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The service is that they get an $800 vest for $400 + $12/mo. Providing a subsidized device when the full retail prices may otherwise dissuade non-frequent motor

The service is that they get an $800 vest for $400 + $12/mo. Providing a subsidized device when the full retail prices may otherwise dissuade non-frequent motorists doesn't seem evil to me. Some people only ride a 2-3 months a year with ideal weather. So providing this service lets them use the device for 10+ years before they finally catch up with the cost of buying it outright at year 0.

ketralnis 6y ago
I have spotify plan that amex failures have cancelled twice in the last 10ish years. Emailing them to retry the charge works, I'm sure it's just random outages and it's never bothered me. But it's also never killed me before. That would be evil.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  Per TFA they give you a 30day grace period if the card declines.
mijamo 6y ago
If the lower upfront cost is the only thing you want then there's no need for a subscription. Just have a financing option like businesses have been doing for decades. And if the person stops paying send it to sent recovery. It's a solved problem for a very long time. The only reason why you would want a subscription is to keep charging people even after they have paid the full price and interests, which is a super annoying and bad policy to have in the first place.
- dahart 6y ago
  This is just a financing option, they even call it a "lease plan" on the web page. The unusual and positive benefit here is it doesn't go to recovery, you get to keep it and just pick up and continue your payments later as if nothing happened. I wish all my financing plans offered that option! * I'm totally and utterly baffled by all the downvoting. It seems like many people did not check out the product's web page and are left with Vice's misleading interpretation. Here's the description I'm talking about, right from the product page: https://klimsitecontent.s3.amazonaws.com/contentblocks/2021%20Moto/cbim-11.jpg https://klimsitecontent.s3.amazonaws.com/contentblocks/2021%... It says "Membership: Lease or Buy (No Subscription!)" Maybe they goofed by using the word "service" in the description, but this is just a financing plan. And it's not some kind of crazy safety issue where they shut it off while you ride, they appear to have designed it to prevent that. And it is, in fact, more lenient than my mortgage, my car payments, or my credit cards. I don't get to pause or cancel any of those without pretty severe repercussions.
  - toss1 6y ago
    You will not wish that if you took advantage of an unexpected nice day in the off season, got all geared up (but didn't remember to re-up your lease), and then crashed and your protective device failed, leaving you crippled, and contemplating that for the remainder of your life We could also celebrate the mafia-types who don't send debts to recovery, they just come by and break your knees if you don't pay -- hey, it's just a "you keep being able to walk as a service", and they never damage your credit score by sending it to collections!
    - dahart 6y ago
      > and then crashed and your protective device failed, leaving you crippled, and contemplating that for the remainder of your life Where did you get the idea that you wouldn't know it wasn't working before you ride? The vest notifies you before you ride, it signals that it does not engage the protection... even if you happened to miss the payment, and the grace period, and ignore all the notifications along the way. BTW, I am a very safety-conscious motorcycle rider, and I read both the article and KLIM's product page that the article links to. The fear that it will shut off and kill someone is the misleading impression that the Vice article left, but the product was specifically designed so that that can't happen.
      - toss1 6y ago
        It is also specifically designed to require an otherwise completely unnecessary link to a remote server, and need to rely on that. Sure, it should notify you, but there are a whole bunch of dependencies just for such a notification. With this level of aggressively pathological design, I would not trust them to have considered every contingency and ensure a fail-safe in every failure mode, particularly since their primary failure mode is fail-unsafe - by design. Try a different scenario, you need to go somewhere, your vest does notify you, but you need to go anyway, and that's your disaster. Yes, that is a bit more on you, like deciding to go anyway without your helmet which just got stolen, which is pretty stupid but can be necessary - but in this case, the theft is digital and enabled by design. Sorry, this is rent-seeking at it's worst. I'm sure they'll find fools to subscribe, just as Zuckerberg found plenty of "dumb f*ks" to trust him with their data, but that does not make it right. Good luck, and stay safe out there.
- oh_sigh 6y ago
  You can do a buyout after 3 years for $99. So the maximum cost someone might need to pay is $(400+36*12+99) = $931, or $131 over the outright purchase option.
bsder 6y ago
The problem is that, in this case, "Default Deny" can mean someone is dead. And, I would go further. This kind of "Default Deny" means that this system simply does not comply with the standards and practices that give you legal shielding and are normally required for "safety equipment". It's going to have a whole host of "failure modes" that normally wouldn't be present because it has to "deny" usage under certain cases. As such, they're going to lose a really large court case for very good reason.
- oh_sigh 6y ago
  Is there any safety equipment that leaves the manufacturer legally liable if the end user doesn't set up and activate the equipment properly? Is Honda responsible if my seatbelt doesn't work, because I didn't put it on? It's not like this airbag is a passive, always-ready device. You can't even just put it on and expect it to work. You need to actually turn it on too, and have the batteries charged. And if you turn it on and it says "NOT ACTIVE" or something like that, would anyone believe that the airbag was going to work?
  - bsder 6y ago
    Honda would be liable if the passenger airbag doesn't go off because the "passenger sensor" failed. The addition of the "passenger sensor" added extra failure modes that have to be managed and certified. Now, car manufacturers did this because people are stupid and put their children in car seats on the passenger side and Honda doesn't want to kill children. Nevertheless, you have to account for the failure modes and sign off on them. I can't imagine anyone with a PE signing off of this kind of fiasco. I'm sure you can find one somewhere if you pay enough money, but man ...
    - oh_sigh 6y ago
      That's an instance where the product says it is working but it doesn't. Not where a product says it isn't working and it doesn't.
- dahart 6y ago
liendolucas 6y ago
I'd understand your point IF you were renting the vest for a limited time. But you are actually buying a product for which if you don't pay the subscription won't work. So if they want to keep this line of business the vests should be rented, not sold.

