Corporations have figured out how to exploit human psychology when it comes to subscriptions. Just as how people are willing to spend $99 on a product when they wouldn't have spent $100, they will gladly pay a $10/month subscription (with annual price increments) for 30 years straight rather than a $500 one-time fee.
Mazda's $10 Subscription for Remote Start Sparks Backlash
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Re: Mazda's $10 Subscription for Remote Start Sparks Backlash
#12Companies love subscription based services. I have to assume it's becauce they're much more lucrative. But many times companies forget the other part: what value are they providing? Telling me I now have to subscribe to something I'm using to owning isn't going to work, or shouldn't work.
The stock market love companies with subscriptions…
Re: Mazda's $10 Subscription for Remote Start Sparks Backlash
#13As some in the comments correctly point out, this service requires a cellular connection. Which involves costs for Mazda. It's appropriate for them to charge a small monthly fee for the service. My only real complaint about this is discontinuing the keyfob-based feature. All that said, I see no need for remote start, anyway.
Cars have had remote start systems since before the first cell phone was invented. What is LTE/4G/5G adding in this scenario? Who exactly needs to start their car from the other side of the world? It's trivial for manufacturers to add a short-range radio that will work from across the driveway, which is what 99% of their customers want. In fact every key fob already has this functionality, which is how cars can unlock from a distance. As the article states, Mazda themselves had this version of remote start until they removed it in favor of the subscription option.
Re: Mazda's $10 Subscription for Remote Start Sparks Backlash
#14As some in the comments correctly point out, this service requires a cellular connection. Which involves costs for Mazda. It's appropriate for them to charge a small monthly fee for the service. My only real complaint about this is discontinuing the keyfob-based feature. All that said, I see no need for remote start, anyway.
Remote start is very nice if you park outside during the winter and prefer not to sit in a car that's 20 degrees Fahrenheit for the first 10 minutes of your drive.
Re: Mazda's $10 Subscription for Remote Start Sparks Backlash
#15> However, irrespective of whether one can afford (or is willing to pay for) a subscription, the key lesson from all this is that, if automakers have their way, the car ownership experience is going to change dramatically in the near future. Yep, unless people stop buying cars that offer these features, it's just going to get worse and worse. But here's the thing: they won't.
Can't stop buying if no options exist. I need a car. Toyota has done this for a while. BMW has IAP heaters in chairs. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Re: Mazda's $10 Subscription for Remote Start Sparks Backlash
#16As some in the comments correctly point out, this service requires a cellular connection. Which involves costs for Mazda. It's appropriate for them to charge a small monthly fee for the service. My only real complaint about this is discontinuing the keyfob-based feature. All that said, I see no need for remote start, anyway.
It only requires cellular because that's how Mazda designed it. Plenty of remote start systems have been built without requiring cellular.
There may be a blurring of use-cases here, between:
1. Starting a car from a short distance in order to pre-heat in cold temperatures or because you're in a huge hurry. (Or paranoid of car-bombs, I guess.)
2. Starting a car from a long distance on someone else's behalf so that they can borrow it for some reason.
While I think #1 is most common, #2 overlaps with other "call support to unlock your car" or "disable if stolen"-type features. So it's likely manufacturers are motivated to use cellular connections "because it's already probably there for the other stuff."
P.S.: That said I really don't like the lack of owner control implied but some of those systems.
Re: Mazda's $10 Subscription for Remote Start Sparks Backlash
#17Companies love subscription based services. I have to assume it's becauce they're much more lucrative. But many times companies forget the other part: what value are they providing? Telling me I now have to subscribe to something I'm using to owning isn't going to work, or shouldn't work.
In theory they much better align expenses with revenue. If you need to maintain servers and pay for LTE plans in perpetuity to make this functionality work, then a subscription makes more sense than bundling it with the purchase price. People are just tired of paying for this kind of thing though, every aspect of human existence is being loaded into a subscription service.
The problem is value add:
The old remote start system worked just fine. I click a button, a remote signal is sent to my car. Boom. Was it perfect? No. But it was local.
Now we replaced a local system with a worse one. I tried using the mazda start and the delay could be 10 minutes because it depends on network coverage OR just how frequently the car wakes up to check the network.
Edit: What would I pay for?
- Remote start service that will automatically start my car 45 minutes after my alarm goes off if the external temperature in my area is below 40 degrees F.
That's additive, and many would want this in say wisconsin, but its not a feature many would need, so the market is reduced.
Re: Mazda's $10 Subscription for Remote Start Sparks Backlash
#18Companies love subscription based services. I have to assume it's becauce they're much more lucrative. But many times companies forget the other part: what value are they providing? Telling me I now have to subscribe to something I'm using to owning isn't going to work, or shouldn't work.
In theory they much better align expenses with revenue. If you need to maintain servers and pay for LTE plans in perpetuity to make this functionality work, then a subscription makes more sense than bundling it with the purchase price. People are just tired of paying for this kind of thing though, every aspect of human existence is being loaded into a subscription service.
For a feature like remote start, this makes some sense, but companies are trying to charge subscription-based fees for things which have no ongoing expense.
For example, BMW offering heated seats as a monthly subscription.
Regardless, ongoing costs for an LTE data connection which can handle things like remote start costs fractions of a dollar per month at the scale of Mazda.
Re: Mazda's $10 Subscription for Remote Start Sparks Backlash
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
In theory they much better align expenses with revenue. If you need to maintain servers and pay for LTE plans in perpetuity to make this functionality work, then a subscription makes more sense than bundling it with the purchase price. People are just tired of paying for this kind of thing though, every aspect of human existence is being loaded into a subscription service.
The problem is value add: The old remote start system worked just fine. I click a button, a remote signal is sent to my car. Boom. Was it perfect? No. But it was local. Now we replaced a local system with a worse one. I tried using the mazda start and the delay could be 10 minutes because it depends on network coverage OR just how frequently the car wakes up to check the network. Edit: What would I pay for? - Remote…
There is lots of value to LTE-based start.
It works even if you're too far from the car for the RF signal to reach. I park just below my office window because if I'm too far away, my RF-based remote start won't work.
Also being able to remotely adjust climate settings would be nice.
I do fully disagree with their implementation of this, especially with regards to a $10 subscription fee.
Re: Mazda's $10 Subscription for Remote Start Sparks Backlash
#20As some in the comments correctly point out, this service requires a cellular connection. Which involves costs for Mazda. It's appropriate for them to charge a small monthly fee for the service. My only real complaint about this is discontinuing the keyfob-based feature. All that said, I see no need for remote start, anyway.
The service costs orders of magnitude more than what their actual costs should be.
You can have an LTE connection for probably around 10c/month/sim at the scale of Mazda with tiny amounts of data (plenty for, say, 100 remote starts/month).