kids there now have the same exact choices I had The big difference between me and my pe…

Congrats, you're the exception that proves the rule.

I know a lot of people who were, frankly, railroaded into college. Middle class kids who never had to worry about money, did good to excellent in school, never worked a serious job, were told by their schools, parents, teachers, television and the internet that any degree was a path to success. Then the clock strikes midnight on their 18th birthday and they have no idea how to make informed decisions, so they just do what they've been told by everyone they've trusted for their entire lives.

They mostly ended up with history, sociology or some other useless undergraduate degrees and working at Starbucks if they're lucky and five to six figures of student loan debt with no way to pay it off. And by the time they're wise enough to actually handle money responsibly they're already trapped.

Also most universities are not freezing tuition, and I'm wondering where you went to college and what your part time job was, and how much assistance you got. You're not paying college tuition by working the counter at California Pizza Kitchen part-time. Plus Tuition has continued to inflate every year even since the early tens, although the rate of inflation has decreased in recent years. https://www.in2013dollars.com/College-tuition-and-fees/price...

Re: BMW heated seats subscription costs $18 per month in South Korea

#284

Post by fny »

What dumbass executive greenlighted this?

$18 per month over 10 years is $2,160. MSRP for the 2020 2 Series--BMW's cheapest sedan--is $35,300.

So instead of charging $2K--5% more--for heated seats out right they have no gone through the expense of (1) building the software, billing, and support infrastructure to manage this (2) pissing off customers.

I'm assuming they're also streamlining production by building heated seats into every car instead of selective models, but again, why not just go with a permanent upgrade model? Everyone buys heated seats, BWM provides a special chip to activate them.

Re: BMW heated seats subscription costs $18 per month in South Korea

#285

Post by athorax »

jms703 wrote: post #215

I can see why a car manufacturer would not want to make two versions of each car, one with heated seats and one without. Instead, build it into all of them, and only activate and charge those that actually need it. Also, the subscription is an option. You can also pay the full price for the feature. Where I live, I could see using this once or two months a year. Whereas some would need it more and they might just buy…

It is mind blowing that this is something people are willing to accept. The feature is there, the ecological damage is done already by including those extra resources, and you've paid for the vehicle but don't actually own its capabilities.

Re: BMW heated seats subscription costs $18 per month in South Korea

#286

Post by mkl95 »

dotancohen wrote: post #267
mkl95 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not going to shrink your target demographic too much in the Western world. Birth rates are low and declining.

Birth rates of Europeans are low and declining. Birth rates of immigrants in Europe is very high, and keeps the population from declining.

The EU's prediction is that population is about to reach its peak and will then decline slowly until the 22nd century or so. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/D... Imo there will be new niches populated by middle aged and old people with no kids.

Re: BMW heated seats subscription costs $18 per month in South Korea

#287

Post by DesiLurker »

colinmhayes wrote: post #220
ghostpepper wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying an old car doesn’t really solve the problem in general, it just solves it for you, temporarily.

The auto sector is one of the most competitive in the world. There are tons of automakers that don’t have subscription services.

but something as big as an auto purchase is a amalgamation of many decisions into one. what they are relying on is that the pain of subscription does not out weighs the rest of value a BMW provides. esp if they can bury this in details and give it away for a couple of years like volvo does.

My suspicion is this will become a lot more pervasive & render every auto purchase to choke full of these under the surface sour decisions.

Re: BMW heated seats subscription costs $18 per month in South Korea

#288

Post by athorax »

fny wrote: post #284

What dumbass executive greenlighted this? $18 per month over 10 years is $2,160. MSRP for the 2020 2 Series--BMW's cheapest sedan--is $35,300. So instead of charging $2K--5% more--for heated seats out right they have no gone through the expense of (1) building the software, billing, and support infrastructure to manage this (2) pissing off customers. I'm assuming they're also streamlining production by building heate…

Exactly. This is probably a $300 actual cost item they have to charge 5x for to pay for all the supporting infrastructure and software engineers

Re: BMW heated seats subscription costs $18 per month in South Korea

#289

Post by wingerlang »

fny wrote: post #284

What dumbass executive greenlighted this? $18 per month over 10 years is $2,160. MSRP for the 2020 2 Series--BMW's cheapest sedan--is $35,300. So instead of charging $2K--5% more--for heated seats out right they have no gone through the expense of (1) building the software, billing, and support infrastructure to manage this (2) pissing off customers. I'm assuming they're also streamlining production by building heate…

I suspect the heated seats were/are just a simple thing they could add onto the infrastructure, which must support a lot more services than just the seats.

Re: BMW heated seats subscription costs $18 per month in South Korea

#290

Post by tekkk »

jms703 wrote: post #215

I can see why a car manufacturer would not want to make two versions of each car, one with heated seats and one without. Instead, build it into all of them, and only activate and charge those that actually need it. Also, the subscription is an option. You can also pay the full price for the feature. Where I live, I could see using this once or two months a year. Whereas some would need it more and they might just buy…

Well just include it in the price for everyone, duhh. It's just executives trying to squeeze every penny out of their customers. Next thing they'll try is making things subscriptions that ought to be always included. I understand the logic, once you sell one subscription it's easier to upsell more but it's heinous and I hope they'll be ridiculed for this years to come.
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