GPS Tracking ROI

Yesterday I made some comments on a new law in Nevada that may be expected to spread far and wide, requiring auto manufacturers to put warnings in the car’s owners manual if the vehicle contains tracking devices. It’s easy to make the case that consumer should be made aware if they may come under the supervision of any tracking device.

One wonders how someone can buy a car with OnStar listed in the list of options and receive a monthly fee from OnStar for their subscription and not be aware they have the technology installed, but hey, more power to the Nevada legislators, it’s a law people seemed to want.

But what about people who don’t know they’re paying to be tracked? This might be the case regarding the woman mentioned above who may well owe her life to a GPS unit in her car that many people didn’t seem to know of.

Hey, these things cost money. Who would put one on your car that even the police didn’t know about? Well, the clue is in the credit the police gave to the finance company. Apparently they are a small ‘buy here, pay here’ auto finance firm. For the past several years now there has been a growing subculture in the GPS sales world of small, unobtrusive tracking units that dealers and finance companies mount on used cars. Are they doing this for customer safety and good will? Hardly. They’re doing it because they want to be able to locate the car (on which they hold a lien) if the payments don’t come in on time. In many cases, the GPS tracking systems are wired into the car’s ignition system, so if a buyer’s payments are late, the finance company can push a button and the car shuts down. I think that’s sort of what psychologists term “negative reinforcement”.

So don’t think you aren’t being tracked even if you don’t own a new GM car that came equipped with OnStar. You might be being tracked even if you are making your payments to Honest Joe’s Used Car and Storm Door Company. Now, who is looking out for these people and who is proposing any laws designed to emulate the Nevada owner’s manual warning?

On the other hand of this argument, perhaps we should ask Laverne Daniels if she’s happy that the GPS tracking was installed on her car. The article doesn’t specify if Ms. Daniels was notified of the device’s existence, but because it was there it for sure that her ordeal was substantially less traumatic than these kind of abduction cases normally turn out to be, At the least the woman usually suffers sexual assault and often is murdered. Thank goodness FreeWay Auto Credit was tracking each and every one of the vehicles they sold.

Or, was the whole thing the work of the devil? What sayeth thou?