Quote:
Originally Posted by upallnight
People that buys a new car normally do not keep the car beyond the warranty period. The free maintenance program is just a marketing ploy by all the car makers to attract car buyers. If you change the oil every 3,000 miles or 7500 mile you would have change the oil 5 times or twice before the free 15,000 miles maintenance kicks in. BMW is just hoping the car last beyond their warranty period with their free maintenance. After that they don't give a rat ass about the car since it will be "Out of warranty". Try asking a BMW dealer to do a transmission fluid change and they will tell you the ATF is "Life Time". You couldn't even pay them to do a ATF change.
It's call plan obsolescence. BMW make their money from selling new cars. If cars last as long as refrigerators all the car maker will only be building cars to replace cars that are no longer operational. Do you buy a new refrig every 5 years? We have a Sub Zero for the last 15 years and if it broke down we will get it fix since they offer a 10 years warranty on their frig.
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The hole in your opinion is that BMW is not the only mfg. out there. There is competition also based on features and benefits. I don't believe there is any brand that intends to survive, let alone thrive, that would ever have a objective or strategy in their business plan that can in any way be interpreted as planned obsolescence.
The free maintenance program is an example. It is there to either meet or exceed the warranties (features/benefits) of brands BMW identifies as direct competition, benchmarking brands or to be the industry benchmark. A marketing program is not empty hype. Marketing programs are tactics to meet business plan objectives. Inherent in marketing programs are to meet or exceed customers expectations.
The products of each industry have unique features/benefits as do the brands within. The expectation of SubZero customers is both unique to that brand and to that industry and not applicable to the auto industry except that both BMW and SubZero are considered high end brands that deliver quality and performance. Our SubZero frig meets or exceeds our customer expectations. Our experience with BMWs parallels.
The capability to do your own repairs is a good thing regardless of the brand, huge cost savings, but not a necessity depending on how you measure value. The value equation of an owner is unique, not transferable to another.