I ended up calling and having OnStar cancel my "trial" in my 2018 era truck in 2019, to the point I instructed them to disable the OnStar lights on the mirror and everything. This was a task as they're very annoying and persistent...
Once that was done I originally pulled the daughterboard housing the entire modem but this bricked my compass and GPS. To keep those working I ended up altering the modem itself with a soldering iron per the pdf posted here:
The guy there on that forum did so in an effort to use your own sim with the HMI, but using 0 ohm resistors or just solder bridging the relevant connections is enough to prevent my vehicle from getting online, but leaves the GPS intact. You can test by trying to make phone/onstar/data related actions - it just won't work.
Another good measure is to remove one of the antenna leads, I forget which one is cellular primary, but the other is more GPS/aux. Doing it all this way allows you to still connect your vehicle to wifi should you so desire to, for updates and such.
There are other secrets and tricks to these things, including a git repo I cloned that is now gone from the public internet, where a guy figured out how to solder an EMMC reader to a few points on the mainboard to get and modify the filesystem.
They really go out of their way to keep you from owning your vehicle.
Also bought a device that lets me plug HDMI inputs into the truck, unfortunately some kind of refresh rate or resolution issue prevents it from working properly.
As an aside, if you bought and financed through GM, they may have attached a secondary GPS/cell tracker to your OBD2 port, and used sticky tape to hide it somewhere - make sure to remove that once you're not financed through them as well (it is illegal to do so I believe before using alternative financing or paying it off).
That seems like a lot of work to own something. At that point I will go with an alternative brand that doesn't have those kind of system or subscription. The problem will be when all the brands have something similar.
Even if it doesn't have all that, if you finance most vehicles they will install a poorly hidden cell tracker that usually draws power from the OBD2 port.
It is legally problematic to remove until you switch financing...
In addition, if tracking bothers you, your tire pressure sensors all have trackable (if there are enough sensors around a city) IDs, and if bluetooth is on, and it probably is, that as well...aside from your cell phone...
My next (secondary) vehicle will 100% be a dumb vehicle from the 90s or earlier.
They've been around for decades, both for thru-hole and surface-mount. When you're using automated machinery, you don't want to mess around with wire jumpers; a zero-ohm resistor can be inserted or pick-and-placed using the same automated equipment that normal resistors are placed with.
> if you bought and financed through GM, they may have attached a secondary GPS/cell tracker to your OBD2 port
ALL buy-here-[pay|finance]-here car dealerships put a GPS tracker in your car. Where it's located and how it's connected to your car's electrical system will vary, but they ALL do it using[0] companies[1] like[2] these[3].
"By including this plan as standard equipment on the vehicle, it helps to provide a more seamless onboarding experience and more customer value,” GM spokeswoman Kelly Cusinato told Automotive News in an email.
"More customer value" clearly worth 125$/month.
You're basically paying > 100 bucks a month for something that allows them to collect and sell your data to third parties.
EDIT: as people mention in reply, I have absolutely zero reading comprehension skills and the fee is actually 1500 for three years not one. Still... I pay less for cellular service with near limitless data and voice.
There are taxes too depends where you are. So likely closer to 50. At least calculate that way give oneself an assurance 41.67 is fixed for 3 years. It could be likely they intend to charge maybe 30/mth and then ramp up to 60/mth towards the end. So at the end of 3yrs, it will be 60x12x3 instead of 41.67x12x3. We got official near 10% inflation (unofficial near 20%). I doubt that 41.67 is what they have in mind for coming months.
Seems they do, more or less. I once had a GM vehicle where the OnStar system (not activated) would occasionally fail to turn off and drain the battery overnight. Although, once I discovered the source of the problem yanking the fuse made it go away.
I am not completely sure, but it appears to be a one-time charge for an initial three-year subscription.
I have no idea whether GM is also making some not-quite-essential but both simple and useful features only accessible with an ongoing subscription, but I have my opinion as to whether it will do so, if it is not doing so already. Plenty of other manufacturers do this.
Visible - $25 a month on Verizon network, unlimited data and calls, no throttling. Though...after hitting > TiB usage per month for a few months in a row they did send me a warning, but didn't cut me off
I ran into this pricing a chevy duramax recently. On their site one can "build" a vehicle by customizing packages. I don't really know what this "build" process is for because at the end it just searches for dealers that have inventory with n out of x features one selected, or "request a quote" which is really the same thing. It's a very misleading process in my opinion.
