WHY HAS MERCEDES INCREASED THE PRICE OF MY SATNAV SUBSCRIPTION?

QI bought my Mercedes E-Class new in 2018. When the warranty expired, the various Mercedes Me services previously included were subject to a subscription. The only one I use is Live Traffic in the satnav, which I renewed last year for £49. This has now expired, but to renew again Mercedes wants to bundle in six other services I don’t want and charge me £119. What can I do?

– NH

AUnfortunately, what you’re experiencing is the start of a disconcerting trend that’s going to become a large part of car buyers’ lives. Pretty soon, many (if not most) manufacturers will offer some or all of their optional extras as subscriptions. The idea is that they build the car with all the hardware in place, but it only gets activated if you agree to pay a monthly fee.

This has its advantages for used-car buyers – that you can turn on options that the first owner didn’t want.

But to my mind this advantage is outweighed by the manifold downsides for consumers, whether it’s the extra weight, wastage and CO2 emissions created by fitting cars with a plethora of hardware that may never get used, or the fact that you end up having to pay many times over for something you’d originally have had for a set fee.

Or, indeed, the fact that there’s nothing to stop a manufacturer arbitrarily raising the price or bundling in other options you didn’t want, as happened here.

There are a few options to get around it. You could simply buy one of the many aftermarket satnavs with live traffic updates. The Garmin DriveSmart 65 is reckoned by Auto Express to be the best and it’s easy to operate thanks to a large screen.

Alternatively, your E-Class has Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. That means that if you have a smartphone tariff that allows for the use of data, you can plug in your phone and use many of its functions via your car’s touchscreen, with Google Maps or Waze replacing your car’s native satnav while still using its central screen. These apps use live traffic information to route you around blockages in real time and, for now at least, they are both free to download and use.