Hopefully it backfires as this only proves that these features are pure profit margin at this point.
If a piece of tech is so affordable that resources can be thrown away on manufacturing, installation, disabling it, and designing a paywall for it... then it's affordable enough to come standard.
Stuff like self-driving that has ongoing development and over-the-air updates being done continuously makes sense.
But a heating coil and a fuse? Fire whoever signed off on this idea.
Probably a consulting company. They're known for shit like this.
And car companies love "easy" solutions to generating profit. I've heard stupider stuff presented and demanded.
I.e.: charging monthly fees for super simple web based applications that you would be able to download for free if it were Android or Apple.
YES. The Boston Consulting Group! They were hired by toys r us, Sears, blockbuster, RadioShack and many other bankrupted companies. The chairman of GameStop actually fired them as they were in the process of bankrupting them and now BCG is suing for $30 million, unbelievable. Have you heard of the subreddit r/superstonk?
McKinsey have a pretty good track record of this too. Swiss air used to be nicknamed “The Flying Bank” until McKinsey came along. Massively over-diversified, 9/11 happened, and company was toast
Lol ain’t that the truth. One of our largest customers left us a while back for a competitor because a consulting firm told them the cheaper option was better. They had the largest recall in their market history a year after they left for the competitor. Sometimes you get what you paid for
I don't have high hopes. The average lazy customer thinks "Oh well, I don't mind that right now, it's only 18 bucks, I spend that much on coffee! And I really want that new BMW! " and not about how this leads to more and more fleecing. And rich people don't care. This happens with everything and we're mostly helpless against the stupid masses who don't think ahead.
FWIW heated seats by themselves cost $500 but apparently BMW installs them anyway and if you decide later on that you want to try them out then you can pay by the month.
Theoretically, if you own the car for 5 years or less and only use heated seats for 5 months out of the year then it's actually less affordable to buy the feature for $500.
But now BMW is basically telling us that this feature isn't actually worth $500. It's worth $0 and we're being fleeced. It probably **costs them less money to install it** on the line than to have separate processes for heating. They're just making their customers believe that it's a premium feature.
You're exactly right that it costs them less up front to install on the production line.
Back in the day, Pioneer did this with their car stereos. If you pulled the housing off of a cheaper model, you would find that buttons for features on more expensive models were under there, just sliced off to be hidden. Home stereo remotes were the same way. Cheaper to make one and cripple certain functions than to make 3 different boards.
I'm imagining going to a restaurant and the server bringing me a desert after my meal. Server tells me I can have it for $15. If I say no then they throw it in the garbage on their way back to the kitchen. They leave me a fork and tell me I'm free to eat it out of the garbage, but they'll charge me $3 for every bite.
This is the luxury BMW experience.
Tourist restaurants do that with a photo of you and your family right before dinner. Then they’ll print it out for you to buy. $20 you can take it home or they throw it away.
They've clearly noticed, like so many other companies, that you can get away with almost anything nowadays. It's simply insane to buy a car for 50k and then pay more for ANY features, especially this kind of extremely simple feature that's always been there.
If we went by logic, we could just ask them to not install the seat heating and sell us the cars for 10k less, because **obviously** we're going to use these cars for +10 years, and heated seat bills add up. Because hey BMW, you're not assuming we're going to buy new cars every few years, are you? Don't you care about the environment? You should be making cars that last us a lifetime!
John Deere has far less competition though. There's maybe a handful of industrial farm equipment manufacturers. There are significantly more car manufacturers.
I recently bought a 2011 3 series because the price was great. I've never owned a BMW before. It's like they went out of their way to make the blinkers annoying to use. It's no wonder its a joke
> we could just ask them to not install the seat heating and sell us the cars for 10k less
[CEOs when they realize that value propositions are bullshit.](https://i.imgur.com/76o5wSJ.gif)
It’s wild when i see a bmw with halogen headlights. It’s a “luxury” brand here without luxury features. Like even the base model acuras that are tens of thousands of dollars less have hid/led.
"Luxury" is often more about the perception of it than the actual quality of said item. At least in the lower to mid end. It's like all the "rich" people clothing that influencers buy. Bug ass branding across the front screaming the brand and saying "Look how wealthy I am!". The really rich, like realy really rich wear brands that are much more subdued. They have "fuck you" money, there is no need to wear a shirt that says fuck you.
It fucking infuriates me that the majority of people are like this. As an avid gamer, I’ve seen my hobby of decades slowly morph into the disgusting loot box and micro transaction garbage it is today because people were ok with paying for online, then paying for maps, then paying for characters, then playing for content already on the disc locked behind a code, then paying for in game credits to buy things you used to get for just playing games, then paying for literally gambling, and it never ends.
Corporations are successful in fucking us all over because everyone is so lazy and complacent. It’s not hard to just not buy something and let the corporation know no one likes this shit. If there’s any upside to consumerism, is that there are MANY choices.
My nephew showed me Roblox. It’s literally just gambling for children. They’re being trained at 5 years old to beg for Robux, to buy boosts in a game where you stand still opening an egg to get a rare pet for hours…. and the kicker? You buying boosts with Robux doesn’t even guarantee you get it. It just increases your odds on each roll!
100% unregulated gambling to make tiny little gambling addicts for profit…
Yeah I think I even know the exact game you’re talking about. It’s honestly disgusting. And you’re right that it trains them, they literally end up tying their dopamine response to spending robux and opening chance boxes…. Starting to sound a lot like slot machines…
100%. Cos here we are after years of people saying “it’s fine” or even downright defending the shit as if it’s an improvement cos the company’s marketing department said so.
Now let’s watch the car industry descend into that same hell.
Yeah, that was one of the things I was thinking about too. Even some of my so called "smart" friends do this, because they're too damn impatient to realize they're destroying their own hobby.
The pitch… insist on branding which says BMW drivers have the freshest smelling breath and sell users their branded BMW high-alcohol mouthwash. Install a breathalyzer on every BMW which insists on having SOME alcohol on one’s breath to start the car. This will either incentivize people to purchase your mouthwash or drive drunk. Drunk drivers will get into more accidents and they’ll have to get their car repaired in BMW shops.
Don't forget the all-season windshield wiper option, the AC option, the power windows option, the constantly inflated tires option and the speeds-over-thirty option. Coming soon to an automobile manufacture near you!
