online upgrades: Is it broken, a disabled feature, or customer gouging

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

You've bought the car, it contains the equipment, but the functioning of the equipment is disabled

**LINK**

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

BMW subscription for switching on a heated seat

[Ian ParkinParticipant @ianparkin39383]

It’s similar to sewing machines my wife bought a £15k brother machine and theres 3 upgrades available for extra features at additional cost which just buys a number to enter into the control panel £400, £300 at time

[Nick WheelerParticipant @nickwheeler]

It's just the electronic equivalent of fitting one wiring loom for all the cars, but not the equipment – I fitted factory front foglights and auto dipping rear view mirror to my 1992 BMW 525 by removing the blanking covers and plugging them into the wiring behind. My 1979 Chrysler Sunbeam was the same; cigarette lighter, clock, panel dimmer and foglights were all easy additions.

The German manufacturers would charge you for the air the car ingests driving off the delivery transporter if they thought they could get away with it.

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

Couldn't agree more Nicholas

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

I see it as the usual basic economics.

• Manufacturers are in business to profit by selling stuff
• Customers want stuff, and have to decide how much they are prepared to pay for it
• Stuff can be anything people want. Services, software, commodities, machines, or bling. Stuffs value varies with demand and availability.

Adding heated seats and other extras were originally done by car makers as specials; men and machines were diverted off normal production to add them, hopefully at a profit. Modern car factories are heavily automated, volume pushes prices down, making it likely cheaper to install 'extras' as standard and profit by charging the customer if he decides to pay for them. Not price gouging, because there is no obligation. Nor should the customer expect to be showered with freebies by generous manufacturers: they have to make the business pay in a ruthlessly competitive world.

As the UK and much of Europe is currently suffering a heat wave it's hard to imagine any customer round here wanting to pay at the moment for an extra hot bottom! Presumably, BMW's offer tempts drivers planning for winter or the sort who value a full set of accessories. The offer works because basic economics confirms that a pound in the bank today is more valuable than a pound that might turn up in six months.

Economics is interesting because customers don't behave rationally and their changing behaviour as a mass causes the cost of 'stuff' to vary unpredictably. Price gouging occurs when demand outstrips supply, which is often caused by foolish customer behaviours like panic buying. (Remember the toilet roll crisis when COVID kicked off?)

Once we've been fed and have a roof to live under, we tend to loose the plot in another way by spending money on fads and fancies. Good fun, but it does lead to unwise expectations, perhaps assuming god or politics will guarantee our personal wealth irrespective of what else is happening across the world. Actually wealth depends on hard-work, innovation and meeting customer needs rather than beliefs or alternative facts.

Customers often see the same situation differently: just as people prefer cats to dogs and vice versa, some of us enjoy paying big money for things others consider ill-judged. Personalised number plates are an example. Putting it politely, large numbers see them as evidence of having 'more money than sense' at best, and a much, much ruder word is commonly applied to drivers who have them! Nonetheless, I see personalised number plates all the time: their owners must have a different world view: I wonder who is right, or are both sides wrong?

Dave

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

When ME and MEW stop being available in printed form you will get the electronic version for a while. When they have worked out your pattern of reading and interests all the basic stuff will be part of your subscription and all interesting articles will be an extra fee. Like Sky movies have been doing for years.

[Anthony KnightsParticipant @anthonyknights16741]

Anyone with a bit of electrical knowledge could soon sort that out with an additional switch and some additional wiring.

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Posted by Anthony Knights on 14/07/2022 12:52:19:

Anyone with a bit of electrical knowledge could soon sort that out with an additional switch and some additional wiring.

I'll bet you they can't. BMW will have made sure of that by installing coded chips in the optional accessories that hook into the vehicle's CANBUS system and monitor what is on and what is off and will not allow accessories to function without the factory supplied — at a price — code. They would make it tamper proof maybe even to the extent of a heat sensor so they would know if you "hot wired" the seats.