Anyway... I tried removing OnStar and the only way I could do that was to remove all the feaures I wanted and also needed. e.g. towing package, bigger engine, etc... The only way I could "build" one without Onstar was to have a bare-bones model with nothing else added. Ill try again in 5 years or so.
It searches inventory first because there’s no sense in ordering one to be built if there’s one sitting around already. “Request a quote” is a synonym for “because of dealer protection laws you can’t actually do anything on the website so now go talk to a dealer who can actually order one.”
no sense in ordering one to be built if there’s one sitting around already
I think that's the catch. Given the number of customization options in the website, I would find it highly unlikely that there would be one already built with the options I selected, so I will always be guided down the path of working with a dealer.
Had this same problem, I think it's just the web sites. Every now and then you can find pre-builts with all the features you wanted and just the features you wanted so you may just have to order it through a human being. Case in point I couldn't customize a Camry on the Toyota to have a factory installed alarm system and one day I was browsing their inventory and there was one. Od course someone bought the car and probably sold it to Carmax for a few thousand profit, but the used car market scam going on now with car hoarding and price inflation is another story.
At certain times they open up building to actually order it and sent to a dealer for you to purchase. Most of the year it seems they do not accept orders. Similar experience on Ford.com for most vehicles. I would agree though, it's very frustrating.
It's even more fun when you realize the dealer price they show for the ones they match is MSRP and the dealer is actually selling it for thousands more, plus the dealer adds accessories so you get to overpay for things like cargo nets and floor mats.
Meanwhile in EU, I can configure any Volkswagen-group car down to the finest detail and have it delivered to a dealer of my choice, and the price will be the same across all dealers.
I've had a great time getting car salesmen to include floor mats for free.
One guy literally tried to tell me he couldn't do that - and I had to spell it out for him. Step one, agree to give me floor mats. Step two, you walk over to the service dept, buy floor mats, and put them in my car. Step three, congratulations you made a sale and commission - but you had to buy floor mats for my car.
I dislike boomer tactics as much as anyone (especially the bizarre trope of yelling at people to sound more right) but car salesmen are nearly as degenerate as realtors so I do take pleasure in this kind of a transaction where I'm the boot of the joke.
> Similar experience on Ford.com for most vehicles
At least for Ford F-series trucks, you must place the order through a dealer. You can build the truck online and take the build to the dealer for the order. In my experience the online build tool is sophisticated enough that it properly reflects the real order entry system. Not sure if it’s the same for the rest of the models.
> at the end it just searches for dealers that have inventory
Most U.S. states have laws requiring car sales only through dealerships. That's why you can't just directly buy a vehicle fully customized from a manufacturer.
I think you may need to get around the "Fleet" wall to get a truck the way you want it. One of my friends recently purchased a GMC with a 7,000lb towing capacity / gooseneck. It was a pretty storied process for him. He ended up taking delivery several states east of where we are.
I would be very interested in this story. I myself am trying to buy a completely bare bones (no power windows, no CD player, no nav, no speaker upgrades, no leather, no lane assist, no blind spot monitoring, no reverse camera, bo auto tailgate,). I just want a bare bones work truck with air conditioning and a diesel motor.
The more I read about car subscriptions and the "connected" nature of current and upcoming vehicles the more inclined I am to keep my current car running until parts for it are literally unobtainable.
Environmentalists/climate helpers can’t agree about anything. People worried about carbon will usually want you to keep the car, but others assume that the engine is more polluting.
I was on a local council once and some lunatics were arguing about cups. One faction believed that styrofoam was better because it was lighter, the others pearl clutched and demanded a styrofoam ban and wanted to ensure that a certain type of wax was used on cups.
I wish I was a rich person who could have stockpiled circa 2003-5 Honda Pilots and Odyssey’s. IMO the perfect family car.
My Pilot had 245000 miles and was fantastic, I had to get rid of it last year. The new car I got to replace it sucks, with the stupid touchscreens and shittier interior.
In the US you can do that already, but I wonder if it will be cheaper for decades to come to purchase a used commercial vehicle (typically a pickup truck or van) and overhaul it as long as the frame is good. The amount of information mechanics can find online these days about some pretty esoteric rebuilding procedures boggles my mind. What I see folks refurbishing in Eastern Europe, Africa, South America, Pakistan and elsewhere to keep on the roads is astonishing (albeit only possible in current markets as we implement them with high-skill, low-cost labor).