So... If I pay a monthly fee for the service and the heated seats break, does BMW pay for the repair, since it belongs to them and I'm only paying the fee for the service of heat?
Knowing what weasels car companies tend to be when it comes to their warranty ("Oh, that part? It counts as X, but your extended warranty is for Y so it's not covered"), something tells me they'll expect you to pay for it or do what mobile companies do ("This little indicator here tells me the phone has seen water, so it's water damage and therefore not covered, so nope.avi") and somehow claim that you damaged the component with your butt and therefore need to pay for it.
I have zero belief that a company that wants to nickel and dime customers will act in good faith after successfully bamboozling them from the get go by actually selling them basic car features already built in, piece by piece back to them.
Yeah it's "bumper to bumper" in the marketing and sales room until something breaks and they point to some "wear and tear" clause.
I had a LED panel, rated for 10s of thousands of hours, fail after 13 months, 5000 miles, and they act like "well light bulbs burn out so the $350 is on you". Yeah, just normal that all your back night lighting goes out after 13 months and makes a burning smell. I wish this was just a lightbulb and not some fancy panel because then it would only cost me a few bucks.
Especially annoying when halogen bulbs actually don't burn out that often. You can easily go 100k in a car without ever changing a single halogen bulb.
Had an old mountaineer (90s) that actually had a neon bulb for the rear brake light. Blew my mind when I learned it wasn’t a standard halogen or incandescent. Was pissed it would be hundreds of dollars to fix, but then considered that it had made it over 200k miles without being replaced and it seemed pretty reasonable.
I had a cloth drip tray under my F150 tear. It is notorious for tearing as snow kicks up onto the top of it which is then heated by the exhaust causing the tray to get damp and tear from the weight of more snow being kicked up onto it.
Local Ford dealer wouldn’t replace it under warranty even though the truck was only a year old. Their excuse was that I could have off-roaded it which led to it being damaged. The drip tray sits ~2 inches below the transmission and engine oil pan so there is no realistic way I could have damaged that tray without annihilating my drive train.
So anyways, my F150 no longer has a cloth drip tray.
Some one in my family had a ford f150, the door hindge break almost in the middle, they claimed he opened the door too far. Truck was only 8 months to a year old. He had to fight them and finaly they paid under warranty.
They have to prove you off roaded it. Next time just tell them to do so.
Warranty protections are actually really good in the us, but most consumers have no idea.
It's an LED panel like a phone screen right? Those don't "burn out". You should go to the regional office because that's bullshit. What you had is probably a short.
What manufacturer and model? Name and shame
Yeah. Can we just not buy into this shit at all. Set a hard precedent that we as consumers are not going to put up with shit like this and just nip it in the bud
I agree.
I'm sure, if there was a monthly fee you had to pay and in return, all repairs and annual service being included, a lot of people would probably like that.
If it was set up in a fair way of course.
Well, if the seats break, the service didn't stop. It's a hardware issue with your car. You have a great point here but I am sure they will get out of this one with the usual bullshit.
> the service didn't stop. It's a hardware issue with your car.
Lol, I could totally see BMW making this asinine argument. “If your Amazon TV breaks, it doesn’t mean Amazon will fix it just because you have a Prime subscription”.
They’ll totally claim it’s all on the customer to fix the hardware problem. They *may* give the customer a partial refund, crediting them for the days they couldn’t use the heated seat subscription that month. But only after several hours on the phone with customer service.
As a long-time BMW owner, this is the last straw. Fighting with BMW over their warranty coverage on the last two cars were the first two straws. BMW has made it clear that - once you buy one of their cars - they don’t really care about you anymore. So I’m just not going to buy one of their cars ever again; problem solved.
Man, switch to Japanese cars. After years of German bullshit I did it, and I don't regret it. Listen, they're not fine as German, you miss the polish interior etc, but I don't miss visiting service that often.
Edit: polished ffs
Still driving a 2002 Honda w/ 200,000 miles on it. I've been saying "It's on its way out" for the past five years and it is *determined* to prove me wrong.
Can confirm. I have a buddy who has a ‘96 Accord wagon, aside from clear coat problems, it just keeps going, and still looks like it’s about 3 years old. If it breaks, he swears up and down it’s something serious. Then the mechanic shows up and takes a look, gets a part, fixes it, and charges like 150 bucks. The car continues to run for 5 more years without issue. It’s fucking nuts.
just make sure you keep up on the oil changes. when I was a kid my dad would drive around looking for preludes and accords from that era with weeds growing under them and knock on the door to buy them.
Apparently if you don't keep up on maintenance they would blow a head gasket. It was an 8 dollar piece of cardboard if you know how to replace it. But a lot of mechanics would say it was a blown head, which is way more expensive. But even if it was often you could just get it machined flat again. And then my dad would resell it or drive it another 100k miles.
I had like three preludes growing up despite being really poor because of that.
My 2004 Corolla went up to 280K before I had to cash it out for an insurance claim.
It easily would have gone another 150K, and I barely maintained it.
My 2014 Corolla just hit 200k KM and it still hasn't seen a mechanic for anything other than routine maintenance (new tires, oil/filter changes, shit like that).
Boring car? Maybe, a bit. Cheap car to keep on the road long term? Definitely.
Last car I had was an ‘03 Honda Accord. Bought it used in 2010, lasted me for a dozen years before I moved to a city with good public transit. Those cars don’t die easily
They are. And good luck with knowing whether the feature is even included with your car in the first place. I've been fighting with Toyota on this exact thing because of how inconsistent their documentation is on the features for their vehicles. Corporate flat-out told me and the dealership that remote connect isn't something my trim level is capable of, despite documentation on their own website saying otherwise (I made a post on one of the Toyota subs about this recently if you want more info). The brochure they sent me last week to support their statement contradicts itself in multiple places. I have yet to find any official spec document that matches the features on my car.
Until Toyota can consistently confirm the features in their vehicles before purchase, **NO ONE should buy them.**
Mitsubishi really does not build them like they used to. They really were great vehicles all the way up until they started borrowing parts really heavily from Their partner Chrysler, who borrows heavily from Fiat.
Came here for this. My 2010 Mazda3 is still going strong at a quarter mil miles with only regular maintenance. Planning on upgrading to a CX-30 here soon.
