Original Article
About 500,000 General Motors vehicles will lose their OnStar service at the end of this year as cell phone companies end analog service and switch to all digital.About another 1 million GM vehicles are able to get a retrofit of hardware that will enable them to continue getting OnStar, while the other roughly 3 million OnStar vehicles are not impacted by the change.
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Ultimately, GM was able to develop a fix for about 1 million OnStar customers starting with some 2002 models. Those customers will pay a dealership just $15 for the fix, if they agree to add a year of OnStar service, Ball said. GM is covering the remainder of dealerships' cost.
I can completely understand that GM didn't know what digital signal was going to be the standard when they first came out with OnStar. I really can. But designing the analog OnStar systems so that there is absolutely ZERO possibility of upgrading it as the digital standards become, well, standard, is ridiculously stupid in ways that I can't even begin to imagine. GM has done exactly one thing incredibly in the last 10 years- promote OnStar. And in one fell swoop, they're screwing over 500,000 customers, plus however many more customers don't want to pay the 15 bucks, 45 minutes, and 1 year of prepaid service to continue their service.
Just amazing.
4 comments:
Surely if someone has been paying for OnStar for 10 years, $15, 45 min. is nothing. They were probably going to tack on another year anyway. Keep in mind, this was all done at the height of the Bean Counter Era, so its not too hard to believe.
Are these numbers just including cars that were sold with OnStar..or are they specific to the cars that actually use OnStar?Our 03 Silverado has onstar...we've never used. My mother's 03 DeVille DTS had onstar..never used it. My mother's new STS has onstar...never plan on using it. I can list off more vehicles and family members that have OnStar equiped cars, both new and old, that have never and will never even care to use it...it is just an additional cost that came in when my simplistic family members said "I want the car loaded." So the numbers of people who give a damn are probably more shy if these numbers are for cars equiped with OnStar, not cars that actually use OnStar. But overall, it is kinda a shitty slap in the face to people who do use it, have use it, and bought into GM's OnStar sales pitch a few years ago. If GM would be able to say they had no way of making future changes possible back then..well..what more can they say? But I have a hunchin feeling that the COULD have..and personally, I dont think the customers should have to even pay the 15 bucks just because of the fact...but there might be alot of people that either dont care or dont know what they blue button on the mirror even does. I know that nobody in my family has every been concerned.
Are GM vehicle has Onstar but we never use it.
How are we going to know which GM vehicles can have the $15 fix?
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