BMW motorbikes have done this in recent years. If you have a minor bingle and damage your speedo/tacho instrument cluster, you can't just fit a secondhand unit off a bike from the breakers yard. The bikes computer system will not recognise it. They are coded at the factory and the Canbus system that connects it all to the central ECU will only work if all coded peripherals are present and accounted for. So you have no choice to buy the outrageously priced new BMW instrument cluster that comes with a new code number to install into your system via a computer link so it will "talk" to your old system.

Their ABS module, a common failure point due to corrosion in the brake fluid system, is the same. Secondhand one will not communicate with the bike's computer control system. So you have to pay the 2,500 Pounds for a new one, with a new code to put in and make it work. And you can't disable the old one and carry on without ABS because the Canbus computer system will pick that up as a brake fault and refuse to let the bike run.

Welcome to 1984.

The next step, is the EU is now demanding all new cars have a speed limiter that relies on GPS to know the speed limit in your location and will not allow your new car to exceed that speed. Tough luck if a 10 ton truck is bearing down on you and you want to get out of its way. Turn on your heated seats and say your prayers.

Edited By Hopper on 14/07/2022 13:13:30

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

So it must now be so cheap to get heated seats made in China that they can afford to fit them to all cars and just charge extra for those who want to use them. Ditto all other accessories. So they only have to produce one variant: ie the "car with the lot". Must be cheaper and less logistics than keeping a stock of cars in all variations and mixtures of variations until someone comes along who wants that exact combination of options. No doubt they price the "subscription" to cover the cost of the heated seats installed in all the other cars that don't use them.

Not really in the spirit of sustainability in this day and age. But I suppose people who cared about that would be buying a Tesla not a BMW.

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

Slightly off topic, but my Renault rear windscreen wiper works sometimes. When it works, you hear the relay clicking away. Asked Renault to replace the relay – NO, you have to buy the whole fuse board with relays attached. I casually said are the soldered into the fuse board – no, just plugged in, but to get to them you have to remove most of the plastic dash board, remove the fuse board which then looses all the info that the CANBUS system stores.

[Michael CallaghanParticipant @michaelcallaghan68621]

I have owned bmw,s for many a year. However in 2019 that all ended. My car was a 6 month old bmw 530i touring. It had all the toys, hud display, sun roof, adaptive led headlights and lots more. I was talked in by the tech, I just love tech. However within a few months the fun had gone out of ownership. The rear hatch would just open on its own account when parked up. Many a time I walked back to the car and found the hatch wide open and all my shopping on view. It went into bmw for a fix. Three weeks later, no fix. Two weeks after that I got the call that the car was ready to be picked up. Well it was undriveable, the gear change was all over the place, the sat nav did not work, the engine was lumpy. So back it went. I was told they had had to fit a new command unit, and it would not take all the software. Yet they expected me to take the car knowing it was totally broken. I asked for my money back, it took some doing and a few months but I got the cash back. Never again will I buy a bmw. They have cut so many corners to make the cars more profitable that they are next to useless if something goes wrong. And they wanted I think £300 for Apple car play. However I now have a vw passat, and they wanted wanted to turn the hands free on. They are all at getting has much out of the customers they can.

[peak4Participant @peak4]

A good friend of mine bought an optional heated seat for his motorcycle.
It's not as comfortable as the standard one, so he preferred to revert to that for the warmer months.
In order to change seats, he has to book the bike into the local service agent to have the ECU re-programmed.

I can understand why folk become fair weather bikers.

Bill

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

It's similar to the issue farmers have been having – according to various news media – with well-known tractor manufacturers. They can't get their machinery serviced by the agricultural engineers they may've worked with for generations, because of software-coded enablement of replacement components monopolised by the manufacturers' aftersales operation.

It changes the concept of ownership in that the buyer doesn't really own what they've bought, in the way we're used to owning vehicles or workshop machinery. They have civil responsibility but limited authority.

Ethically I think it's sharp practice.

Edited By Mick B1 on 14/07/2022 15:42:03

[Nick Clarke 3Participant @nickclarke3]

Posted by Mick B1 on 14/07/2022 15:40:46:

Ethically I think it's sharp practice.