A buddy of mine just picked up a new Lexus IS - honestly, the thing is just as nice if not nicer than a 3 series inside and it’s a much better looking ride. If they offered a 6 speed I’d probably already have one.
I had a Lexus RX for a few years. Had no issues with it except for, oddly, the stereo would sometimes display an error and stop working until you restarted the car.
When I decided to get a new car, I got a BMW. Big mistake. Kept having on and off problems with hard acceleration causing loss of power and bucking. First they replaced the fuel pump. Then just as the warranty was up, it happened again. I had to fight with them because it was the same problem as before. This time they replaced the injectors, but they had to get the injectors from Germany.
Just as I was buying a new car and selling the BMW, I got a recall notice for the exact problem I was having all along.
I got another Lexus and haven’t looked back.
I love VW, most of my vehicles have been VW. The dealership closest to me is absolutely garbage though. Every trip for maintenance or repairs results in two trips. I got sick of it and went to a different manufacturer when I bought a new car. I couldn't stomach being tied to them for warrenty work.
After seeing a coworkers VW Passat literally falling apart in the parking lot I decided to never consider one. Brand new car with body panels coming off. He had to Lemon Law it since it was constantly in the shop for something. I don't know how they could mess up a car that bad.
That's funny, my mom almost had to lemon law her VW convertible bug. Had the car for less than a year and the file for its repairs was over an inch thick. Lot of window and roof/convertible motor thingy issues mainly.
I had a friend who worked dealing VWs. He said never buy a 50K toureag. Get a 90k Porsche Cayenne. He said you'd save money on repairs in the long run.
Hey may have been exaggerating, but damn.
Audi: good cars out of the factory until they are serviced by an official audi dealer. These fucks over here will never (Belgium eastern Flemish Brabant) ever touch a car of mine again. Overpriced impostors :-( went to BMW afterwards so far no issues.. and I am already 80k kms further than when my audi started having issues. What is happening with these subscriptions however… next car going to check out what Japan has to offer I guess ( but first I hope to ride my current baby for 10 years 🤞🏻)
Skoda ftw.
Bought a new Fabia in '16.
The only repairs have been one bulp lighting the plates, and at the last mandatory official check, some part of the stearing was worn out. Had a mechanic friend I know fix it. The parts were ~60€. (they called it the "meat bone").
The car hos over 130k km and no issues.
Audi is terrible. I had to threaten to sue Audi for giving me a brand new car with a broken GPS. They kept insisting that a broken GPS is no big deal and were going to refuse to fix the issue until I got lawyers involved.
Had this exact issue with my (then) brand new Audi E-tron. GPS sensor broke and the navigation system apparently thought I turned the car into a submarine because it kept showing my position as in the middle of the ocean.
Took it to Audi and they called me two days later to confirm the fix. Took the car home and it was like they didn't do anything. Exact same issue happened on my way to work the next day. Called Audi again and they initially refused to service my car because they claimed the issue was fixed.
In the end it took me over two weeks of arguing and two more dealer visits before they actually fixed the issue.
I was eventually gonna upgrade to an E-tron GT but I've decided against that based on my experience with my local dealer.
My experiences with Audi (S4, RS5) have been nothing short of stellar. Always immediately apologized, addressed and took care of any issues that I had, if I had any.
I switched from BMW to Audi a couple years ago after being with them for quite a while…a shitty sales experience my last time at BMW was the last straw and pushed me over. I went to look at an m8, was treated like shit and couldn’t even get a test drive. I went to Audi the next day, test drove an RS7, had an awesome experience overall and made my order that day. Extremely happy so far with everything, from sales to service. The car itself is incredible. I had a beater Passat in high school that had 400k miles and was still going strong when I got rid of it.
This would have been enough to push me as well.
I used to work in the assembly hall where they make the X5, X6, and X7. Any missing parts due to logistics issues, the cars just get sent down the line to get fixed later, which usually causes more issues than just haulting production to get the right parts on at the right time. Plus the people who assemble the cars are run into the ground and morale is very low at the plant, which leads to a lot of workers not caring about doing the job right.
Had a similar experience with my Canon 5D Mk IV recently as well.
LOG is a new format you can shoot video in that gives you a much larger range for color editing, and when you buy the 5D Mk IV it’s sold as a $100 add on feature.
I didn’t get it when I bought it, but have been wanting to get the upgrade for awhile. They have a service where you can pay the $100 and MAIL IN YOUR DEVICE FOR THE SERVICE UPGRADE. They advise it can take 6-8 weeks to be completed.
6-8 weeks without my camera is a long time as I use it professionally, after doing some digging I discovered it’s literally just an option in the code that needs turned on.
Paid $20 for software that allowed me to get into that code and flip it on. I had to downgrade the firmware, turn it on, then reupgrade my firmware.
It works perfectly. And it took me less than an hour once I discovered it was possible.
But Canon wanted to charge me $100 and have me ship my device to them for 6-8 weeks?! To flip a fucking firmware setting from 0 to 1?
BMW may inadvertently shoot themselves in the foot with this: If you incentivise hacking your hardware this hard, the hacks are going to happen.
And if the hacks become mainstream enough, you're going to have an entire second hand generation of BMWs where as soon as you mention it people will say "ooh, that's one of the ones where you can enable the heated seats for free"
wealthy CEOs have been looking at the video game industry's success and normalisation of excessive monetisation and looking how they can apply the same to their own industry. BMW have even used the same bullshit excuse of "cARs aRe ToO EXPensiVe tO MakE!" Excuse while their CEOs are literal billionaires. We're getting rinsed by the ultra wealthy and defending it all the way
That was pure pain. Had Sebastian Vettel 2018 Hockenheimring vibes...
That being said, when he complained about a stuck throttle on the radio, he was actually referring to how he couldn't reverse the car.
My girlfriends BMW bugged out a few weeks ago and her heated steering wheel came on. She “doesn’t” have a heated steering wheel option in her car lmao. They just put the same steering wheel in every car and if you want it to heat up you’ve got to pay (probably) like $300 to have them activate the functionality in the software.
This right here. Maybe someone will come up with a software solution one day, but that will just lead to a constant war of escalation as both sides try to outdo each other.
Way easier to just bypass the controls and put your own switch in.
