Advertising is a major source of expenses and/or revenue for many companies – including, in some cases, automakers – and as such, it’s no surprise that some of those companies have opted to, well, shove more and more ads at us in various ways. Aside from traditional TV ads, that can include pop-ups when we visit websites, not to mention paid partnerships with social media influencers and other methods. Ford has even explored adding ads to retail and commercial vehicles in the future via a couple of patents, though like all of its patent filings, those aren’t necessarily indicative of something that will actually happen. As for one of Ford’s biggest rivals – Jeep – such a thing has now become a reality, however.
Posts from the assholedesign
community on Reddit
As first discovered by The Drive, a user on Reddit recently posted a photo of their 2022 Jeep Cherokee’s infotainment screen, which suddenly began displaying a pop-up ad of sorts for the company’s FlexCare Extended Care Premium plan. The user stated that this ad pops up on the “entire screen … every time you stop, even if you hit OK,” displaying a pair of options as well – the choice to simply hit “OK,” or a button to make a Bluetooth-enabled call to complete the sign-up process for the extended warranty of sorts.
Making matters worse, vehicles are only eligible for the Jeep FlexCare Extended Care Premium plan if they have less than 36,000 miles on the clock, and in this case, the owner’s Cherokee had already surpassed that mark. Users can apparently disable these messages, but they must first go to the Jeep Connect website, create an account, and link their vehicle via VIN, after which they can choose to turn off in-vehicle notifications. According to Jeep, the owner that’s been spammed with this particular message was apparently impacted by a glitch that has since been fixed, however.
“This was an in-vehicle message designed to inform Jeep customers about Mopar extended vehicle care options,” a Jeep spokesperson said in a statement. “A temporary software glitch affected the ability to instantly opt out in a few isolated cases, though instant opt-out is the standard for all our in-vehicle messages. Our team had already identified and corrected the error, and we are following up directly with the customer to ensure the matter is fully resolved.”
Comments
Instead of this nonsense, hire more engineers to make better and more reliable vehicles!
This is why manufacturers are moving to the screens and ditching gauges–to bombard you with ads. I hope a class action lawsuit ensues for this egregious safety hazard.
Time to have an aftermarket company offer ad-free, Apple Car-Play, and Android-Auto kits to eliminate all OEM control. I know that the GM On-Star antenna can be terminated with a 50 ohm resistor. We don’t need what the OEMs are selling to us, as well as the information they are selling about us to the insurance companies.
Well. Looks like I’ll be that old man driving my 2011 in 2035