There are a hell of a lot of light-to-heavy duty diesel pickups in the US and the aftermarket offerings are enormously deep and broad, for example. I imagine that will take awhile to fade away, and if metrology gets advanced and cheap enough, and integrates well enough with machinists on the floor, I can see a possible future where these parts live on in electronic form to the point where reproducing them from scratch gets into the realm of economically feasible.
I'm not aware of any dumb TV manufacturer after over a decade of smart TVs. I'm afraid the demand for dumb devices is simply not sustainable. People get accustomed to the new normal very quickly.
I'm hoping for this as well. It's probably going to be way more expensive than normal though, considering how efficient car manufacturing is and how hard it is for new players to get into (and the loss of revenue for not having "smart" features)
This is very unlikely, as the regulations are set up to protect the incumbents. Just to sell a new vehicle in the US you have to crash test several copies of the vehicle.
Like how Apple ruined the MacBook Pro from 2016-2020 (butterfly keyboard, loss of ports, loss of magsafe) and I was holding on desperately to the 2015 model until they gathered their wits again.
I doubt the parts for mine will ever become unobtainable, at least the parts that make it stop and go, as there's a huge aftermarket. Indeed, I suspect the "smart" stuff I've added will become unrepairable first.
(It's a stereotypical American "land yacht" with some performance mods and a bit of computer monitoring --- not control.)
Because they are earnest. If your behavioral choices negatively affect others, that must be accounted for somehow, either through paying extra so we collectively can deal with the fallout, or banning it, if it causes too extreme of an effect on others. Negative externalities must be accounted for, this isn't a controversial statement to anyone other than entitled people.
If this is the excuse being stated, but there is some ulterior motive, then that's another thing.
For what its worth, this is a massive pet-peeve of mine.
I forget exactly who does it, TicketMaster, or Axios, or something - will say something like:
> Ok, two tickets for the concert; that's $120
I'm like great. No idea how you came up with that number, but I'm good with it.
Then they'll come back after I'm locked in and say:
> There's also a convenience fee of $30. Your total is $150.
I'm livid at this point - which is totally irrational; because had they just told me the cost was $150 up front - like an idiot, I'd have just said "well, that's the price. Here's money."
Instead, I'm left with a sour taste in my mouth and hate all ticket vendors who I feel pulled a fast one on me.
I'm sure you could make the argument that a greater percentage balk at the $150 number than would walk at $120 + $30, so you make more money. That's fair, but to me it feels like I was tricked for no good reason.
Because Wall Street treats subscription revenue differently than one time income. So if they can put that $1500 on the books split up over three years as recurring subscription, that helps their stock price.
I'm going to guess it's because when you buy a car, you don't buy it from GM. You buy it from the dealer. That $1,500 option can become whatever inflated price the dealer puts it.
While if it's a subscription from GM, it's $1,500 and that $1,500 directly goes to GM.
Because the optics of a car company disabling a feature that was included with the car after three years unless you start paying for it and continue paying for it indefinitely are even worse.
Similar reasons to why things are priced at $x.99 or why car prices are often quoted in per-month payments or why mail-in rebates make you mail something in rather than just give you a discount. Or why the dealer doesn't even mention the mandatory "prep" charge until after you've shaken hands on the deal.
Perfectly rational people may factor everything in properly... but the world is woefully short of perfectly rational people.
They could do that and I'm sure they considered it. In the end, the consumer pays the same price. But I'm sure there are some internal accounting games going on. The $1500 is booked over the next three years, not all at once. So I'm guessing the accountants may have a plan.
I don't want to re-type the story here, but I had a "fun" time getting OnStar to cancel the demo service when I purchased my pickup several years ago. Story is in another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21816479#21826049).
The USA really needs better consumer protection laws. In my country that would clearly be an illegal bundled sale and illegal bait and switch. If you advertise product A for X amount, then a customer with X amount in their pocket should be allowed to walk out with product A, any deviation from that should be illegal.
(slightly off topic, but in my country consumer laws also mandate that sticker and advertised prices must be the final price including all taxes. The standard USA practice of stickers/adverts with pre-tax price is also absurdly anti-consumer).
Sales tax in the US is not a Value Added Tax, so putting just the post tax price on the sticker is not actually enough, the sticker would need the pre-tax price too, as some purchases can be exempt from sales tax.