Edited By Mick B1 on 14/07/2022 15:42:03

But isn't that like having a licence to use a computer program? You have a licence to only do what the software house wants you to do for as long as they want you to do it – provided you keep paying.

Basically BMW are more or less licencing their heated seats for an annual fee.

And while this appears to be novel I suspect there are far fewer BMWs out there than software licences so their new business model is only common practice elsewhere!

[JAParticipant @ja]

I have just bought a new, modern, petrol car. Part of its five week delivery journey from Europe was spent in the dealer's pre-prep workshop. When asked, the salesman explained that it took around a day to load the car's computer software. New cars are delivered to dealers without software to deter vehicle theft.

I may be wrong but aren't modern car electrics going over to common "busbars" and electronic switching for all accessories?

I least I can switch off my heated seats.

JA

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

A friend was a service engineer for ICL, he described a service call to install a memory expansion, he moved the link to enable the memory that was installed as standard but not enabled. The customer paid much more than the cost of a service call.

Mike

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Mike Poole on 14/07/2022 19:56:50:

A friend was a service engineer for ICL, he described a service call to install a memory expansion, he moved the link to enable the memory that was installed as standard but not enabled. The customer paid much more than the cost of a service call.

Mike

The ICL1906A I started on had 256k words of core memory installed, but my employer could only afford to pay to have 198k words* switched on. Must have been pricey because this was a machine expensively installed in it's own purpose built building, with a water cooled computer hall and office space for about 200 employees, plus it's own electricity sub-station, six rotary generators, and a 2MW diesel generator set. Originally worked on a 3-shift system, later cut to 2 after software efficiencies and giant 200Megaword disc drives were installed. Seriously expensive to run, but it saved an enormous amount of money, well over a billion in today's terms.

A curious thing I remember was that almost all the peripherals – line printers, card readers, paper tape, magnet tape and disc drives etc each cost roughly the same as an average home. Scary thatt it was more than half a century ago, but not as horrifying as that old bloke I see in my bathroom mirror every morning…

Dave

* words not bytes. Each word contained four 6 bit characters, so upper case only.

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 14/07/2022 21:05:48

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

Pat brought a disk into the office one day, probably 3ft in diameter and 1/4” thick, he had salvaged it after a head crash had seriously damaged it and had the idea of making a garden table with it. He worked on the 1900 series but I don’t know which models, Wikipedia seems to indicate that the 1900 series covered a wide range of machines, I remember Oxford Council and the Morris factory had 1900 installations from what he said. I worked with Pat from the early 70’s when he joined the Technicians department in the car factory, he was department manager when I joined the department in 1979.

Mike

[Anonymous]

When I was in University in London (City U) we had the original installation for the (then) ICT-1900. It was installed for us cheaply (!) as a test installation. It had a huge area to live in (3 labs combined) and replaced our old Ferranti Pegasus (with the punch-card girls who fell pregnant every 5 minutes).

[Bob Unitt 1Participant @bobunitt1]

Posted by Mike Poole on 14/07/2022 19:56:50:

A friend was a service engineer for ICL, he described a service call to install a memory expansion, he moved the link to enable the memory that was installed as standard but not enabled. The customer paid much more than the cost of a service call.

Mike

Years ago I used to look after some Honeywell mini-computers for a software developer. You could buy an upgrade to double the CPU speed, requiring an engineer visit. After a few upgrades I got to know the engineer quite well, and he showed me the single motherboard jumper that had to be removed to perform the upgrade…

[IanTParticipant @iant]

Many years ago, I was a senior field engineer for a mini-computer manufacturer and provided support services for some of the older systems when required.

I always checked jumper settings as a part of any diagnostic process – as customers sometimes would hear that cutting 'this link or that one' would speed throughput without realising that on some boards you also needed to change some components – the boards having different SKU numbers. Of course, if they screwed things up they would never admit it, just reporting a 'fault'. If I did find a modified board (wrong settings for the SKU No) the Branch Manager had to be informed – which usually resulted in a back service charge and sometimes a ticking offf for the site engineer.