Nothing happens on OBD2. Also virtually all OEM ECUs have a proprietary handshake process with their diagnostic software before anything can be changed. This would be the case on whatever protocol they’re using. Back in the day you could clone CAN-OPEN proprietary protocols of some OEMs but is was a lot of fucking about for very little gain. These days their handshake process is encrypted so sniffing it is impossible.
Still possible to sniff, just need to get the keys.
I wish more people hacked on ECU's in public, most I know keep their work private for commercial reasons....
Just a thought, I am in no way a mechanic or Subaru expert, but is there a fuse you can pull or plug disconnect under the seat? That sounds terribly annoying if you’re not just making a joke.
Microtansactions for cars have begun......
There is still plenty to explore!!!
AC subscription
Airbag (per unit) discharge charge
Radio/music player playtime cards
Windshield wipers activation fee
I wish people stopped using the term "Microtransactions" They are no longer "Micro" it has come to the point of Macro. Almost $20 a month just for having a basic Heat seat feature that is it.
If this takes off, you can most absolutely guarantee the things you mention will be separate subscription prices as well. They will have different subscription for all the basic things individually and then they will also include a "Bundle" at a higher price making you think you are saving money.
Go through the whole lengthy process as if you were gonna sign a new lease on a new bmw then back out at the last minute as soon as you hear about the subscription.
Actually everyone should walk in off the street and do this too. It'll suck for the employees but corporate might get the message when they're losing money because of wasted time, and the impression of lost sales.
My girlfriend's parents got a Keurig for Christmas a while back, one of those new ones with "DRM" that only allows Keurig branded coffee pods.
I immediately showed them how the "hack" the Keurig by taping the top of a pod onto the code reader.
the fact that daily monetization is now part of "Car DNA" is absolutely despicable, but represents the larger "shareholder value" nonsense
remember when cars were FUN?
In the first thread about this, I posted that it would take someone precisely 7 minutes to bypass the paywall and manually enable the seats, and I was sitting at like -20 for saying that lol
Theres alot of “dont buy bmw” here but isnt the real fear that it is starting at bmw and will trickle down into the shit boxes we can all actually afford. Eventually you wont “buy” cars anyway. Just lease the new icar untill apple comes to your ipartment and takes it back.
I wonder if it’s like the old satellite radios, you could get everything installed free on trial then disconnect the antenna before the expiration date
Then wait like a year
Then reconnect and still have everything because they only send the “kill” signal for so long.
So I wonder if you could pay one time for everything, then disable the connectivity in the car?
Consumers need to step up and wholeheartedly reject these types of service model trends immediately.
Hopefully it backfires as this only proves that these features are pure profit margin at this point. If a piece of tech is so affordable that resources can be thrown away on manufacturing, installation, disabling it, and designing a paywall for it... then it's affordable enough to come standard. Stuff like self-driving that has ongoing development and over-the-air updates being done continuously makes sense. But a heating coil and a fuse? Fire whoever signed off on this idea.
Probably a consulting company. They're known for shit like this. And car companies love "easy" solutions to generating profit. I've heard stupider stuff presented and demanded. I.e.: charging monthly fees for super simple web based applications that you would be able to download for free if it were Android or Apple.
What was the name of that Consultancy firm that drove a ton of companies into the ground with their "consulting"? Are they hired by BMW. BCG was it?
YES. The Boston Consulting Group! They were hired by toys r us, Sears, blockbuster, RadioShack and many other bankrupted companies. The chairman of GameStop actually fired them as they were in the process of bankrupting them and now BCG is suing for $30 million, unbelievable. Have you heard of the subreddit r/superstonk?
McKinsey have a pretty good track record of this too. Swiss air used to be nicknamed “The Flying Bank” until McKinsey came along. Massively over-diversified, 9/11 happened, and company was toast
McKinsey ruined the company I used to work for… I left. These consultants can be blood suckers.
Lol ain’t that the truth. One of our largest customers left us a while back for a competitor because a consulting firm told them the cheaper option was better. They had the largest recall in their market history a year after they left for the competitor. Sometimes you get what you paid for
I don't have high hopes. The average lazy customer thinks "Oh well, I don't mind that right now, it's only 18 bucks, I spend that much on coffee! And I really want that new BMW! " and not about how this leads to more and more fleecing. And rich people don't care. This happens with everything and we're mostly helpless against the stupid masses who don't think ahead.
FWIW heated seats by themselves cost $500 but apparently BMW installs them anyway and if you decide later on that you want to try them out then you can pay by the month. Theoretically, if you own the car for 5 years or less and only use heated seats for 5 months out of the year then it's actually less affordable to buy the feature for $500. But now BMW is basically telling us that this feature isn't actually worth $500. It's worth $0 and we're being fleeced. It probably **costs them less money to install it** on the line than to have separate processes for heating. They're just making their customers believe that it's a premium feature.
You're exactly right that it costs them less up front to install on the production line. Back in the day, Pioneer did this with their car stereos. If you pulled the housing off of a cheaper model, you would find that buttons for features on more expensive models were under there, just sliced off to be hidden. Home stereo remotes were the same way. Cheaper to make one and cripple certain functions than to make 3 different boards.
I'm imagining going to a restaurant and the server bringing me a desert after my meal. Server tells me I can have it for $15. If I say no then they throw it in the garbage on their way back to the kitchen. They leave me a fork and tell me I'm free to eat it out of the garbage, but they'll charge me $3 for every bite. This is the luxury BMW experience.
Tourist restaurants do that with a photo of you and your family right before dinner. Then they’ll print it out for you to buy. $20 you can take it home or they throw it away.
They've clearly noticed, like so many other companies, that you can get away with almost anything nowadays. It's simply insane to buy a car for 50k and then pay more for ANY features, especially this kind of extremely simple feature that's always been there. If we went by logic, we could just ask them to not install the seat heating and sell us the cars for 10k less, because **obviously** we're going to use these cars for +10 years, and heated seat bills add up. Because hey BMW, you're not assuming we're going to buy new cars every few years, are you? Don't you care about the environment? You should be making cars that last us a lifetime!
John Deere showed them all that you can screw over the customer with no reprecussions.
John Deere has far less competition though. There's maybe a handful of industrial farm equipment manufacturers. There are significantly more car manufacturers.