Most VAT based countries have a single VAT rate for the whole country (or possible a country-wide set of rates for different types of products). The United States is not like that. Even if we consider an individual state as the equivalent to Country, each state does not have one consistent sales tax rate.
Typically the state will have one rate, the county can have its own rate, the city its own rate, and potentially even special districts with their own sales tax rates.
That complicates things a lot. For example, if a law required the shown prices to include tax, it would mean that an online website cannot show you the price until you have entered your exact street address. Most people don't want to tell the website where they live just to find out a price that may not be any good.
The variable tax rate means that if the law applied to advertised prices shown on say TV, it would not be possible to have nationwide advertisements that show a price, or even statewide advertisements, or in some cases not even city-wide advertisements. (Unless they set a post-tax price based on what they can sustain with the highest tax rate, which means charging people in lower tax areas a higher price than they would otherwise have charged, just to be able to mention a price at all on TV). Unless the law allowed "between $x and $y depending on your local tax rate" (where X and Y are based on the lowest and highest tax rate for the advertising area).
Most people who want such post tax pricing laws would not be terribly happy with a law that allowed advertising a range like that.
I've heard this excuse, that tax situation is too complicated, and never understood it. The store knows to charge me the correct value, including all appropriate taxes, when I come to pay. So the data clearly is there, and therefore choosing not to show it to me up front is indeed bait-and-switch. They're telling me a price that is not going to be what they'll actually charge me.
> Unless the law allowed "between $x and $y depending on your local tax rate" (where X and Y are based on the lowest and highest tax rate for the advertising area).
What's wrong with this solution?
Getting rid of sales tax would be the best solution imo but complicated
Many landlords and development companies add on percentage based fees. Some merchants will report these on recipes as PIF Tax (Property Improvement Fees). These are not a technically a tax, but impact the consumer the similarly
Even if you are tax exempt or buying non-taxable items like food, the property own still collects PIF.
PIFs are in the contract between the landlord and merchant the actual details of how fees work are not publicly know. Merchants may benefit from actual property improvements, or the fees are entirely a profit stream for the landlord.
In my state if I photograph a wedding and give the client a flash drive of the photos, I need to charge them sales tax on the entire wedding. If I just deliver the photos online, there’s no sales tax.
If they (or a family member) later purchase prints through their online gallery that are essentially drop shipped to them? Who the hell knows.
Stickers in Europe show both pre and post-tax prices. Online sales just charge you with the tax of their origin country. Anyway difficulty to advertise is no reason to not show real prices on in-store stickers.
>Typically the state will have one rate, the county can have its own rate, the city its own rate, and potentially even special districts with their own sales tax rates.
There's a simple solution to this: stop doing this. Ban cities and districts from having their own sales taxes. There's no reason to allow this. In my country, there's a single national sales tax that's the same everywhere.
The US's problems are a result of its own stupid decisions.
I live in one of the few states in the US with no sales taxes. It boggles my mind when I go to a store in another state, and buy a $0.99 soda, and the total comes to $1.07. I have also never understood why the price isn't including the tax.
We had taxes bundled in the price for years in Canada. And it was changed to being separate and added on at the point of sale. The rationale given at the time, was that people should know the actual price of the things they're buying, and how much extra they're paying to support government. Essentially, the argument is that the cost of government shouldn't be invisible.
Yeah, that's one of the many benefits of living in New Hampshire. But what boggles my mind is why people in other states are willing to put up with sales tax at all. You're already being taxed on income. Its just the government double-dipping at that point.
The sales tax rate can change (sometimes from city to city). It is easier to keep track at the register than it is to keep track in the aisles. That's my best guess.
While I like the idea of having the tax shown on the price tags... tax rates change a lot in most places in the US. The cost to change all the price tags in a store everytime the rate changes, and to do it overnight, would be crazy. Maybe once everyone uses digital eink price labels...
The price of the soda is $0.99, so that's the advertised price.
When you negotiate salary with a new employer, do you include the employer paid Social Security and Medicare taxes? Do you say I require $100,000 or $107,650 (Social Security is $6,200, Medicare is $1,450)?
How on earth is this related to consumer protection? It's not as if they are forcing this retroactively. They're just increasing the price for a car by $1500 and including more functionality.
They are a free enterprise that can offer whichever products at whatever prices they want. And consumers are free to vote with their wallets.
Its frightening how many people think we need the government to regulate the most minute details of everything. Vote with your dollar, period, that is the only way the right feedback gets to the right issues.
