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“Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of Dollars Overnight”

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Re: “Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of Dollars Overnight”

#31

Post by bloopernova »

bthomas wrote: post #20

What’s the rationale for not naming them here?

Reddit users are like a swarm of zombies sometimes. If something negative gets shared about a person or company, you can be fairly certain that there will be hundreds to tens of thousands of Redditors expressing their anger. That anger, whether deserved or not, results in everything from DDOS attacks, phonecalls from thousands of people, people contacting employees at home, death threats, etc etc.

There's also the tale of the Boston Marathon bombing, where some "over-enthusiastic" Reddit users took it upon themselves to solve the crimes based on footage from security cameras. The Reddit Detectives managed to hound and accuse the wrong people: https://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-falsely-accuses-sunil...

So Reddit is very anxious to avoid unleashing the zombie horde again, hence its very strict policies about naming companies or individuals.

Re: “Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of Dollars Overnight”

#32

Post by koolba »

jhfdbkofdcho wrote: post #3

Sounds like a hi tech version of a scam in my city where a guy rents an apartment (or just squats it) and then turns around and sublets it and stops paying rent to the actual owner. People actually living in the unit stuck holding the bag.

I’ve seen the commercial version of this scam where a guy rented out floor space at a mall, collected rent from subletting pop up vendors, and never actually paid the rent to the facility, then skipped town.

Re: “Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of Dollars Overnight”

#33

Post by Animats »

Animats wrote: post #8
spectramax wrote: post #2

What is “the startup” in this case? What is preventing from disclosing the name of the business?

Homeshare fits the description.[1] Not finding any other articles which mention this problem, though. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/homeshare-rents-luxury-apart...

Oh, and here's an SF tenant attorney who says that California law prohibits rental agreements requiring arbitration, or waiving a jury trial.[1]

Main page for California small claims courts.[2] Some things can be done online.

[1] http://mcwrealestatelaw.com/eviction/arbitration-clause-in-y...

[2] https://www.courts.ca.gov/selfhelp-smallclaims.htm

Re: “Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of Dollars Overnight”

#34

Post by i4blux »

djflutt3rshy wrote: post #4
spectramax wrote: post #2

What is “the startup” in this case? What is preventing from disclosing the name of the business?

Reddit's rules against giving out personal information, so thousands of Redditors don't bombard the startup with angry comments or worse.

The name of a company is not personal information.

Re: “Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of Dollars Overnight”

#35

Post by i4blux »

bloopernova wrote: post #31
bthomas wrote: post #20

What’s the rationale for not naming them here?

Reddit users are like a swarm of zombies sometimes. If something negative gets shared about a person or company, you can be fairly certain that there will be hundreds to tens of thousands of Redditors expressing their anger. That anger, whether deserved or not, results in everything from DDOS attacks, phonecalls from thousands of people, people contacting employees at home, death threats, etc etc. There's also the ta…

Calling those who did the Boston Marathon detective work "Reddit" is like calling those who hailed the NZ mosque shooter "4chan".

Re: “Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of Dollars Overnight”

#36

Post by dmix »

larkeith wrote: post #10
dmix wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subletting is entirely legal is it not? And it’s not a free ticket to do whatever you want with the property either.

> and stops paying rent to the actual owner The idea is they take the sublessee's deposit and first rent payment, don't pay the owner the rent, and vanish. The sublessee has now payed deposit + rent but has nowhere to live (as the landlord is unpaid).

Right. That’s different, I misread.

This happened to my relative when someone owed her $9000 in rent. We were able to retrieve most of it via small claims court. It also helped he was dumb enough to leave bank papers behind when he was evicted so it made the process easier. A credit agency is handling the rest.

Re: “Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of Dollars Overnight”

#37

Post by stuart78 »

I realize intimately how hard it is to get by in SF and other big cities, so I won’t criticize the renters here, but I have no such hesitation about criticizing the founding team and investors. Turning apartments into tenements could never have turned out well. How does this business scale outside of the core nimby tech cities? And even in those cities, the decentralization of the market is both good and hard to take down. One hopes those responsible are compelled to do so, but one also fears it will just be the renters left twisting.

Re: “Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of Dollars Overnight”

#39

Post by jakobegger »

jhfdbkofdcho wrote: post #3

Sounds like a hi tech version of a scam in my city where a guy rents an apartment (or just squats it) and then turns around and sublets it and stops paying rent to the actual owner. People actually living in the unit stuck holding the bag.

Happened to me. I paid rent for a couple of months to a lady that I thought owned the appartement. Then one day someone knocked on the door, asked who I was, why I was living in his appartement, and why his tenant stopped paying rent.

In retrospect, it was eye opening how gullible everyone involved was (myself included), and how little the police did about it.

For every appartement I've since rented I checked the official register to make sure my future landlord actually owns the place...

Re: “Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of Dollars Overnight”

#40

Post by thaumasiotes »

oceanghost wrote: post #25
bengale wrote: post #18

Do you have a deposit protection scheme like we have the the UK? Our refundable deposits don't sit with the landlord or letting agent, they go to a separate company. At the end they release the funds unless there is some sort of damage in which case they investigate and decide whats a fair payment to the landlord.

At least in California, no. My experience has always been the landlord makes up any excuse at all to keep the deposit and you fight them tooth and nail. California does have a fair number of renter protection laws, but the companies rarely observe them.

My experience in California has been that the landlord didn't try to keep the deposit even when the rental contract arguably allowed them to.
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