After my irate column of 16 August on the subject of people being asked to pay ongoing fees to use features in their cars, I think I’ve put my finger on what irritates me most about it.
It’s the idea that a manufacturer wants to retain some kind of stake in or ownership of a product long after you’ve bought and paid for it.
I’ve had a lot of correspondence on this. Only a few people have said they think it’s okay, but I suspect I will remain unconvinced regardless of the elegance of the arguments or analogies. The vast majority agree that it’s a grim practice.
Accordingly, BMW will stop charging such fees for hardware-based features (although not for software-based features) on its future cars.
Sales and marketing boss Pieter Nota told us at the Munich motor show: “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.”
My analogy is to imagine a property developer building 1000 houses to the same design, all with an en suite bathroom, because it’s cheaper than troubling the builders to make some with, some without.
So you buy one, move in and love it. What a place, and it’s all yours! But what’s that behind this door? Ah, now that, say the developers, is an extra bathroom, but you can only access it if you give them £30 a month in perpetuity.
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Automakers ref software defined features: Please, PLEASE hack our vehicle's software.
There is a better property analogy, which exists in reality. Some developers reserve a "ground rent" on long leaseholds, which buyers often overlook because they are initially modest, however, the developer is entitled to increase them dramatically over time (for no added value) and buyers are left with unsaleable properties which they thought they'd bought.
Never used everything built into any car I've owned,well not everyday, for instance,I've never used the flappy paddles to change gear because the auto and the Turbo engine are plenty fast enough.