That sounds like the wrong direction to go. That normalizes that it's okay to push bad safety programming as long as the onus is on the user to search for and attempt a conveluded way to contact the manufacturer, at which point the manufacturer will most likely ignore it anyway. I doubt VW has a hotline for reporting this kind of thing, and if so, I bet it's not posted on the car anywhere.
The best way to give a manufacturer feedback is to not purchase their product. If the product is already purchased and non-refundable, the next best way is to advise others not to purchase the product. While this may sound harsh, sales metrics are guaranteed to shape manufacturer behavior, while anecdotal feedback may or may not result in changes.
Writing to or calling the manufacturer may be effective for small companies, or companies with a good track record in ethics. Otherwise, let the sales do the talking.
Your plan doesn't seem really effective, either. The company then has no idea why you aren't buying the product. It could be for one of any thousands of reasons.
This will only work out for you (and others) if there are other manufacturers that don't add features like this at all. And since you haven't provided feedback to anyone about what you don't like, other manufacturers won't hear about this either, and may also add these sorts of features.
I agree that one person providing feedback isn't going to do much. But that's why everyone needs to do so. It's like voting: your individual vote usually won't change anything, but the votes of everyone can. Refusing to provide feedback (or vote) because your individual action won't change anything on its own doesn't solve anything, and just gives those in charge less data to work with to figure out what people actually do want.
> The best way to give a manufacturer feedback is to not purchase their product.
And then the VW software team managers say "Look how great Tesla's are selling. It's because they have more autodrive features. Give me more money to add more features." Note, that was "add features" not "improve features".
The manufacturer must carry out comprehensive safety testing of their automobiles before putting them into production - that's how other safety-critical tech is deployed.
That is: their test results should be providing them with all the feedback they need. We're not talking about a broken UI on a shopping website. Broken "smarts" in a car is like broken brakes; it's not OK to just wait for users to find out for you.
If they "did the wrong thing" with car safety, then they shoun't be allowed to sell cars until the problem is fixed.
And yet here we are. I agree with you that such things shouldn't be allowed out into the wild until they are perfect (or at least meet some reasonable standard), but it appears to that it does happen.
You can either stick your fingers in your ears and keep yelling "this can't happen!", or acknowledge that it does and try to do something about it.
Designing, testing and QA can be seen as forms of internal feedback but I was writing about external feedback in response to a suggestion that external feedback is wrong to give.
I'm all for giving feedback, and I've made a niche suggestion to Google once, which they've implemented, so I know it does happen sometimes, but I've made many more suggestions to other companies including to Toyota and Dodge which have just been ignored.
