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Stellantis Is Spamming Owners' Screens with Pop-Up Ads for New Car Discounts

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31–40 of 162 posts

Re: Stellantis Is Spamming Owners' Screens with Pop-Up Ads for New Car Discounts

#31
post #8

I remember many years ago thinking, "if they can have a add a SIM card on a phone, why not add one in your car? Imagine an Internet connected car?" What I didn't think about was this would be an opportunity for ads and subscriptions. And everyday you'll own less and less of your car. I'm shopping for a car right now, I may have to just put a fresh coat of paint on my old one.

Not just the ads. They are likely tracking your location, and drive events. These can be sold to your insurance company who may adjust your rates, or even drop you if they consider your driving patterns to be risky. When we got our Ford Maverick, first thing I did was disable this. Kudos to Ford for making this easy.

Downside is that we got a recall notice about the software for the backup camera needing an update. I scheduled an appointment, and it took over 3 hours. Asked the service guy why it was taking so long to flash to software, and he said our system needed an update because we had not enabled over-the-air connection with Ford which allows this to be done in the background. Evidently the download speed for this was incredibly slow according to the SG, so it took over two hours before our Mav was current, and they could apply the backup camera fix. Note: I was very suspicious about this claim. I thought it was more likely we were being purposely held captive in the service waiting area -- which has a big screen constantly running Ford ads. I guess that is OK. I had my Kindle, and was into a great book at the time, so I actually was not too put out.

Re: Stellantis Is Spamming Owners' Screens with Pop-Up Ads for New Car Discounts

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I have a 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee. It was the first year of their then new model rollout for the GC. It was (as I understand it) the last of the Mercedes JGCs. I love this thing, it's a "cold dead hands" kind of car for me. Only has 120k-ish miles on it. I won't say it's my last car ever, I just have a hard time visualizing swapping it out for anything. It starts, all the buttons work, it's cosmetically 9…

So your 12 yrs old truck with only 120k miles got: - radiator replaced - water pump replaced - AC repaired (twice) - suspension rebuilt And that's considered to be a "good" truck? Good lord I'm happy we don't get such garbage sold here in Europe

Yeah, it's not as if Mercedes (who made the vehicle he's talking about) or BMW are German.

Re: Stellantis Is Spamming Owners' Screens with Pop-Up Ads for New Car Discounts

#33
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep that car as long as you can. Modern cars are shit. Peak of cars was probably 1990s/2000s.

You could still buy some rad cars into the '10s but you generally had to go looking. The fiesta st is a decent example. An economy car, so very simple, but with a sports package. The only "smart" features, like traction control, can be turned off.

You forgot to mention that ST is a manual transmission car, not for everyone

Re: Stellantis Is Spamming Owners' Screens with Pop-Up Ads for New Car Discounts

#34
post #8

I remember many years ago thinking, "if they can have a add a SIM card on a phone, why not add one in your car? Imagine an Internet connected car?" What I didn't think about was this would be an opportunity for ads and subscriptions. And everyday you'll own less and less of your car. I'm shopping for a car right now, I may have to just put a fresh coat of paint on my old one.

Not just the ads. They are likely tracking your location, and drive events. These can be sold to your insurance company who may adjust your rates, or even drop you if they consider your driving patterns to be risky. When we got our Ford Maverick, first thing I did was disable this. Kudos to Ford for making this easy. Downside is that we got a recall notice about the software for the backup camera needing an update. I…

I highly doubt the overworked service center employees were wasting your time, they probably were just as annoyed as you were that your car was sitting in a service bay longer than expected.

Re: Stellantis Is Spamming Owners' Screens with Pop-Up Ads for New Car Discounts

#35

I had already scratched Jeep off my car-buying list years ago. Now the bulk of car-buying research is not "how good is it?" but "what are the purposefully in-built annoyances? Can I hack them away?"

You won't have any options for non garbage vehicles pretty soon. It's more profitable to sell you garbage and than sell you the maintenance on the above mentioned garbage while getting a steady trickle of revenue for ad impressions.

Ford pulled focus/fiesta lineup from US ignoring great sales (despite widely known DCT issues) just so they can focus on selling the garbage SUVs and pickups, highest margin cars. But hey, no CAFE regulations to follow, can pollute as much as you want.

Jeep quality is a joke - they would've been sued out of existence with trucks like that in Europe. When I first saw the Jeep Gladiator photo I through it was a joke/meme.

Corporations do truly control everything in US. They'll sell you garbage overpriced trucks, convince you to feel happy about them and laught all the way to the bank while raking cash for all "dealer maintenance" required to keep such garbage on the roads. And then they lock down all the maintenance behind encryption so you can't replace a battery without going to the dealer for the unlock code.

Please speedrun your late stage capitalism asap, it's getting harder and harder to watch

Re: Stellantis Is Spamming Owners' Screens with Pop-Up Ads for New Car Discounts

#36
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could still buy some rad cars into the '10s but you generally had to go looking. The fiesta st is a decent example. An economy car, so very simple, but with a sports package. The only "smart" features, like traction control, can be turned off.

You forgot to mention that ST is a manual transmission car, not for everyone

The attitude that the computers should always be subordinate to the driver also extends to the transmission.

Re: Stellantis Is Spamming Owners' Screens with Pop-Up Ads for New Car Discounts

#37
post #8

I remember many years ago thinking, "if they can have a add a SIM card on a phone, why not add one in your car? Imagine an Internet connected car?" What I didn't think about was this would be an opportunity for ads and subscriptions. And everyday you'll own less and less of your car. I'm shopping for a car right now, I may have to just put a fresh coat of paint on my old one.

In most vehicles, you can pull the cellular capability (either a physical sim or the RF component). You'll lose telematics, but will also lose this.

So nothing of value is lost.

Re: Stellantis Is Spamming Owners' Screens with Pop-Up Ads for New Car Discounts

#39
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your 12 yrs old truck with only 120k miles got: - radiator replaced - water pump replaced - AC repaired (twice) - suspension rebuilt And that's considered to be a "good" truck? Good lord I'm happy we don't get such garbage sold here in Europe

Yeah, it's not as if Mercedes (who made the vehicle he's talking about) or BMW are German.

Mercedes or BMW don't sell "tough trucks" lol.

They sell luxury goods, which people know to avoid when they care about reliability

The thing is, jeeps are even beating the BMWs when it comes to unreliability.

Yes Mercedes built that garbage for the US market because US market eats that crap. Then stellantis took it a step up and removed reliability from their vocabulary entirely - more profitable that way. I'd pick a modern VW over American garbage all day any day.

But sure, keep yourself convinced about exceptionalism of American SUVs.

Re: Stellantis Is Spamming Owners' Screens with Pop-Up Ads for New Car Discounts

#40
post #8

I remember many years ago thinking, "if they can have a add a SIM card on a phone, why not add one in your car? Imagine an Internet connected car?" What I didn't think about was this would be an opportunity for ads and subscriptions. And everyday you'll own less and less of your car. I'm shopping for a car right now, I may have to just put a fresh coat of paint on my old one.

Not just the ads. They are likely tracking your location, and drive events. These can be sold to your insurance company who may adjust your rates, or even drop you if they consider your driving patterns to be risky. When we got our Ford Maverick, first thing I did was disable this. Kudos to Ford for making this easy. Downside is that we got a recall notice about the software for the backup camera needing an update. I…

Do you really think that a dealership would tie up a service bay to keep you captive?

Service is where dealers make their money. You’re convinced that manufacturers will sell data to insurance companies yet believe that dealers will sacrifice hours of profit. That doesn’t work out.

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