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BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription

forbes.com

161–170 of 197 posts

Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People feel that they paid double, which was actually not true That's some serious gaslighting.

That's a very popular take, but if it's laid out clearly in the contract that heated seats (or whatever feature) are not part of what you're buying up front, then technically they're in the right. The fact that buying big solid things like cars has typically, thus far, in our society, meant owning every physical piece of that thing, doesn't and shouldn't override what it says in the contract. Maybe an argument can be…

I think there a link that can be drawn between the type of contract you describe, and feudal-era serfdom. Serfs at the time were effectively prevented from owning property - land. In this case, people are being prevented from owning property - cars. In both cases the exclusion was enabled by the laws at the time. In the case of feudalism, the land reform laws brought an end to the state of affairs. And, they were responsible for a very large increase in common prosperity.

What you say is correct - the laws as they stand do allow for this behavior by BMW, and the company is correct when they say that (buyers? renters?) don't own the gadget in question.

It's also true that a discussion around preventing this sort of behavior with new laws is probably warranted.

Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription

#162

> People feel that they paid double – which was actually not true, but perception is reality It was true. The heating wires in the seats were already installed and the consumer paid for them and owned them. I remember in the olden days some compiler vendors added a fee to "unlock" floating point code support. That was never popular (I never did such with my compilers.)

Money and prices are fungible so it isn't really possible to prove anything. But there are two very reasonable ways to look at it. 1. Those who purchase the heated seats cover the cost of all of these heating wires. So they are paying much more than the raw cost (but presumably less than if their cars needed a separate / modified production line). 2. The manufacturer is paying these costs as a "marketing fee" hoping…

OK, first off, your blog post uses an entirely hypothetical, fictitious cost graph, anyone can create a fictitious graph to support their hypothesis. I highly doubt an actual cost graph on a car with actual costs would pan out the way you're looking at it. With that out of the way...

If the hardware to perform the capability is in the machine I bought, it belongs to me. I paid for it. I don't care if you discounted the price below your cost to produce, I gave you the money and you gave me the thing, its mine. No amount of legalese will change that, it is a simple fact of life. I'm paying for the gas to lug the hardware around with me everywhere I go. The hardware itself does not require software to function, you need a heating element and a switch, you can't even make the argument that you're paying for a license to the software without which the feature will not work. Even if a device does genuinely need software to work, unless the hardware can be used for other things and someone can purchase or create competing software for the thing, again, the hardware is mine and you don't get to tell me what to do with it. It's less like purchasing Windows for your computer and more like purchasing firmware for the proprietary WiFi card you just bought.

Those who want the feature can pay for the hardware. Make a car without it. If it's in my car and I didn't steal it it's mine, period. Even if they decide to put them in every car and charge me a one time fee to turn it on and even make that transferrable with the car I don't care, you can't gimp my property and sell it back to me, how is that different than ransomware? Make a car without it or charge for it for all cars it's in. It is that simple.

Off topic, we talk about e waste and what not but then we justify this form of waste by saying it reduces cost by streamlining manufacturing. This is bullshit. If it reduces costs then make it a standard feature. Why don't they? Because it doesn't reduce cost. It increases cost for every item manufactured and that cost is recouped by the subscription fee. In other words, they do it because it is profitable. And it's profitable not because it reduces cost, but because people have to pay a recurring fee to use the thing forever, and because it's valueless on the secondary market, you can't even pull one at a junkyard. If they charged a one time transferrable fee to turn it on I doubt they'd be saying it reduces cost, because it doesn't. But some people fall for this hand waving, and as a result thousands, possibly millions of cars are out there with device in them that are going for two hundred thousand mile ride right to a landfill, brand new and out of the box.

Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In either of these cases the car you exchanged your money for physically had the seat heaters in it already. You were buying (or renting) the password to be allowed to use your own belongings. To me this isn't nuanced at all. It's my fucking car, get out of here with this rent-seeking DLC shit.

It is nuanced. If they did not sell the car for a penny more than last years model without heated seats, in other words they put up the money for the heated seat hardware in hopes of recouping that cost (and making their usual profit on it) later, then I don't see why people have a problem with getting the same features for the same price as last year. In fact, as someone who likes to buy lightly used cars, I love th…

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21127243/tesla-model-s-aut...

