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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 d

by mijamo 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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.
      - dahart 5y ago
        > this is rent-seeking at it's worst It's a bit sad that their marketing and Vice and this thread of misinformation has convinced you of this. Because their financing terms are in fact more consumer friendly than the vast majority of financing plans out there, likely including all the monthly payments you're currently making. It's a missed opportunity that the marketing message got so lost here.
- cortesoft 5y ago
  Except what if the company has an outage and their license servers fail to respond? Or if there is an issue with their auto payment and they don’t notice it get cancelled?
  - dahart 5y ago
    Then the vest won't turn on, and you'll know before you ride that it's not protecting you. It says that on the product page.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Schwolop 5y ago
      If I buy a car with airbags, I am buying the confidence that they are there to protect me. Indirectly I'm also buying the confidence to not need to check them before setting off. In this instance, if I need to check the safety of my safety equipment before using it, that's a negative for me. As a daily motorbike rider, I can definitively say that I will not be buying one of these because they have the capability to remotely disable the functionality. That's an absolute no-no for me.
      - dahart 5y ago
        I think that's fine to decide against purchase for that reason. All I'm saying is 1: you always have to check your safety equipment before using it, that's true with your motorcycle, and in this instance it's not some kind of crazy burden, it happens automatically as part of the device's functioning power-on, and it doesn't require you to do anything special that you wouldn't already have done. If you re-read your sentence about not wanting to check your safety before you ride, you might regret saying it that way, it doesn't sound very good. And 2: perhaps not your motorcycle, but your cars and phones and computers already have remote disable functionality.
        Schwolop 5y ago
- akira2501 5y ago
  > This is just a financing option For $400? My whole non-IoT riding suit already cost $1200. My insurance costs $1200/year. Who is this financing option _for_, exactly?
  - dahart 5y ago
    People less rich than you? I don't know, but you can finance a $200 helmet too. https://www.revzilla.com/motorcycle/bell-mx-9-adventure-mips-helmet https://www.revzilla.com/motorcycle/bell-mx-9-adventure-mips...
- jiofih 5y ago
  If it was financing, lack of payment would just use collections like every other financial product. It’s a solved problem, your problem is with the bank and not the product manufacturer. They are acting like a lender and insurer (for themselves) at the same time. It’a a strange pay-for-non-existent-service scheme designed to artificially reduce MSRP, while using fear to reduce their risk. On a personal safety device. It’s disgusting.
  - dahart 5y ago
    > It is not financing if you have to continue payments after covering the full cost. You don't have to continue payments, they offer a buyout plan for $99 after three years. (They also offer the buyout up front plan.) BTW, jeez, I realize I seriously sound like an ad for the company just because I'm trying to help explain the flood of misinformation in this comment section. I ride motorcycles, but I have no affiliation, and I like the idea of an airbag vest and I like the idea of being more easily able to afford to try safety gear... even if it's more expensive in the long run. (Like everyone, I generally dislike rent, subscriptions, and financing plans, but I do have to acknowledge the utility.) > It’a a strange pay-for-non-existent-service scheme designed to artificially reduce MSRP but increase lifetime value. That seems accurate, except that it's not at all strange, it's utterly commonplace. Like millions and millions of people, I have a mortgage and a car payment and a credit card. Most of the money I spend would be reduced if I were to pay up-front. > It’s disgusting I'm very confused about this part, I don't understand why that feeling is so strong in this thread. KLIM's financing plan is better than most, just be open to reconsidering your idea here. You can cancel without notice, and you get to keep the vest. You can pick up where you left off and continue paying later. You can pay only in the summer when you're riding. Those consumer friendly options aren't available on any mortgage or car plan or credit card anywhere.
    - jiofih 5y ago
      > Like millions and millions of people, I have a mortgage and a car payment and a credit card That’s not the strange part. Volkswagen cannot deactivate your car if you stop paying - it’s the banks problem. Same with your house. There are legal mechanisms to kick you out or recover property, but none of them involve a subscription and remote deactivation. Imagine your front door stops opening if you miss a payment.
oh_sigh 5y 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.