Is the cost of living in your country, on average, higher or lower than in the United States?
As far as I can tell there are a vanishingly small number of problems where "new laws" are the optimal answer. Increased regulatory oversight generally leads to ossified markets with higher costs. Many of the most reviled monopolies throughout American history got there in no small measure because of government protection in the form of "regulation".
In this case, there are multiple car manufacturers available to Americans from around the world - if this makes GM vehicles more expensive or causes a consumer backlash that damages sales, GM will change their behaviour. That seems like a more responsive mechanism than piling on new regulation to dictate which types of fees are okay and which aren't.
> Many of the most reviled monopolies throughout American history got there in no small measure because of government protection in the form of "regulation".
This is simply not true. The common reviled monopoly strategies include price fixing, collusion, natural monopolies, markets with high barriers to entry, network effects, and others in addition to regulatory capture. Regulations that contribute to monopolistic tendencies are "vanishingly small" in number, you just hear about them a lot because people don't like them.
> if this makes GM vehicles more expensive or causes a consumer backlash that damages sales, GM will change their behaviour.
It may be time to walk through history and see all the dark patterns that were solved by regulation. Before the EPA, it was common for manufacturing companies to dump industrial waste directly into rivers, for example.
Consumers only have so much energy for backlash, and your theoretical system requires everyone to have an encyclopedic memory of all the shitty things that every company does and weigh all of that in their minds when making consumer choices. It's impractical and impossible. Regulatory agencies are a much better system and that's why every modern economy depends on them.
It clearly isn't. The power and knowledge asymmetry between producers and consumers is such that most producers can get away with abhorrent behaviour pretty much all the time with no significant repercussions. That's why boycotts don't work, among other things.
While I agree this would be ideal, actual prices on cars actually wouldn't be possible in the US. For many (most?) states, for cars/trucks, you pay sales tax based on where you LIVE not where you purchased the car so the price would be different per buyer.
Also, for most cars, paying sticker would be a rip off anyway. Unless there is a shortage going on, no one expects to pay sticker price.
> (slightly off topic, but in my country consumer laws also mandate that sticker and advertised prices must be the final price including all taxes. The standard USA practice of stickers/adverts with pre-tax price is also absurdly anti-consumer).
How does that work when advertising in media that is available in more than one country, such as broadcasts of major international sporting events?
Where do you live and is Apple's bundling of iCloud (you can only use some major features like the App Store when signed in & you can't choose other providers to fullfil the same role) illegal there too?
The practice of not including sales taxes allows the government to raise sales tax without it impacting the inflation charts, and citizens recognizing the full impact to their wallet.
At this point I am really wondering when massive shift to bikes/cargo bikes will happen?
Like... it needs NO fuel or can be charged at home for electric ones, companies literally can't offer other subscription services aside from "free repair" for x$ a month, because bicycle is too simple... Maybe battery leasing, idk...?
It doesn't need driver license to operate, if infrastructure is good, it can be much faster in the city and you don't need to pay a ton of taxes, in many situations you can repair it by yourself
With electric cargo bikes/bakfiets a big chunk of car use-cases is gone, like buying groceries, moving light-medium objects, even take childs to school.
For other 5% of use-cases, people can like... rent a car for a day or take taxi...
I can't imagine how cheap this could be
And for people that can't use them, there are tricycles, carts or duofiets
Aaaaaand you can add a small bicycle trailer at the back, increasing further total capacity.
Of course all this is possible with protected bike lanes AND at least decent public transport like buses AND bike parking. Car drivers will drive without encountering bicyclists and vice-versa, everyone happy, everyone safe, much less stress
I can see why. Cycling in Europe is fantastic, but cycling in North America is terrifying.
I have a car and a motorcycle, but German bike routes are so nice that I still prefer the bike. I bike from the outskirts to the centre of Berlin on a dedicated bike path in nature. It's awesome!
Canada has few such routes. You have to fight for a place on a wide, ugly boulevard lined with box stores, and the drivers take personal offence to your existence.
yep, i can only imagine... I went recently to Switzerland... oh god, so many bikes, dedicated lanes, a ton of parking places inside and outside of buildings. I can imagine myself biking there, but where I live... it is still possible, but much harder(at least for now, but there are plans for improvement)
Many electric bikes are supposed to go back to the shop for maintenance once a year. If you lease the bike this often becomes mandatory. Also more and more manufacturers lock down the electronics and battery systems so nobody can really work on their own bike, at least those drivetrain parts.
