GM charges mandatory $1,500 fee for three years of optional car features | Hacker News Reader

GM charges mandatory $1,500 fee for three years of optional car features

theregister.com

16 pointshasseo12 comments

I sat right here and said I don't want any TruCoat!

We had a deal, here, for $19,500! You sat there and darned if you didn't tell me you'd get me this car, these options, without the sealant, for $19,500!

These guys, here. These guys! It's always the same! It's always more!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2LLB9CGfLs

Frustrating and tragic how he still proceeds to buy the car for a higher than agreed upon price. Argh!

p.s. How is what GM is doing legal? I suppose I have the option not to do business with them, fortunately there are lots of other car vendors.

My approach to buying a car (from a dealer), has always been to get the price over the phone, and say that you’ll be coming with a bank/cashiers cheque for that exact amount and not bringing any other means of payment with you. If they try to add any fees you walk out: you have no means to pay them.

Where I live, the banks won't give you a draught without the recipient's name on it. So you leave the dealership with cashier check in hand and then what? You have to go back and cash it yourself before getting a new one and heading off to the next dealership I guess, because you can't use it anywhere else.

Oh, I get the dealer's name (for checking purposes) as well - because yeah, a bank cheque with no specified recipient would be like carrying a similar amount of cash :-O

To be explicit, the outrageousness of this GM policy is that it forces the customer to pay in advance for GM's marketing promotion costs and then some for product optional features they may have no interest in.

An acceptable marketing approach to this problem would be for GM to make these features free for an initial period of one month or one year. After the initial period was up, interested customers could pay for the feature(s) to be continued.

This way GM would not be perceived as cheating customers interested in their base product, but not in their extra-cost optional products they are having trouble selling in an honest and non-coercive way.

This policy is a big mistake. The Board of Directors should remove GM's CEO for this and other bad business judgements.

> According to a GM spokesperson who spoke to the Free Press, the fee will be charged whether or not the customer activates OnStar Connected Services.

This is the key complaint. The services aren't active, but you have already paid for them. Presumably you have to provide additional information, like a credit card, to activate the services.

As for Onstar itself: I had a mercedes that came with a competing service for a year. We used it once, just to see if it worked.

It was always easier to just use the phone. This is the Alexa problem, but with humans at the other end.

Remember this is equivalent to raising the MSRP by $1,500 and saying the car comes with the first three years for free.

Does this allow them to perform some specific accounting for revenues generated by OnStar? For the consumer, it's equivalent. (I don't know if there's a sales tax implication if a service gets added to a vehicle price). For GM, they can point to a direct $500/year/vehicle revenue line.

Is this for own and lease? Or just own? For lease, does GM track their vehicles?

Article strongly implies it's for the vehicle, i.e. for both. The 3 years indicates a 3-year lease-holder will pay all of it.

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