On-Star Scores big during Gustav

I was reading this morning that GM's On-Star operators (the in-auto emergency satellite service) handled 76 million calls on Sunday (in USA Today 9/3 - but didn't the storm hit Monday?) during Hurricane Gustav's sojourn through Louisana. It was noted that that was double the normal call volume. So that means that on a normal day On-Star handles 38 million calls or so. WOW! Talk about Customer Controlled Communications (TM)!

But what are these people calling about on a non-hurricane day? Surely they cannot all be car accidents, flat tires and other car mishaps. On-Star is marketed as a safety net that deploys automatically say when an airbag inflates during a car accident. But people are using it (among other reasons) for directions, places to eat on the road and a way to reach someone if their mobile phone does not have service.

When we leased a car several years ago it came with a three month or one year (I cannot remember) On-Star trial. This was fine but when it came time to pay $ 9.95/month (maybe it was $ 12.95?) my wife and I declined the service. Part of the reason was the big brother factor of having our car monitored wherever we went. They probably can still do that anyway since the signal still exists we simply did not pay for service. And to think what they could see if they kept track of our travels - trips to soccer games, the mall, the grocery store!

I am rethinking On-Star however and it may be a worthwhile investment although like Satellite radio if it were $ 6.95/month it would be a true no-brainer. Maybe On-Star and Sirius/XM should do a partnership deal and package their services for a better price and single bill option.

In the end I do like the idea of 38 million or more as in the case Sunday having the ability to call into On-Star and get the service, information or help that they need. But it also makes me wonder how many On-Star operators there are at any given time. 76 million calls works out to more than 3 million calls per hour or 50,000 calls per minute. That would require a substantial amount of operators at the ready at any given time. Impressive to say the least.