I waited a whole year to bring my electric bike in and my maintenance bill was $300+. The higher speed and braking energy puts a lot of wear on the components. After that I learned how to do maintenance myself to save some money but I warn people considering an e-bike that maintenance costs will be non-trivial.
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Once that was done I originally pulled the daughterboard housing the entire modem but this bricked my compass and GPS. To keep those working I ended up altering the modem itself with a soldering iron per the pdf posted here:
https://www.chevybolt.org/threads/internet-without-onstar-wi...
The guy there on that forum did so in an effort to use your own sim with the HMI, but using 0 ohm resistors or just solder bridging the relevant connections is enough to prevent my vehicle from getting online, but leaves the GPS intact. You can test by trying to make phone/onstar/data related actions - it just won't work.
Another good measure is to remove one of the antenna leads, I forget which one is cellular primary, but the other is more GPS/aux. Doing it all this way allows you to still connect your vehicle to wifi should you so desire to, for updates and such.
There are other secrets and tricks to these things, including a git repo I cloned that is now gone from the public internet, where a guy figured out how to solder an EMMC reader to a few points on the mainboard to get and modify the filesystem.
Edit: here's a mirror https://repo.or.cz/bosch_hmi_hacking.git
They really go out of their way to keep you from owning your vehicle.
Also bought a device that lets me plug HDMI inputs into the truck, unfortunately some kind of refresh rate or resolution issue prevents it from working properly.
As an aside, if you bought and financed through GM, they may have attached a secondary GPS/cell tracker to your OBD2 port, and used sticky tape to hide it somewhere - make sure to remove that once you're not financed through them as well (it is illegal to do so I believe before using alternative financing or paying it off).
It is legally problematic to remove until you switch financing...
In addition, if tracking bothers you, your tire pressure sensors all have trackable (if there are enough sensors around a city) IDs, and if bluetooth is on, and it probably is, that as well...aside from your cell phone...
My next (secondary) vehicle will 100% be a dumb vehicle from the 90s or earlier.
Had me scratching my head for a minute there. I guess it's a thing now, though we used to just call them jumpers.
ALL buy-here-[pay|finance]-here car dealerships put a GPS tracker in your car. Where it's located and how it's connected to your car's electrical system will vary, but they ALL do it using[0] companies[1] like[2] these[3].
[0] https://gpsandtrack.com/
[1] https://www.spireon.com/gps-auto-tracking/
[2] https://passtimegps.com/industries/franchise-car-dealerships...
[3] https://logistimatics.com/gps-trackers/car-dealers/
"More customer value" clearly worth 125$/month.
You're basically paying > 100 bucks a month for something that allows them to collect and sell your data to third parties.
EDIT: as people mention in reply, I have absolutely zero reading comprehension skills and the fee is actually 1500 for three years not one. Still... I pay less for cellular service with near limitless data and voice.
They are not lying. The value of the customer to GM increases.
I have no idea whether GM is also making some not-quite-essential but both simple and useful features only accessible with an ongoing subscription, but I have my opinion as to whether it will do so, if it is not doing so already. Plenty of other manufacturers do this.
But your point is well founded too.
You can make a case to your building governing body to have them installed.
There are solutions designed for this and operate off common area energy and bill at on a cost only basis.
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Anyway... I tried removing OnStar and the only way I could do that was to remove all the feaures I wanted and also needed. e.g. towing package, bigger engine, etc... The only way I could "build" one without Onstar was to have a bare-bones model with nothing else added. Ill try again in 5 years or so.
I think that's the catch. Given the number of customization options in the website, I would find it highly unlikely that there would be one already built with the options I selected, so I will always be guided down the path of working with a dealer.
It's even more fun when you realize the dealer price they show for the ones they match is MSRP and the dealer is actually selling it for thousands more, plus the dealer adds accessories so you get to overpay for things like cargo nets and floor mats.
One guy literally tried to tell me he couldn't do that - and I had to spell it out for him. Step one, agree to give me floor mats. Step two, you walk over to the service dept, buy floor mats, and put them in my car. Step three, congratulations you made a sale and commission - but you had to buy floor mats for my car.
I dislike boomer tactics as much as anyone (especially the bizarre trope of yelling at people to sound more right) but car salesmen are nearly as degenerate as realtors so I do take pleasure in this kind of a transaction where I'm the boot of the joke.