ketralnis 6y ago

I have spotify plan that amex failures have cancelled twice in the last 10ish years. Emailing them to retry the charge works, I'm sure it's just random outages and it's never bothered me. But it's also never killed me before. That would be evil.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
Per TFA they give you a 30day grace period if the card declines.

mijamo 6y ago

If the lower upfront cost is the only thing you want then there's no need for a subscription. Just have a financing option like businesses have been doing for decades. And if the person stops paying send it to sent recovery. It's a solved problem for a very long time. The only reason why you would want a subscription is to keep charging people even after they have paid the full price and interests, which is a super annoying and bad policy to have in the first place.

dahart 6y ago
This is just a financing option, they even call it a "lease plan" on the web page. The unusual and positive benefit here is it doesn't go to recovery, you get to keep it and just pick up and continue your payments later as if nothing happened. I wish all my financing plans offered that option! * I'm totally and utterly baffled by all the downvoting. It seems like many people did not check out the product's web page and are left with Vice's misleading interpretation. Here's the description I'm talking about, right from the product page: https://klimsitecontent.s3.amazonaws.com/contentblocks/2021%20Moto/cbim-11.jpg https://klimsitecontent.s3.amazonaws.com/contentblocks/2021%... It says "Membership: Lease or Buy (No Subscription!)" Maybe they goofed by using the word "service" in the description, but this is just a financing plan. And it's not some kind of crazy safety issue where they shut it off while you ride, they appear to have designed it to prevent that. And it is, in fact, more lenient than my mortgage, my car payments, or my credit cards. I don't get to pause or cancel any of those without pretty severe repercussions.
- toss1 6y ago
  You will not wish that if you took advantage of an unexpected nice day in the off season, got all geared up (but didn't remember to re-up your lease), and then crashed and your protective device failed, leaving you crippled, and contemplating that for the remainder of your life We could also celebrate the mafia-types who don't send debts to recovery, they just come by and break your knees if you don't pay -- hey, it's just a "you keep being able to walk as a service", and they never damage your credit score by sending it to collections!
  - dahart 6y ago
    > and then crashed and your protective device failed, leaving you crippled, and contemplating that for the remainder of your life Where did you get the idea that you wouldn't know it wasn't working before you ride? The vest notifies you before you ride, it signals that it does not engage the protection... even if you happened to miss the payment, and the grace period, and ignore all the notifications along the way. BTW, I am a very safety-conscious motorcycle rider, and I read both the article and KLIM's product page that the article links to. The fear that it will shut off and kill someone is the misleading impression that the Vice article left, but the product was specifically designed so that that can't happen.
    - toss1 6y ago
      It is also specifically designed to require an otherwise completely unnecessary link to a remote server, and need to rely on that. Sure, it should notify you, but there are a whole bunch of dependencies just for such a notification. With this level of aggressively pathological design, I would not trust them to have considered every contingency and ensure a fail-safe in every failure mode, particularly since their primary failure mode is fail-unsafe - by design. Try a different scenario, you need to go somewhere, your vest does notify you, but you need to go anyway, and that's your disaster. Yes, that is a bit more on you, like deciding to go anyway without your helmet which just got stolen, which is pretty stupid but can be necessary - but in this case, the theft is digital and enabled by design. Sorry, this is rent-seeking at it's worst. I'm sure they'll find fools to subscribe, just as Zuckerberg found plenty of "dumb f*ks" to trust him with their data, but that does not make it right. Good luck, and stay safe out there.
oh_sigh 6y ago
You can do a buyout after 3 years for $99. So the maximum cost someone might need to pay is $(400+36*12+99) = $931, or $131 over the outright purchase option.

bsder 6y ago

The problem is that, in this case, "Default Deny" can mean someone is dead. And, I would go further. This kind of "Default Deny" means that this system simply does not comply with the standards and practices that give you legal shielding and are normally required for "safety equipment". It's going to have a whole host of "failure modes" that normally wouldn't be present because it has to "deny" usage under certain cases. As such, they're going to lose a really large court case for very good reason.

oh_sigh 6y ago
Is there any safety equipment that leaves the manufacturer legally liable if the end user doesn't set up and activate the equipment properly? Is Honda responsible if my seatbelt doesn't work, because I didn't put it on? It's not like this airbag is a passive, always-ready device. You can't even just put it on and expect it to work. You need to actually turn it on too, and have the batteries charged. And if you turn it on and it says "NOT ACTIVE" or something like that, would anyone believe that the airbag was going to work?
- bsder 6y ago
  Honda would be liable if the passenger airbag doesn't go off because the "passenger sensor" failed. The addition of the "passenger sensor" added extra failure modes that have to be managed and certified. Now, car manufacturers did this because people are stupid and put their children in car seats on the passenger side and Honda doesn't want to kill children. Nevertheless, you have to account for the failure modes and sign off on them. I can't imagine anyone with a PE signing off of this kind of fiasco. I'm sure you can find one somewhere if you pay enough money, but man ...
  - oh_sigh 6y ago
    That's an instance where the product says it is working but it doesn't. Not where a product says it isn't working and it doesn't.
dahart 6y ago

liendolucas 6y ago

I'd understand your point IF you were renting the vest for a limited time. But you are actually buying a product for which if you don't pay the subscription won't work. So if they want to keep this line of business the vests should be rented, not sold.