BMW refused to pay for heated seats

Photo: autocar.co.uk

The German car manufacturer BMW has canceled the subscription service for heated seats. Peter Nota, a member of the BMW board of directors for sales and marketing, told about this in an interview with the British magazine Autocar. month;

The essence of the subscription was that a new BMW car already had all the necessary components for heated seats, but to unlock this feature it was necessary to pay.

According to the top manager, the company discovered that the popularity of the subscription was insignificant.

We thought we would provide an additional service to the customer by offering the option to activate it later, but the level of user acceptance was not so high. People feel like they've paid twice, which they don't, but I always say perception is reality. That's why we stopped it.

For the first time, BMW announced a subscription feature for heated seats, as well as some other paid services in 2020. The service became available in 2022, in particular to customers in South Korea and several other countries.

Other features BMW is locking in with the subscription (according to the company's UK digital store) include:

• steering wheels with heating for $12 per month;
• the ability to record video from your car cameras for $235 for unlimited use;
• the IconicSounds Sport package, which allows you to play engine sounds in your car for a one-time fee $117.

Since the company announced in 2020 that the operating system of its cars would allow for "microtransactions" with features like automatic high beams and adaptive cruise control, customers condemned the move as greedy and exploitative.

Prepared by Serhiy Daga