At least for Ford F-series trucks, you must place the order through a dealer. You can build the truck online and take the build to the dealer for the order. In my experience the online build tool is sophisticated enough that it properly reflects the real order entry system. Not sure if it’s the same for the rest of the models.
Most U.S. states have laws requiring car sales only through dealerships. That's why you can't just directly buy a vehicle fully customized from a manufacturer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_dealerships_in_the_United_....
I've heard that driving a vehicle until everything falls apart is a lot more green/climate friendly than immediately switching to something new.
I was on a local council once and some lunatics were arguing about cups. One faction believed that styrofoam was better because it was lighter, the others pearl clutched and demanded a styrofoam ban and wanted to ensure that a certain type of wax was used on cups.
My Pilot had 245000 miles and was fantastic, I had to get rid of it last year. The new car I got to replace it sucks, with the stupid touchscreens and shittier interior.
There are a hell of a lot of light-to-heavy duty diesel pickups in the US and the aftermarket offerings are enormously deep and broad, for example. I imagine that will take awhile to fade away, and if metrology gets advanced and cheap enough, and integrates well enough with machinists on the floor, I can see a possible future where these parts live on in electronic form to the point where reproducing them from scratch gets into the realm of economically feasible.
The difference is that cars are a extremely competitive market, and the "no connected" version will always be offered.
(It's a stereotypical American "land yacht" with some performance mods and a bit of computer monitoring --- not control.)
(The above is satire, but analogous statements are frequently made in earnest.)
If this is the excuse being stated, but there is some ulterior motive, then that's another thing.
Why not just include it in the sticker price of the car? At a minimum for PR / Optics.
You could argue:
> Its like power steering. You don't have the option NOT to have it, and it costs us money; so its part of why the car costs what it does.
That way instead of people feeling like they're being cheated out of an extra $1,500 on a $50,000 vehicle; they just purchase a $51,500 vehicle?
I forget exactly who does it, TicketMaster, or Axios, or something - will say something like:
> Ok, two tickets for the concert; that's $120
I'm like great. No idea how you came up with that number, but I'm good with it.
Then they'll come back after I'm locked in and say:
> There's also a convenience fee of $30. Your total is $150.
I'm livid at this point - which is totally irrational; because had they just told me the cost was $150 up front - like an idiot, I'd have just said "well, that's the price. Here's money."
Instead, I'm left with a sour taste in my mouth and hate all ticket vendors who I feel pulled a fast one on me.
I'm sure you could make the argument that a greater percentage balk at the $150 number than would walk at $120 + $30, so you make more money. That's fair, but to me it feels like I was tricked for no good reason.
:shrug-emoji
In my personal finance, I’d always rather have $1500 now than an IOU for $1500 over three years.
While if it's a subscription from GM, it's $1,500 and that $1,500 directly goes to GM.
Perfectly rational people may factor everything in properly... but the world is woefully short of perfectly rational people.
(slightly off topic, but in my country consumer laws also mandate that sticker and advertised prices must be the final price including all taxes. The standard USA practice of stickers/adverts with pre-tax price is also absurdly anti-consumer).
Most VAT based countries have a single VAT rate for the whole country (or possible a country-wide set of rates for different types of products). The United States is not like that. Even if we consider an individual state as the equivalent to Country, each state does not have one consistent sales tax rate.
Typically the state will have one rate, the county can have its own rate, the city its own rate, and potentially even special districts with their own sales tax rates.
That complicates things a lot. For example, if a law required the shown prices to include tax, it would mean that an online website cannot show you the price until you have entered your exact street address. Most people don't want to tell the website where they live just to find out a price that may not be any good.
The variable tax rate means that if the law applied to advertised prices shown on say TV, it would not be possible to have nationwide advertisements that show a price, or even statewide advertisements, or in some cases not even city-wide advertisements. (Unless they set a post-tax price based on what they can sustain with the highest tax rate, which means charging people in lower tax areas a higher price than they would otherwise have charged, just to be able to mention a price at all on TV). Unless the law allowed "between $x and $y depending on your local tax rate" (where X and Y are based on the lowest and highest tax rate for the advertising area).
Most people who want such post tax pricing laws would not be terribly happy with a law that allowed advertising a range like that.
What's wrong with this solution?
Getting rid of sales tax would be the best solution imo but complicated
Many landlords and development companies add on percentage based fees. Some merchants will report these on recipes as PIF Tax (Property Improvement Fees). These are not a technically a tax, but impact the consumer the similarly
Even if you are tax exempt or buying non-taxable items like food, the property own still collects PIF.
