I've got a bone to pick with car manufacturers. I know what you're thinking..."Just one?" Well, despite the plethora of schlamozzles committed by automakers these days the one I'm currently a bit flapped about is the ridiculous restrictions they've placed on which options you can or can't select when you order your shiny new piece of driveway jewelry. I've been cruising around the websites of a few car companies playing with the "Build Your Own" tools and dreaming little dreams of driving bliss. Well, great big huge dreams actually, but what the hell ever. My beef is this: When you try to add, for example, the Satellite Navigation System, or the Dual Zone Automatic Climate Control, most car companies won't let you have either of them unless you also opt for Sport Package 3 or Luxury Package 478. Evidently if I want the Sat/Nav system I've also got to have the Middling Sized Orangutan Eating Hard Boiled Eggs permanently installed in the left rear passenger seat. And these "required" packages, as you may well guess, usually cost several thousand extra dollars. Now, I realize that car companies are in the business of making money (I thought they were in the business of making cars. Silly me!) but whatever happened to good old customer satisfaction? Were I to go out and buy a new car I would definitely want a satellite navigation system in it because I don't like getting lost and I frequently go to towns and cities I know nothing about. However, all joking aside, every single car I tried to add a navigation system to required that I also add some sort of luxury package which invariably included leather seats and door inserts; heated seats, side mirrors, and washer nozzles; faux woodgrain trim; XM or Sirius Satellite Radio; automatically dimming rearview mirrors; and in most cases, some sort of "home link" communications system which can be programmed to, among other things, open your garage doors, turn on the TV in your house, or give your worst enemy leprosy. I don't want any of those things. I prefer good basic non-fancyschmancy cloth seats, I really couldn't care less about Satellite Radio since I prefer listening to CD's or my iPod anyway, and I haven't got a house with garage doors to open, nor anyone I hate enough to actually inflict with a debilitating disease. Faux woodgrain? That stuff is just horrible looking. The heated bits might not be so bad, though. Same deal with a sunroof. You can't have one unless it's part of a bigger, more expensive package. Even a little extra bit to plug your iPod into comes only as part of a $1700 package from one manufacturer. But the point is, why must I have all this frivolous nonsense just to get a navigation system or a sunroof? No other reason than that it makes a bigger payday for the carmaker. It's maddening. It's frustrating. It's bad business ethics, I say. And it's totally legal. But if you went to the grocery store to get a loaf of bread and they said, "Sorry, you can't have bread unless you also get this 7-course Thanksgiving dinner package for $600," you'd go straight to the Better Business Bureau and they'd shut the place down immediately. Why should the auto makers be allowed to get away with it? Because cars aren't a necessity? Tell that to anyone who lives in a town without a decent public transportation system. It's just another example of Big Business doing whatever it can get away with to put more of your money into their own pockets, where it will be put to use devising still more ways in which they can take still more of your money. But I supposed we should be thanking them, for it is, truly, Money that makes the world go 'round.
2 comments:
The free market answer is that when demand is high enough for this service, one of the car companies will figure out how to do a la carte pricing. But making and selling cars is a very low-margin business with very high barriers to entry, so the normal solution ("Go start a business that offers that service, and kick Toyota's ass!") is not likely to work.
The guys who run Wal-Mart know how to make low-margin high-volume stuff pay... if they could partner up with the U.S. automakers and make this work, the U.S. auto industry might still be around twenty years from now.
Starbucks has definitely figured out a la carte pricing models. If it's hot and brown and fits in a cup, you can order it from Starbucks.
Cable TV is just now getting there, but there's a huge demand for being able to get, say "Sci-Fi, Comedy Central, CNN, and the Golf Channel, and nothing else except my local channels," or what-have-you. The cable companies are going to get their asses kicked by the other data utility providers (telcos etc) who offer fiber to the home with TV on it.
Oh, and "it makes a bigger payday for the automaker" is true -- it does raise profits -- but it also lowers costs, because you only need to train the folks on the line to make ten or fifteen variants of each car, instead of the ~1,000 ways you can have (e.g.) a Whopper served. Imagine if the difference between "pickles" and "no pickles" was four hours of labor and a $200 part.
fair play, but that still doesn't justify making the $50 part available only as part of a $1700 package.
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