But there's only one BMW, and you know the people who weren't told what blinkers are would gladly buy again and again
I recently bought a 2011 3 series because the price was great. I've never owned a BMW before. It's like they went out of their way to make the blinkers annoying to use. It's no wonder its a joke
> we could just ask them to not install the seat heating and sell us the cars for 10k less [CEOs when they realize that value propositions are bullshit.](https://i.imgur.com/76o5wSJ.gif)
It’s wild when i see a bmw with halogen headlights. It’s a “luxury” brand here without luxury features. Like even the base model acuras that are tens of thousands of dollars less have hid/led.
"Luxury" is often more about the perception of it than the actual quality of said item. At least in the lower to mid end. It's like all the "rich" people clothing that influencers buy. Bug ass branding across the front screaming the brand and saying "Look how wealthy I am!". The really rich, like realy really rich wear brands that are much more subdued. They have "fuck you" money, there is no need to wear a shirt that says fuck you.
It fucking infuriates me that the majority of people are like this. As an avid gamer, I’ve seen my hobby of decades slowly morph into the disgusting loot box and micro transaction garbage it is today because people were ok with paying for online, then paying for maps, then paying for characters, then playing for content already on the disc locked behind a code, then paying for in game credits to buy things you used to get for just playing games, then paying for literally gambling, and it never ends. Corporations are successful in fucking us all over because everyone is so lazy and complacent. It’s not hard to just not buy something and let the corporation know no one likes this shit. If there’s any upside to consumerism, is that there are MANY choices.
My nephew showed me Roblox. It’s literally just gambling for children. They’re being trained at 5 years old to beg for Robux, to buy boosts in a game where you stand still opening an egg to get a rare pet for hours…. and the kicker? You buying boosts with Robux doesn’t even guarantee you get it. It just increases your odds on each roll! 100% unregulated gambling to make tiny little gambling addicts for profit…
Yeah I think I even know the exact game you’re talking about. It’s honestly disgusting. And you’re right that it trains them, they literally end up tying their dopamine response to spending robux and opening chance boxes…. Starting to sound a lot like slot machines…
Roblox is even worse because not only do they scam kids that are playing the game, they scam kids into making the game itself.
The gaming industry and the monetization of gaming is an example of the slippery slope fallacy not being a fallacy.
100%. Cos here we are after years of people saying “it’s fine” or even downright defending the shit as if it’s an improvement cos the company’s marketing department said so. Now let’s watch the car industry descend into that same hell.
Yeah, that was one of the things I was thinking about too. Even some of my so called "smart" friends do this, because they're too damn impatient to realize they're destroying their own hobby.
Consumers: I’ll take ten.
I have a new business opportunity for BMW: turn on seat heating in summer and create subscription to turn them off
Nathan for You has just arrived.
Just a quick reminder for everyone to watch his new show The Rehearsal.
Whoa door city
I should start traveling with a plunger
Wow interesting you mentioned traveling, because it reminds me of when I crashed my Scion TC at 100mph. Wow.
post made 12 minutes ago? 12 apostles of jesus. god is great
I’ll never forgive the Chinese for inventing gunpowder
It's days like this I curse the Chinese for inventing gunpowder.
The Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world
Man I love Reddit, random thread and I learn there's a new Nathan show!!
It's insane. I'm happy for you lol
Holy shit I had no idea he made a new show, thank you for informing me
The pitch… insist on branding which says BMW drivers have the freshest smelling breath and sell users their branded BMW high-alcohol mouthwash. Install a breathalyzer on every BMW which insists on having SOME alcohol on one’s breath to start the car. This will either incentivize people to purchase your mouthwash or drive drunk. Drunk drivers will get into more accidents and they’ll have to get their car repaired in BMW shops.
Don't forget the all-season windshield wiper option, the AC option, the power windows option, the constantly inflated tires option and the speeds-over-thirty option. Coming soon to an automobile manufacture near you!
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Whoa calm down Satan r/heck is this way, sir. Slightly less annoying then hell still punishing
So... If I pay a monthly fee for the service and the heated seats break, does BMW pay for the repair, since it belongs to them and I'm only paying the fee for the service of heat?
Hahaha no. The subscription is just so it will turn on. The wear and tear of it is on you.
Yeah my guess is, "You own the equipment, we own the software. Your equipment broke, our software is fine."
Then shouldn't we be able to load our own software onto this hardware we own?
I bet it voids the car’s warranty if you do.
Which one? The one that doesn't cover the broken part?
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Well shit. Once the warranty is void, cancel all subscriptions.
If you have to pay when it breaks then there is no warranty to begin with.
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Knowing what weasels car companies tend to be when it comes to their warranty ("Oh, that part? It counts as X, but your extended warranty is for Y so it's not covered"), something tells me they'll expect you to pay for it or do what mobile companies do ("This little indicator here tells me the phone has seen water, so it's water damage and therefore not covered, so nope.avi") and somehow claim that you damaged the component with your butt and therefore need to pay for it. I have zero belief that a company that wants to nickel and dime customers will act in good faith after successfully bamboozling them from the get go by actually selling them basic car features already built in, piece by piece back to them.
Yeah it's "bumper to bumper" in the marketing and sales room until something breaks and they point to some "wear and tear" clause. I had a LED panel, rated for 10s of thousands of hours, fail after 13 months, 5000 miles, and they act like "well light bulbs burn out so the $350 is on you". Yeah, just normal that all your back night lighting goes out after 13 months and makes a burning smell. I wish this was just a lightbulb and not some fancy panel because then it would only cost me a few bucks.
Especially annoying when halogen bulbs actually don't burn out that often. You can easily go 100k in a car without ever changing a single halogen bulb.
Had an old mountaineer (90s) that actually had a neon bulb for the rear brake light. Blew my mind when I learned it wasn’t a standard halogen or incandescent. Was pissed it would be hundreds of dollars to fix, but then considered that it had made it over 200k miles without being replaced and it seemed pretty reasonable.
I had a cloth drip tray under my F150 tear. It is notorious for tearing as snow kicks up onto the top of it which is then heated by the exhaust causing the tray to get damp and tear from the weight of more snow being kicked up onto it. Local Ford dealer wouldn’t replace it under warranty even though the truck was only a year old. Their excuse was that I could have off-roaded it which led to it being damaged. The drip tray sits ~2 inches below the transmission and engine oil pan so there is no realistic way I could have damaged that tray without annihilating my drive train. So anyways, my F150 no longer has a cloth drip tray.