PIFs are in the contract between the landlord and merchant the actual details of how fees work are not publicly know. Merchants may benefit from actual property improvements, or the fees are entirely a profit stream for the landlord.
If they (or a family member) later purchase prints through their online gallery that are essentially drop shipped to them? Who the hell knows.
There's a simple solution to this: stop doing this. Ban cities and districts from having their own sales taxes. There's no reason to allow this. In my country, there's a single national sales tax that's the same everywhere.
The US's problems are a result of its own stupid decisions.
edit: you can get a refund on the state’s portion of the sales tax, but not the city. (ex. WA state form https://dor.wa.gov/file-pay-taxes/apply-tax-refund/state-sal...).
When you negotiate salary with a new employer, do you include the employer paid Social Security and Medicare taxes? Do you say I require $100,000 or $107,650 (Social Security is $6,200, Medicare is $1,450)?
Dead Comment
They are a free enterprise that can offer whichever products at whatever prices they want. And consumers are free to vote with their wallets.
From TFA, they're advertising the vehicle's MSRP without the extra $1500 cost, and that extra $1500 is not optional when you go to actually buy one.
As far as I can tell there are a vanishingly small number of problems where "new laws" are the optimal answer. Increased regulatory oversight generally leads to ossified markets with higher costs. Many of the most reviled monopolies throughout American history got there in no small measure because of government protection in the form of "regulation".
In this case, there are multiple car manufacturers available to Americans from around the world - if this makes GM vehicles more expensive or causes a consumer backlash that damages sales, GM will change their behaviour. That seems like a more responsive mechanism than piling on new regulation to dictate which types of fees are okay and which aren't.
This is simply not true. The common reviled monopoly strategies include price fixing, collusion, natural monopolies, markets with high barriers to entry, network effects, and others in addition to regulatory capture. Regulations that contribute to monopolistic tendencies are "vanishingly small" in number, you just hear about them a lot because people don't like them.
> if this makes GM vehicles more expensive or causes a consumer backlash that damages sales, GM will change their behaviour.
It may be time to walk through history and see all the dark patterns that were solved by regulation. Before the EPA, it was common for manufacturing companies to dump industrial waste directly into rivers, for example.
Consumers only have so much energy for backlash, and your theoretical system requires everyone to have an encyclopedic memory of all the shitty things that every company does and weigh all of that in their minds when making consumer choices. It's impractical and impossible. Regulatory agencies are a much better system and that's why every modern economy depends on them.
It clearly isn't. The power and knowledge asymmetry between producers and consumers is such that most producers can get away with abhorrent behaviour pretty much all the time with no significant repercussions. That's why boycotts don't work, among other things.
Also, for most cars, paying sticker would be a rip off anyway. Unless there is a shortage going on, no one expects to pay sticker price.
How does that work when advertising in media that is available in more than one country, such as broadcasts of major international sporting events?
Because they have been specifically targeting iPhone + App Store bundling: https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/25/22996248/apple-sideloadin...
I feel like we used to. Everything is so overtly nickle and dime the working class now.
Government gets more money this way
Deleted Comment
Like... it needs NO fuel or can be charged at home for electric ones, companies literally can't offer other subscription services aside from "free repair" for x$ a month, because bicycle is too simple... Maybe battery leasing, idk...?
It doesn't need driver license to operate, if infrastructure is good, it can be much faster in the city and you don't need to pay a ton of taxes, in many situations you can repair it by yourself With electric cargo bikes/bakfiets a big chunk of car use-cases is gone, like buying groceries, moving light-medium objects, even take childs to school. For other 5% of use-cases, people can like... rent a car for a day or take taxi... I can't imagine how cheap this could be
And for people that can't use them, there are tricycles, carts or duofiets Aaaaaand you can add a small bicycle trailer at the back, increasing further total capacity.
Of course all this is possible with protected bike lanes AND at least decent public transport like buses AND bike parking. Car drivers will drive without encountering bicyclists and vice-versa, everyone happy, everyone safe, much less stress
I have a car and a motorcycle, but German bike routes are so nice that I still prefer the bike. I bike from the outskirts to the centre of Berlin on a dedicated bike path in nature. It's awesome!
Canada has few such routes. You have to fight for a place on a wide, ugly boulevard lined with box stores, and the drivers take personal offence to your existence.