The license to these software enabled features is not usually transferrable. And why would they be?

It's not nuanced. If I pay you money for an object I expect the object to work. I don't care if you're selling it to me at a loss, that's your prerogative. What's not your prerogative is how I use my property.

Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that is my problem. My belongings belong to me. I don't care if a bean counter somewhere was slightly happier about it before it got to me. The moment the car is my car, it's no longer their car to start charging me access to.

I see your point. I don't have a problem with it personally, but I understand your logic. I guess now that everything is controlled by software, and software is rarely ever owned (mostly licensed) that has started to blur the lines between what we own and what we license. This kind of thing is common in software where all of the code is there for the premium/business/family/group/team/etc features, but how much you p…

They're not the same thing. If I buy a computer, you can say "if you want to use adobe software you have to pay an adobe license fee", you cannot say "if you want to use WiFi you need to pay for a license to the firmware for the hardware in your machine."

Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription

#166

"We thought that we would provide an extra service to the customer by offering the chance to activate that later, but the user acceptance isn’t that high. People feel that they paid double, which was actually not true, but perception is reality, I always say. So that was the reason we stopped that," Nota told Autocar. Wow. They still don’t get it

Oh they got it. Let me rephrase it for you:

"People realised they were paying double. So that is the reason we stopped"

Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription

#167
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was actually a little more nuanced — they offered a one-time purchase (at a normal-ish price), or the option to purchase via subscription. I have no problem with this arrangement, which literally offers consumers more choices. The concerns I would have are (1) that the one-time pricing would gradually creep up, so that in a few years it becomes untenable, or (2) that when you sell the car, the heated seats would b…

If I bought the heated seats via a one-time purchase then that feature should transfer to the new owner. It may require that transfer of ownership be registered with BMW. If I rented the heated seats, or hadn't bought or rented the heated seats, then the new buyer should have the option to rent the heated seats or make a one-time purchase to just buy them. This seems pro-consumer to me. I don't want heated seats (no,…

How does it drive prices down? I can see how it drives profits up, so costs down when weighed against profits, but I don't see how it drives prices down.

Consider that these things cannot be sold on the secondary market. You can't pick and pull the hardware.

Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very popular take, but if it's laid out clearly in the contract that heated seats (or whatever feature) are not part of what you're buying up front, then technically they're in the right. The fact that buying big solid things like cars has typically, thus far, in our society, meant owning every physical piece of that thing, doesn't and shouldn't override what it says in the contract. Maybe an argument can be…

I keep bringing up this example - it's like buying a house with a room that's walled off and you need to pay the developer extra money to have it opened up for use. The houses are made from prefabs so it's easier to just make every house the same but just wall off rooms you didn't pay for. The contract could stipulate this clearly - you are not paying for the room that's walled off. Obviously, that's completely insan…

Add one variable to your example: imagine that having variations increases cost such as increased development cost (you need to develop each component, test and certify possible combinations, incur increased logistical complexity, etc..)

This additional cost however is less than just adding the higher trim to every configuration, e.g. the additional room, so it doesn't make economic sense to do so.

But let's assume you now get the ability to sell and unlock a higher trim after the initial purchase. Let's say that 20% of your customers would be willing to purchase such an unlock at a later point in time, resulting in increased revenue.

If that revenue plus the reduced lifecycle expense exceeds the cost of adding the higher trim as baseline you would have a business case, which wouldn't be the case if you just add the room for everybody (where you'd have to raise the base price and lose buyers on the lower end).

Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription

#170

Is it illegal to enable the seat heating yourself after purchasing the car without the seat heating plan? Is it even possible?

Who cares? It's your property. And yes, there are seats and there are heating elements already in the car. They even wired them up for you.

> Who cares? It's your property.

Authorities care. Yes it's your property and you can do whatever you want with it. The question is whether you're allowed to operate the vehicle on public roads afterwards. Cars go through thorough certification processes (homologation) and that includes software.

Can you prove that your change does not negatively affect a certification-relevant function?

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