by mijamo 5y ago

dahart 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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.
    - dahart 5y ago
      > this is rent-seeking at it's worst It's a bit sad that their marketing and Vice and this thread of misinformation has convinced you of this. Because their financing terms are in fact more consumer friendly than the vast majority of financing plans out there, likely including all the monthly payments you're currently making. It's a missed opportunity that the marketing message got so lost here.
cortesoft 5y ago
Except what if the company has an outage and their license servers fail to respond? Or if there is an issue with their auto payment and they don’t notice it get cancelled?
- dahart 5y ago
  Then the vest won't turn on, and you'll know before you ride that it's not protecting you. It says that on the product page.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Schwolop 5y ago
    If I buy a car with airbags, I am buying the confidence that they are there to protect me. Indirectly I'm also buying the confidence to not need to check them before setting off. In this instance, if I need to check the safety of my safety equipment before using it, that's a negative for me. As a daily motorbike rider, I can definitively say that I will not be buying one of these because they have the capability to remotely disable the functionality. That's an absolute no-no for me.
    - dahart 5y ago
      I think that's fine to decide against purchase for that reason. All I'm saying is 1: you always have to check your safety equipment before using it, that's true with your motorcycle, and in this instance it's not some kind of crazy burden, it happens automatically as part of the device's functioning power-on, and it doesn't require you to do anything special that you wouldn't already have done. If you re-read your sentence about not wanting to check your safety before you ride, you might regret saying it that way, it doesn't sound very good. And 2: perhaps not your motorcycle, but your cars and phones and computers already have remote disable functionality.
      - Schwolop 5y ago
akira2501 5y ago
> This is just a financing option For $400? My whole non-IoT riding suit already cost $1200. My insurance costs $1200/year. Who is this financing option _for_, exactly?
- dahart 5y ago
  People less rich than you? I don't know, but you can finance a $200 helmet too. https://www.revzilla.com/motorcycle/bell-mx-9-adventure-mips-helmet https://www.revzilla.com/motorcycle/bell-mx-9-adventure-mips...
jiofih 5y ago
If it was financing, lack of payment would just use collections like every other financial product. It’s a solved problem, your problem is with the bank and not the product manufacturer. They are acting like a lender and insurer (for themselves) at the same time. It’a a strange pay-for-non-existent-service scheme designed to artificially reduce MSRP, while using fear to reduce their risk. On a personal safety device. It’s disgusting.
- dahart 5y ago
  > It is not financing if you have to continue payments after covering the full cost. You don't have to continue payments, they offer a buyout plan for $99 after three years. (They also offer the buyout up front plan.) BTW, jeez, I realize I seriously sound like an ad for the company just because I'm trying to help explain the flood of misinformation in this comment section. I ride motorcycles, but I have no affiliation, and I like the idea of an airbag vest and I like the idea of being more easily able to afford to try safety gear... even if it's more expensive in the long run. (Like everyone, I generally dislike rent, subscriptions, and financing plans, but I do have to acknowledge the utility.) > It’a a strange pay-for-non-existent-service scheme designed to artificially reduce MSRP but increase lifetime value. That seems accurate, except that it's not at all strange, it's utterly commonplace. Like millions and millions of people, I have a mortgage and a car payment and a credit card. Most of the money I spend would be reduced if I were to pay up-front. > It’s disgusting I'm very confused about this part, I don't understand why that feeling is so strong in this thread. KLIM's financing plan is better than most, just be open to reconsidering your idea here. You can cancel without notice, and you get to keep the vest. You can pick up where you left off and continue paying later. You can pay only in the summer when you're riding. Those consumer friendly options aren't available on any mortgage or car plan or credit card anywhere.
  - jiofih 5y ago
    > Like millions and millions of people, I have a mortgage and a car payment and a credit card That’s not the strange part. Volkswagen cannot deactivate your car if you stop paying - it’s the banks problem. Same with your house. There are legal mechanisms to kick you out or recover property, but none of them involve a subscription and remote deactivation. Imagine your front door stops opening if you miss a payment.

oh_sigh 5y 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.