We told you more than a year ago BMW has adopted a truly reprehensible policy, to the extent that some of our readers even called it a scam. In my case, without reaching this point, I found it to be a perfect example of greed and lack of respect for users. As I said at the time, I prefer other brands, mainly Audi, but that doesn’t mean that BMW has seemed to me to be a reference in the industry for years, as well as a brand with its own personality and that, I understand, is really attractive to many.

The policy, which I’m sure you still remember if you were reading it at the time, was charge a monthly subscription for the use of heated seats. It is obvious that by setting the selling price of the vehicles, the brand ensures a profit margin on costs. In other words, when you buy a car, you are already paying for the components necessary to use the heating contained in the said seats.

However, due to the game and software industry, BMW was seduced by the subscription model, something that makes sense in some cases (i.e. when what’s being offered is really a service), but not when it involves paying for something that doesn’t depend on connectivity or updates or anything like that. Since, of course, in the event of a malfunction, its repair would be the responsibility of the owner, the service would not cover it. The answer was clear and expected, just two weeks later this system was already hacked.

Fortunately, after a year of this stupid model, it seems that the brand has decided to back down, because, as we can read in Autocar, BMW is abandoning the subscription model for heated seats and other accessories. However, they also say that their ecosystem of services for their cars will grow in the future. There’s nothing to argue about… as long as the brand understands the difference between a product or feature and a service.

This is easy to understand. If BMW offers a map system that is constantly updated, that has traffic and weather information, or a driver assistance service, some function that depends on the computing power of a data center… well, something that will actually be a service will make sense market it as a service. Trying to charge a monthly fee to use something that the user already paid for when they purchased the vehicle is simply joke and lack of respect for the user.