For lower and mid range car very first thing everyone wants in a car is reliability and then comes all other features like opening car from phone and other cool features which Onstar package provides. Safety is one the big factor in selection of car, and GM onstar provides reactive answer to that, but other companies are developing proactive accident avoidance technologies. So which car will you buy -the one which is reliable and doesn’t break after 50,000 miles and which can help you to avoid accident or the one which breaks after 50K miles and provide reactive support.
Onstar doesn’t come cheap – it’s approx. $20 without turn by turn direction and $30 with GPS functionality. Can GM lower price? My answer is no. U.S. 911 operates at capacity utilization of 16% to provide under 30 second response time, I think GM has to provide similar within 30 second response time to Onstar users, that means more number of people on node will not help company. Can they outsource it to countries like India/China? My guess is not.
I feel Onstar provides value proposition for higher model car. Question is how much time will it take to provide Onstar kind of service on Mercedes / Lexus / BMW/ Acura/ Infinity etc.
Another thing is that if On Star cost that much, why not use the money you would pay for On Star and buy a better car that is safer?
ReplyDeleteIn addition, I wonder why they can't out source the service to outside countries? I realized that a lot of technical/customer service I call in these days are outsourced. I am assuming the reason it may not be outsourced is because the quality of the service will be compromise. (There is a noticeable customer service quality that I noticed when calling to an seemingly outsourced call center)
Yesterday at the CES OnStar announced that they will be selling an OnStar enabled mirror which can be fitted into 55 million of the non GM cars sold in the last 10 years in the US. The price point: $299, plus a $75-100 install and of course a monthly service fee. I'll be interested to see how well the mirror sells.
ReplyDeleteRead more here