Back to cars. My new (and very lovely) Italian car comes with a number of 'soft' features that will cease in 3-5 years time (unless I renew their subscriptions). Most of these features I can happily live without, although I do find it amusing to check that my car is still on the drive using my phone (saves me getting up and looking out the window but doesn't give me as much pleasure).

Of course, there are potential upsides to the 'soft' car. In Italy, car taxes prohibit most Italians buying the more powerful models of my car but enterprising enthusiasts there have discovered that a Stage 1 tune (just an ECU remap – no 'hard' upgrades required) can add another 80-100bhp – because the engine and supercharger are essentially the same (and until 3 years ago were exactly the same). In fact, you can purchase a switch from the top-of-the range 510BHP beast and fit it into the lowest powered version and then have a 'Race' mode to select – the softwear just reads the new switch.

I'm not sure I will ever re-map my car (it's more than quick enough for my needs) but others might choose to save £5-6K off list and then spend about £400 for a remap once the car is out of warrenty. So 'soft' features can have their upsides too.

Regards,

IanT

[John Doe 2Participant @johndoe2]

I cannot believe this – features "running out" on a car such as your new Italian car you have already bought and paid for?

It's the same with CAD packages. Does Paul McCartney have to pay Höfner or Fender or Rickenbacker every time he writes and releases a new song, or pay an annual licence? No he buys the instrument once and that's it. Yet a CAD owner has to pay a licence (if they want security and all the features or to use the CAD for designing items to be sold).

Bundling features that won't work until extra is paid is one thing, but how can it be legal to charge customers repeatedly for using what they have already paid for?

I remember at school when electronic calculators started appearing; some cheaper models in certain product ranges did not have the advanced functions, but actually it was only that the keys were not labelled with them. If you knew which combination of keys to press, the advanced functions worked !

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

I'm currently rather annoyed with Renault/Dacia. The dashboard has a spanner shaped service light position. Unfortunately, they decided to use the general engine fault warning light to indicate that a service is desired (as well as indicating that one might actually have an engine fault). This means that one needs to use an OBD2 reader to make sure that the car isn't complaining about being broken when it just thinks you need to pay for a service. To add insult to injury, the light can only be reset with Renault's proprietary software, which independant garages cannot get access to.

I have a feeling that this actually contravenes the 'right to repair' laws…

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by John Doe 2 on 15/07/2022 17:25:04:

… Does Paul McCartney have to pay Höfner or Fender or Rickenbacker every time he writes and releases a new song, or pay an annual licence? No he buys the instrument once and that's it. …

Many different ways of paying for things and musical instruments are no exception. Paul McCartney might buy his musical instruments outright but plenty of others hire them. Also possible when new instruments are invented that they can only be licenced. Not unlikely if software is involved.

Cars, vans, lorries, computers. houses and pretty much everything else can be leased: you hand over money but don't own anything.

Software is in the same class as printed material and entertainment. Buying a book doesn't transfer the Intellectual Property Rights. Paying the BBC licence fee or a Netflix subscription doesn't mean you own whatever is downloaded. Neither does watching content paid for by advertising. Software remains the property of it's creator, unless issued with a 'copy-left' licence. Microsoft is very different from Linux.

Rentals, mortgages, annuities, bonds, and shares etc also blur ownership. You don't own anything bought on a credit card until the loan is paid off. For a long time the majority shareholder in my house was a bank.

Stolen goods never belong to the purchaser – even if bought in good faith. The list of exceptions to outright ownership is endless, even before examples like cars are taken off the road by the MOT or congestion charges, and homes being compulsory purchased or requisitioned by the military.

The car situation is an interesting development; people are apparently buying cars without realising part of the deal is only a temporary licence to use. It would put me off buying the car! Best not to assume anything, as there's no reason why a contract should be simple: READ THE SMALL PRINT!

Dave

[Author]

Posts