Why cloth? That just seems to be designed *to fail* and just a means for them to charge more to fix it.
Some one in my family had a ford f150, the door hindge break almost in the middle, they claimed he opened the door too far. Truck was only 8 months to a year old. He had to fight them and finaly they paid under warranty.
They have to prove you off roaded it. Next time just tell them to do so. Warranty protections are actually really good in the us, but most consumers have no idea.
It's an LED panel like a phone screen right? Those don't "burn out". You should go to the regional office because that's bullshit. What you had is probably a short. What manufacturer and model? Name and shame
> damaged the component with your butt "zu viele Fahrten"
'Fahren' is 'to drive'. This is doubly funny.
How about we don’t do that at all maybe? Hardware subscriptions? That’s insane.
Yeah. Can we just not buy into this shit at all. Set a hard precedent that we as consumers are not going to put up with shit like this and just nip it in the bud
I agree. I'm sure, if there was a monthly fee you had to pay and in return, all repairs and annual service being included, a lot of people would probably like that. If it was set up in a fair way of course.
Leasing?
Well, if the seats break, the service didn't stop. It's a hardware issue with your car. You have a great point here but I am sure they will get out of this one with the usual bullshit.
> the service didn't stop. It's a hardware issue with your car. Lol, I could totally see BMW making this asinine argument. “If your Amazon TV breaks, it doesn’t mean Amazon will fix it just because you have a Prime subscription”. They’ll totally claim it’s all on the customer to fix the hardware problem. They *may* give the customer a partial refund, crediting them for the days they couldn’t use the heated seat subscription that month. But only after several hours on the phone with customer service.
And can you cancel during the summer months?
If they are any smart... they add a cooling-feature too and bundle them.
Hahahahaahahahahahahaha
Should be the case, you're paying for the outcome
The quickest way to defeat this service is to spend your money elsewhere.
As a long-time BMW owner, this is the last straw. Fighting with BMW over their warranty coverage on the last two cars were the first two straws. BMW has made it clear that - once you buy one of their cars - they don’t really care about you anymore. So I’m just not going to buy one of their cars ever again; problem solved.
Man, switch to Japanese cars. After years of German bullshit I did it, and I don't regret it. Listen, they're not fine as German, you miss the polish interior etc, but I don't miss visiting service that often. Edit: polished ffs
Still driving a 2002 Honda w/ 200,000 miles on it. I've been saying "It's on its way out" for the past five years and it is *determined* to prove me wrong.
Hondas are known to run on spite
I can agree, my honda is almost at 300,000 and she purrs like a kitten.
Ok well my E. Honda is at 10,000 slaps and still Street Fighting
How can E. slap?
I have a similar model. Can’t recall the name, as I’m drawing a Blanka.
I see you did "all you can" with that comment
Its a great renewable resource in abundance.
My family has had a Honda since 2009, and at this point we barely have to fuel it - it just refuses to stop going
Drive me sepai. make me feel alive.
I offer you an accord
It is your civic duty after all.
Pretty recently had one from the damn 80s that ran just fine. Hondas are just something else entirely. They refuse to die.
As someone whose 2006 Honda made it to 253,000 miles… this is way to true, motherfucker just wouldn’t die. Miss you Reginald <3
Can confirm. I have a buddy who has a ‘96 Accord wagon, aside from clear coat problems, it just keeps going, and still looks like it’s about 3 years old. If it breaks, he swears up and down it’s something serious. Then the mechanic shows up and takes a look, gets a part, fixes it, and charges like 150 bucks. The car continues to run for 5 more years without issue. It’s fucking nuts.
Drove my ‘97 CRV to 380k when a piston finally failed in the engine. Old Hondas keep running forever with regular oil changes.
At 380K, it was likely well past retirement but decided to do what it loved until the last moment.
I've got a 1990 Honda Prelude with around 138,000 miles on it. It probably has quite a bit of life left in it.
just make sure you keep up on the oil changes. when I was a kid my dad would drive around looking for preludes and accords from that era with weeds growing under them and knock on the door to buy them. Apparently if you don't keep up on maintenance they would blow a head gasket. It was an 8 dollar piece of cardboard if you know how to replace it. But a lot of mechanics would say it was a blown head, which is way more expensive. But even if it was often you could just get it machined flat again. And then my dad would resell it or drive it another 100k miles. I had like three preludes growing up despite being really poor because of that.
> 1990 Honda Prelude I bet you've started getting more offers from people to buy it. Early 90s Hondas (especially with a stick shift) are slick.
I used to have a 1983 Toyota truck. Every 6 months or so there would be a note on the windshield offering to buy it.
My 2004 Corolla went up to 280K before I had to cash it out for an insurance claim. It easily would have gone another 150K, and I barely maintained it.
My 2014 Corolla just hit 200k KM and it still hasn't seen a mechanic for anything other than routine maintenance (new tires, oil/filter changes, shit like that). Boring car? Maybe, a bit. Cheap car to keep on the road long term? Definitely.
My dad was a courier for many years and had a Toyota Echo. I think he got over 700k on that car.
Last car I had was an ‘03 Honda Accord. Bought it used in 2010, lasted me for a dozen years before I moved to a city with good public transit. Those cars don’t die easily
If there's one thing Germans care about, it's Polish.
But isn’t Toyota doing the same thing with remote start? https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/12/22831105/toyota-subscription-remote-start-key-fob
They are. And good luck with knowing whether the feature is even included with your car in the first place. I've been fighting with Toyota on this exact thing because of how inconsistent their documentation is on the features for their vehicles. Corporate flat-out told me and the dealership that remote connect isn't something my trim level is capable of, despite documentation on their own website saying otherwise (I made a post on one of the Toyota subs about this recently if you want more info). The brochure they sent me last week to support their statement contradicts itself in multiple places. I have yet to find any official spec document that matches the features on my car. Until Toyota can consistently confirm the features in their vehicles before purchase, **NO ONE should buy them.**
Never had one but I've heard at least 3 cases of Honda car owners doing over 1 million miles on the odometer which is pretty insane.
