So I have had my car now for a year, and the trial period/first year subscription to BlueLink has ended. I sat down and looked at the price of the package and the benefits they allegedly provide. And I couldn't find anything that would justify the renewal price for me.
The fist package is the
Connected Care Package which is offered for $99 after the 1 year trial period is over.
Listed "benefits":
- Automatic Diagnostic Trouble Code Notification
- Service Link
- On-Demand Diagnostics
- Enhanced Roadside Assistance
- Genesis Intelligent Assistant App
- Monthly Vehicle Health Report
- Driving Information
- Automatic Collision Notification (ACN)
- SOS Emergency Assistance
These things are mostly useless. In the one year I had these things available, I have used none of this information to my benefit. Just an example:
Service Link - Conveniently schedule a Car Care Appointment with your preferred service dealer right from your vehicle.
Basically, it calls the number of your preferred dealer service department. Or, you can program that number into your cell phone once and say "Call Service Department" for free.
Enhanced Roadside Assistance - Blue Link provides your vehicle's location and account information automatically so you don't have to worry about knowing where you are when you need assistance.
Or, you look at your Navigation system/Google Maps/Apple Maps for free and tell the roadside assistance operator where you are located because your navigation system / cell phone has the same exact information.
Automatic Collision Notification (ACN) and
SOS Emergency Assistance seem somewhat useful if you have an accident in a less populated area, otherwise someone will call emergency services if you can't do that yourself. I have had no opportunity to try these features (knock on wood), but this seems to be designed for people who are scared that help won't come if they have an injury accident - not a very likely event in my opinion, but for some it may be worth for peace of mind. It remains to be seen how good the BlueLink coverage would be in areas with low population density, where this would be the most useful.
The next package is the
Remote Package, which also costs $99 per year, and requires the
Connected Care Package. If you don't care about the
Connected Care Package, you still have to pay the $99 to be able to get access to the
Remote Package, so the real cost is $198.
This package has a long list of benefits:
- Remote Door Lock
- Remote Door Unlock
- Remote Vehicle Start**
- Remote Horn & Lights
- Car Finder***
- Stolen Vehicle Recovery
- Stolen Vehicle Slowdown
- Stolen Vehicle Immobilization
- Curfew Alert †
- Valet Alert †
- Panic Notification
- Alarm Notification
- Geo-fence †
- Speed Alert †
Some of the remote features are slightly useful, i.e. if you forgot to lock your car or if you would like to start the vehicle to heat up/cool down the interior prior to getting to the car. In my experience, more than 50% of the times I tried to use any of the remote features they simply failed. In some locations I got a 100% failure rate (Austin, TX airport, parked on an outside lot) when attempting to try the remote start feature. I felt like buying a lottery ticket every time the feature actually worked as advertised.
I have a lot of these messages in my email inbox:
Your request for Remote Start with Climate Control on XX/XX/201X at XX:XX pm CST was not processed. The feature is currently unavailable. Please try again later.
I have many fewer messages like this:
Your request for Remote Start with Climate Control on XX/XX/201X at XX:XX pm CST was successful. Your vehicle ignition is now on. Please ensure it is in a well ventilated area.
Overall, every successful remote start probably cost me over $5, if I take the $99 yearly fee and divide it by the number of successful remote start attempts (less than 20). The remote start feature is frustrating difficult to use, as it requires you to start an app on your phone (I have a pretty common Galaxy S6 Android phone), which frequently forgets my user name and password. So I have to type in both user name and password almost every time I want to use the app., even though I checked the "Keep me logged in" box in the start screen. Once inside the app, you have to push a small "Remote" button on the bottom of the screen, then the "Start" button. Which usually results in the
Your request for Remote Start with Climate Control on XX/XX/201X at XX:XX pm CST was not processed. The feature is currently unavailable. Please try again later. message. With a > 50% failure rate this is just not worth the hassle.
OK, so what about the other features. Any "Stolen vehicle stuff" doesn't really interest me. First off, I have never had a vehicle stolen, secondly, I have insurance and probably wouldn't want my vehicle back after it was stolen for a joy ride, to remove parts or had been used by people unknown to me for whatever purpose they stole the vehicle for. Once the car is stolen, it becomes a police/insurance issue, both of which I already pay for. The nanny features (Curfew alert, Speed alert) have zero value to me, since I don't have anyone that I need to monitor driving my car. Maybe if you have a driving teenager in your family, but for me this is useless... I wouldn't let anyone I don't trust drive this car anyway, so if I had a teenager they'd get a 10 year old Honda Civic with the smallest engine or something along those lines (my first car had 60 non Turbo Diesel HP, and I did just fine).
Which leads us to the final package, the
Guidance Package, for another $99 (but requires the two previous packages, so really only available if you pay $297
- Turn-by-turn Navigation
- Destination Search Powered By Google®
- Poi Web Search And Download
This seems to be the most useful package, but anyone who has
Android Auto or
Apple Car Play has similar features for free, instead of paying
$297 per year for this convenience. Basically, anyone but the drivers of the highest end Genesis models (Ultimate) get this as a free update, the people who paid $50,000+ for their cars get the privilege to pay an additional fee to get this luxury. My phone already does all this at no extra charge, so having this feature is kind of redundant. The advantage of having this integrated in the vehicles Navigation system is the larger screen, center console display and the HUD integration. For $297 per year, I'll pass.
Maybe my logic is flawed or I am not seeing something of value? What's your opinion on the value of BlueLink???
