I got a new car recently and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that onstar would still call the emergency services in a crash even if I didn't pay for it. I asked for clarification and the salesperson was like, "No, that would be ridiculous. Monstrous even. We'll give you the freebie if the crash detectors go off. You can also press the SOS button for free. You don't have to pay for that."

I'm curious, if it's provided for free, then what else would you get if paying for it?

oh i can call them up and be like, "where is applebee's?", and a person on the other end has to google it and tell me.

well how could you NOT pay for that

u joke but onstar was the bridge my family needed to get my grandparents to understand cell phones

I looked this up to be sure, and according to the onstar website that service is specifically $300 a year and you don't get it if you don't pay. I've seen mixed messages about what happens if you don't have a subscription and push the button, apparently in some cases if you press the emergency button without a subscription a creepy voice tells you that you need to sign up.

I think people might mix this up because if you hit the onstar button itself you will talk to someone if even you're not subbed, but that's someone there to sell you service and they don't get your location. I think they may be able to dial 911 if you can talk, but I'm not even sure about that.

In any case car salespeople will say anything in order to get you to buy a car so I'm not sure if that's a trustworthy source.

that's scary. even if i had paid up i'm not sure i'd ever really be able to trust the software to actually enable the thing

Yikes hmm.. I'll check into that, thanks

you know, I just found a pamphlet that says that I don't have that automatic crash response, you were right.

I got lied to by a salesperson! 😭

all salespeople know is mcdonalds , bluetooth they phone, shake hands, be heterosexual, eat hot chip & lie