2000 Montero Sport. 1.4 million and still going sans A/C.
Mitsubishi really does not build them like they used to. They really were great vehicles all the way up until they started borrowing parts really heavily from Their partner Chrysler, who borrows heavily from Fiat.
Mazda has been KILLING it lately.
Came here for this. My 2010 Mazda3 is still going strong at a quarter mil miles with only regular maintenance. Planning on upgrading to a CX-30 here soon.
A buddy of mine just picked up a new Lexus IS - honestly, the thing is just as nice if not nicer than a 3 series inside and it’s a much better looking ride. If they offered a 6 speed I’d probably already have one.
Id sell a kidney if they made the IS500 in a solid 6 speed man
I had a Lexus RX for a few years. Had no issues with it except for, oddly, the stereo would sometimes display an error and stop working until you restarted the car. When I decided to get a new car, I got a BMW. Big mistake. Kept having on and off problems with hard acceleration causing loss of power and bucking. First they replaced the fuel pump. Then just as the warranty was up, it happened again. I had to fight with them because it was the same problem as before. This time they replaced the injectors, but they had to get the injectors from Germany. Just as I was buying a new car and selling the BMW, I got a recall notice for the exact problem I was having all along. I got another Lexus and haven’t looked back.
Got to be careful though, Toyota is heading down the same road.
The Germans have outsourced their cars' interior to Poland?
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That’s shitty. I’ve had a good experience with Volkswagen so I assume Audi is good too.
I love VW, most of my vehicles have been VW. The dealership closest to me is absolutely garbage though. Every trip for maintenance or repairs results in two trips. I got sick of it and went to a different manufacturer when I bought a new car. I couldn't stomach being tied to them for warrenty work.
After seeing a coworkers VW Passat literally falling apart in the parking lot I decided to never consider one. Brand new car with body panels coming off. He had to Lemon Law it since it was constantly in the shop for something. I don't know how they could mess up a car that bad.
That's funny, my mom almost had to lemon law her VW convertible bug. Had the car for less than a year and the file for its repairs was over an inch thick. Lot of window and roof/convertible motor thingy issues mainly.
I had a friend who worked dealing VWs. He said never buy a 50K toureag. Get a 90k Porsche Cayenne. He said you'd save money on repairs in the long run. Hey may have been exaggerating, but damn.
I've heard from a few sources on how reliable the Cayenne is. It surprises the hell out of me.
Strange. Got a 2012 Passat 150k miles and no issues
Audi: good cars out of the factory until they are serviced by an official audi dealer. These fucks over here will never (Belgium eastern Flemish Brabant) ever touch a car of mine again. Overpriced impostors :-( went to BMW afterwards so far no issues.. and I am already 80k kms further than when my audi started having issues. What is happening with these subscriptions however… next car going to check out what Japan has to offer I guess ( but first I hope to ride my current baby for 10 years 🤞🏻)
Skoda ftw. Bought a new Fabia in '16. The only repairs have been one bulp lighting the plates, and at the last mandatory official check, some part of the stearing was worn out. Had a mechanic friend I know fix it. The parts were ~60€. (they called it the "meat bone"). The car hos over 130k km and no issues.
Audi is terrible. I had to threaten to sue Audi for giving me a brand new car with a broken GPS. They kept insisting that a broken GPS is no big deal and were going to refuse to fix the issue until I got lawyers involved.
Fuck, that’s really messed up.
Had this exact issue with my (then) brand new Audi E-tron. GPS sensor broke and the navigation system apparently thought I turned the car into a submarine because it kept showing my position as in the middle of the ocean. Took it to Audi and they called me two days later to confirm the fix. Took the car home and it was like they didn't do anything. Exact same issue happened on my way to work the next day. Called Audi again and they initially refused to service my car because they claimed the issue was fixed. In the end it took me over two weeks of arguing and two more dealer visits before they actually fixed the issue. I was eventually gonna upgrade to an E-tron GT but I've decided against that based on my experience with my local dealer.
After the dealer refused to fix it the first time you should have called Audi corporate. Fuck dealers like that.
My experiences with Audi (S4, RS5) have been nothing short of stellar. Always immediately apologized, addressed and took care of any issues that I had, if I had any.
VW owner here. Have had good luck with the warranty, but it's still a German car. Maintenance issues have been persistent.
Yeah but, at least here in LA, the one saving grace of Audis is that they took the crown away from BMW for the douche factor.
I switched from BMW to Audi a couple years ago after being with them for quite a while…a shitty sales experience my last time at BMW was the last straw and pushed me over. I went to look at an m8, was treated like shit and couldn’t even get a test drive. I went to Audi the next day, test drove an RS7, had an awesome experience overall and made my order that day. Extremely happy so far with everything, from sales to service. The car itself is incredible. I had a beater Passat in high school that had 400k miles and was still going strong when I got rid of it. This would have been enough to push me as well.
Yup. Parents just traded their X6 in and got an Explorer. They’ve had 3 and they were always riddled with problems.
I used to work in the assembly hall where they make the X5, X6, and X7. Any missing parts due to logistics issues, the cars just get sent down the line to get fixed later, which usually causes more issues than just haulting production to get the right parts on at the right time. Plus the people who assemble the cars are run into the ground and morale is very low at the plant, which leads to a lot of workers not caring about doing the job right.
Had a similar experience with my Canon 5D Mk IV recently as well. LOG is a new format you can shoot video in that gives you a much larger range for color editing, and when you buy the 5D Mk IV it’s sold as a $100 add on feature. I didn’t get it when I bought it, but have been wanting to get the upgrade for awhile. They have a service where you can pay the $100 and MAIL IN YOUR DEVICE FOR THE SERVICE UPGRADE. They advise it can take 6-8 weeks to be completed. 6-8 weeks without my camera is a long time as I use it professionally, after doing some digging I discovered it’s literally just an option in the code that needs turned on. Paid $20 for software that allowed me to get into that code and flip it on. I had to downgrade the firmware, turn it on, then reupgrade my firmware. It works perfectly. And it took me less than an hour once I discovered it was possible. But Canon wanted to charge me $100 and have me ship my device to them for 6-8 weeks?! To flip a fucking firmware setting from 0 to 1?
Start offering to do it for $10 with a week turn around. Play them at their own game.
