If I were asked to pick one thing that humans hated almost universally, perhaps by some supervillain friend looking for exciting new torture ideas, I bet pop-up ads would be a pretty good answer. Everyone hates pop-up ads. We’ve hated them since the very start of widespread internet access, and we haven’t stopped. Really, I can’t think of a quicker way to incur the wrath of nearly every human, across all cultural, political, and linguistic boundaries than to stick pop-up ads on something. That may be why I was so surprised to see posts about how a freaking extended warranty full-screen pop-up ad was showing up on Jeep center-stack screens. What the hell, Jeep? Are you serious with this shit?
Now, since I’m a journalist, or at least close enough, I decided that I should at least get Stellantis/Jeep’s side of things instead of doing what I felt like doing, which was tapping a lawn sprinkler into a gas line and setting the entire world on fire. That’s just the magic of pop-up ads at work, nothing to be worried about.
Here are the posts I saw showing these pop-up ads, both on Jeeps, and both posted to Reddit’s r/assholedesign forum:
Posts from the assholedesign
community on Reddit
… and then this one:
s
Jeep puts ads on the fucking screen in my car.
byu/Dunkinmydonuts1 inassholedesign
Wow. It’s real. It’s terrifying. It’s a full-screen, block-everything ad, with options to place a Bluetooth call if you, I suppose, want the damn FlexCare Extended Care Premium plan (as long as you have less than 36,000 miles), and then an X button to ideally close the window, and an OK button which … I’m not sure what that does. Does it just close the window, too? Or does OK mean yes, gimme that extended warranty? It’s not really clear.
One of the posters noted that the message appears every time the car stops, even if they hit the OK button. That would drive me positively clamshit. Notably absent is any sort of “never show me this ad again, dammit” button, or any sort of similar opt-out control.
Can this be real? Would Stellantis do something so woefully misguided and annoying? I reached out to our Stellantis/Jeep contact to ask and was initially told that they were “investigating” on their end, which to me felt like a stalling tactic while the proper ass-covering plans were conceived.
I eventually got this response from a Stellantis spokesperson:
This was an in-vehicle message designed to inform Jeep customers about Mopar extended vehicle care options. 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.
Ohhhhh it was a glitch! Whew, okay, good. I’d hate to think that Jeep would actually subject their customers to such a dystopian annoyance like mothergrabbing pop-up ads on a car they paid good money for. Because that would be cruel and miserable, and likely engender wrathful feelings of everyone who was subjected to it.
I suppose a glitch is possible, though I’ve not seen any examples of this ad popping up with the instant opt-out option available, but I guess it must exist, since not all Jeep owners seem to have had to deal with these ads. I suspect if this was happening to more people than these “few isolated cases” we’ still be cleaning up from the aftermath of the riots and uprisings.
I’m choosing to believe Stellantis in that this was not an intentional start of some test to see if Jeep owners would tolerate this sort of misery, but I hope a lesson was taken away from this glitch situation regardless. That lesson is, simply: don’t.
Don’t do this. Don’t push pop-up ads to our car screens. Nobody deserves that. We’ll fucking revolt, I swear it.
Don’t test us.
I’m more and more convinced that the dashboard infomatics screen should just be an extension of a mobile device. It was already obvious that carmakers weren’t really using it for our benefit.
I agree that if pop-ups on in-car screens become a reality, we should revolt.
Fucking Stellantis, lol. Bankrupt in 3-2-1…
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Phillip K Dick wrote a short story called The Sales Pitch way back in 1954. Pretty sure pop up ads are his fault.
Man, you’ll hate BMW and Triumph motorcycles, more recent models of both will put full-screen (and the screen is your speedometer/dashboard) “pop ups” that “helpfully remind” you to take the bike in to the dealer for scheduled service. So these ads for the dealer’s service department block visibility of things like how fast you’re going or how much gas you have left. You have to dismiss them at every ignition cycle, and they can NOT be reset by the owner if you do your own maintenance. BMW goes a step further. Even if you dismiss the nag screen, a persistent yellow flashing wrench light is on the dashboard for eternity.
Buddy had a G310GS (their baby ADV/cheapest bike) which had a more basic LCD (think 8-segment alarm clock) display. Nope, that doesn’t mean you’re exempt. Instead of pop-up ads, you get “WORKSHOP REQUIRED” scrolling across the display in place of tripmeters or other information, along with the blinking wrench. It keeps scrolling until you held a button down for a couple seconds to dismiss it. Which you had to do every time it was started. He finally brought it into a dealer and asked if they would *just* clear the light, thinking they’d do this for a nominal-ish fee. Nope. They refused to clear the light unless the requisite service was paid for. That was a 300cc bike that took like 1.5 quarts of oil. The dealer wanted nearly $200 for this routine service- and to clear the light. Told them to pack sand and a piece of black tape went over the light. He actually got rid of the bike like 2 months later and I think the colossal piss-off factor of the maintenance reminder was a substantial part of that decision.
Seems to mostly be a Euro bike thing. Every Japanese brand I’ve dealt with, if it has a reminder at all, it’s easily user-resettable, and such reminders tend to only be found on bikes aimed at beginners or “casual” riders like scooters. Like my 2020 Goldwing doesn’t have any sort of maintenance reminders at all.
It does kinda figure that it is Stellantis doing this to their customers. I mean, they are exactly pillars of quality.
How much did they charge him to get this out-of-warranty problem fixed?
Man, when you start your jeep that *finally* didn’t burst into flames, and then this happens.
What a better way to remind you they have extended warranties available then an annoying software glitch?
I’ve seen a lot of comments “joking” about how if all the customers experiencing this glitch actually bought the extended warranty, the claims would bankrupt the company within a year.