miamiten, unlike sgcrockett1, most all affected vehicles’ SOS buttons do nothing now, and many owners are only asking for what’s right, yet your self-professed ‘indstury insider’ perspective fails to see this, and fails to see what actually is right.
While one can never write off the possibility of Donald Trump suing oneself, politics aside, your seemingly arbitrary pronouncements of numbers and figures while contradicting yourself appears to be deflection akin to that seen on the campaign trail.
Impossible for the system to dial 911(?), yet it can. Couldn’t have been envisioned(?), yet there’s precedent. Isn’t the fault of customer service(?), while the central issue is a business decision from the top down. Come on.
Correct me if wrong, but it's your sentiment that the great percentage of owners wouldn’t have renewed, so we should simply accept this or otherwise purchase a new car? Is that fair? You beg to differ that this is an important safety feature? You feel this matter is frivolous or trivial? Even the founding member of another board - an ardent enthusiast - sees this as wrong. There’s a button in our cars with a picture of a phone under which SOS is written. If one was not an ‘industry insider’ like yourself, knew nothing of this matter and were in an emergency, what would one’s reasonable expectation for the button be?
If you dig deeper you’ll find other threads from when these services were first rolled-out where it was determined that our cars have actual telephone numbers when these services are active (
http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showthread.php?t=47567), wherein it was suggested that refusal to permit dialing of 911 likely arose out of a business decision that doing so would limit renewal sales. Makes sense to me. What will come of this if reprogramming or retrofit is ultimately not provided?
What’s right is for there to have been advance notice and for there to have been transition to a solution with no lapse. That being water under the bridge, there should be either free of charge programming of the SOS button to dial 911 and/or a nominal charge for hardware retrofit, possibly below cost. This should not be done reluctantly, but promptly, in the best interests of all. Only other alternative would be the mandatory removal and replacement of SOS buttons with false ones on affected vehicles, with detailed explanation provided.
Prior to your chiming in - which I don’t find to be ‘straight talk’, as you suggested on another board - this thread was moving in advancement of the matter - namely, for the SOS button to be permitted to dial 911 - but your divisive tone took it in a different direction, your prerogative, surely.
So what do you propose? What do you think is feasible and is fair to those for whom reliable telematics was a factor in their purchase? We all don't have Rolls-Royce and Bentley in our garages, driveways, etc.
Yes, enlightening.