BMW gets burned on $18/month heated seats, but car feature subscriptions are unstoppable

The headlines this morning wrote themselves: "BMW feels the heat, stops charging for warming cheeks" ... "BMW's terrible heated seats subscription didn't even make it to a second winter."

That's right, BMW, which maybe should have known better after its infamous attempt to charge money for Apple CarPlay, has had another subscription scheme backfire.

BMW started charging $18 a month, or $180 a year, in a few overseas markets for using heated seats in 2022. Clearly the move did not sit well with the public. The problem, of course, is attempting to charge money ... ongoing in perpetuity ... for a feature that already existed in people's vehicles. Said Peter Nota, BMW's board member in charge of sales and marketing: "People feel that they paid double – which was actually not true, but perception is reality, I always say. So that was the reason we stopped that."

That feeling you're paying double is the heart of the problem with many subscription schemes. It also feels like being nickel-and-dimed, except that $18 is the sum of a lot of nickels.

It doesn't help that heated seats just topped a survey of car buyers' most-sought-after features. BMW might have looked at that sentiment and thought, "People want this, we can make money on this," while consumers instead were thinking, "I so want this, that I'll buy it. In fact I'll buy an entire luxury car from you to get features like this. So stop squeezing me."