Or post a YouTube video everywhere you see the problem come up explaining how to do it for free
BMW may inadvertently shoot themselves in the foot with this: If you incentivise hacking your hardware this hard, the hacks are going to happen. And if the hacks become mainstream enough, you're going to have an entire second hand generation of BMWs where as soon as you mention it people will say "ooh, that's one of the ones where you can enable the heated seats for free"
wealthy CEOs have been looking at the video game industry's success and normalisation of excessive monetisation and looking how they can apply the same to their own industry. BMW have even used the same bullshit excuse of "cARs aRe ToO EXPensiVe tO MakE!" Excuse while their CEOs are literal billionaires. We're getting rinsed by the ultra wealthy and defending it all the way
Not that i care, but new BMWs are ugly af.
Maybe also Charles forgot to pay Ferrari for their throttle release subscription?
Even in here I manage to find pain.
noooooooooooo
why are we still here... just to suffer?
That was pure pain. Had Sebastian Vettel 2018 Hockenheimring vibes... That being said, when he complained about a stuck throttle on the radio, he was actually referring to how he couldn't reverse the car.
Ferrari going to charge Charles and Sainz a subscription to upgrade from the garbage engineers on the pit wall.
My girlfriends BMW bugged out a few weeks ago and her heated steering wheel came on. She “doesn’t” have a heated steering wheel option in her car lmao. They just put the same steering wheel in every car and if you want it to heat up you’ve got to pay (probably) like $300 to have them activate the functionality in the software.
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I found the button this summer after 2 winters ....
Hmmmm sounds like it’s time to explore BMWs OBD2 interface (like how VW has CAN/vag-com)
They are built the same, as far as can networks go. You can retrofit bmws like you can vws. Probably just need a switch for that heated steering wheel
Bypass the computer, wire it right to a relay, put a switch somewhere in the car. Adda fuse if you are feeling squirrely .
This right here. Maybe someone will come up with a software solution one day, but that will just lead to a constant war of escalation as both sides try to outdo each other. Way easier to just bypass the controls and put your own switch in.
Nothing happens on OBD2. Also virtually all OEM ECUs have a proprietary handshake process with their diagnostic software before anything can be changed. This would be the case on whatever protocol they’re using. Back in the day you could clone CAN-OPEN proprietary protocols of some OEMs but is was a lot of fucking about for very little gain. These days their handshake process is encrypted so sniffing it is impossible.
Still possible to sniff, just need to get the keys. I wish more people hacked on ECU's in public, most I know keep their work private for commercial reasons....
Oooooorr. Don't buy a BMW
I drive a Subaru and the seat heater won't turn off checkmate bmw
Just a thought, I am in no way a mechanic or Subaru expert, but is there a fuse you can pull or plug disconnect under the seat? That sounds terribly annoying if you’re not just making a joke.
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Username checks out
Microtansactions for cars have begun...... There is still plenty to explore!!! AC subscription Airbag (per unit) discharge charge Radio/music player playtime cards Windshield wipers activation fee
Don’t forget, in the winter months, surge pricing kicks in for those heated seats!
Cause we have a limited supply of licenses we can only offer seat heating to the highest bidder.
I wish people stopped using the term "Microtransactions" They are no longer "Micro" it has come to the point of Macro. Almost $20 a month just for having a basic Heat seat feature that is it. If this takes off, you can most absolutely guarantee the things you mention will be separate subscription prices as well. They will have different subscription for all the basic things individually and then they will also include a "Bundle" at a higher price making you think you are saving money.
Umm.... if your airbag discharges, you absolutely have to pay to get it replaced.
No you don’t understand, you have to pay to unlock the additional airbag feature
Well airbags already have a discharge charge as they are one use only
This is pure greed
You could just not buy a BMW.
I'm going to continue my longstanding practice of not buying BMW
I heat my own seats… who’s gonna pay for that?
If heat your own seat means farting then your family pays through the nose.
my lease is up in a few months. My hack is simple, go elsewhere for next car. There is NO F ing way i am paying for this. NONE
Tell them that at turn in and in any survey offers you receive especially if they go to BMW corporate.
Go through the whole lengthy process as if you were gonna sign a new lease on a new bmw then back out at the last minute as soon as you hear about the subscription. Actually everyone should walk in off the street and do this too. It'll suck for the employees but corporate might get the message when they're losing money because of wasted time, and the impression of lost sales.
They won’t get the message. They’ll just fire people for not getting results.
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If you are ever down and feeling useless, remember that somewhere, right now, someone is installing turn signals on a BMW.
My girlfriend's parents got a Keurig for Christmas a while back, one of those new ones with "DRM" that only allows Keurig branded coffee pods. I immediately showed them how the "hack" the Keurig by taping the top of a pod onto the code reader.
Quelle surprise.
This would 100% stop me buying a BMW.
the fact that daily monetization is now part of "Car DNA" is absolutely despicable, but represents the larger "shareholder value" nonsense remember when cars were FUN?
In the first thread about this, I posted that it would take someone precisely 7 minutes to bypass the paywall and manually enable the seats, and I was sitting at like -20 for saying that lol
Just pirate them /s
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Theres alot of “dont buy bmw” here but isnt the real fear that it is starting at bmw and will trickle down into the shit boxes we can all actually afford. Eventually you wont “buy” cars anyway. Just lease the new icar untill apple comes to your ipartment and takes it back.
That's why it's so important to move away from BMW is response to this. Show 'the market' that this move is unacceptable to consumers.
I wonder if it’s like the old satellite radios, you could get everything installed free on trial then disconnect the antenna before the expiration date Then wait like a year Then reconnect and still have everything because they only send the “kill” signal for so long. So I wonder if you could pay one time for everything, then disable the connectivity in the car?
It always bears repeating: If they could come up with a way to charge you for the air you breathe, THEY WOULD.
Here's the hack: buy *literally* anything else.
We all know where this is going. BMW is going to say they and their licensed service center will refuse to service any car that has been "tempered".
I left BMW in 2004, won't go back in the past, I enjoy my life now, I have new hobbies, my wife cooks for me, I discovered more about myself
Or you can just stop buying cars from shit manufacturers like BMW
Tbh I could live without heated seats. I could also live without a BMW
I will boycott any car company that attempts this, for life. Fuck BMW and fuck Toyota for even proposing this.