They Said You Could Leave Scooters Anywhere, Then the Repo Men Struck Back • Hacker News Board

Re: They Said You Could Leave Scooters Anywhere, Then the Repo Men Struck Back

#41

Post by DrScump » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 7:36 AM UTC

zkms wrote: post #25

citrablue wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in San Diego, and have followed this with great interest. From my understanding, they are only doing this for scooters that are parked illegally: e.g. on the shop owners property, blocking vehicle access, etc. It's very interesting, because the riders don't have an incentive to park appropriately (and that is sometimes a guessing game -- street signs don't exist for where you can park scooters legally). Howeve…

> because the riders don't have an incentive to park appropriately (and that is sometimes a guessing game -- street signs don't exist for where you can park scooters legally). However, I'd warrant that it's the sheer carelessness of riders who cause this issue. i think this is not exactly correct. The scooter-riding apps i've tried do make users take a photograph of the correctly-parked scooter after the ride, and ev…

  make users take a photograph of the correctly-parked scooter

You can upload any picture of any of their scooters. It's just a picture, and it may or may not have any metadata, or unaltered metadata.

Re: They Said You Could Leave Scooters Anywhere, Then the Repo Men Struck Back

#42

Post by emiliobumachar » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 8:11 AM UTC

Simulacra wrote: post #17

I side with the scooter companies. I think these guys are exploiting a gray area in the law and shaking down the companies, and should be stopped. GPS should be able to show it a scooter was in a legit place or not. If it was, then their argument goes out the window. It just smells too much like theft.

"If [a scooter was in a legit place], then their argument goes out the window."

What about if it wasn't, if it was square on the private property of whoever called the towers?

Re: They Said You Could Leave Scooters Anywhere, Then the Repo Men Struck Back

#43

Post by alanning » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

The end of the article sums up the repossessors' argument quite nicely:

“If you take all the BS that they’ve thrown out, and you take our BS, and you take it down, it’s a very simple concept,” Heinkel says. “They have taken their stuff and placed it on someone else’s property without permission.”

“Now that’s them, and here’s us. We’re two guys who went to the property owners and got permission with that property owner to remove that stuff off their property. That’s all it is.”

Re: They Said You Could Leave Scooters Anywhere, Then the Repo Men Struck Back

#44

Post by ksaj » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 11:10 PM UTC

negativez wrote: post #34

GhostVII wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the incentive should be to call the police and have them impound it in a legal way, or just move it off of their property, not have a private party come and steal the scooters. Just because something is on your property, does not mean you can legally take it - if you park in my driveway, I can't just steal your car.

Replace "steal" with "call a registered tow company" and you can do exactly that - have someone remove an improperly-placed item from your property. Cities solved the problem of improperly-parked cars by creating the entire "towing" concept. Police aren't a service for junk removal, they are for holding guns. You hire a moving company to remove junk and you get the police to come hold guns if the junk-leaver threaten…

Impounding isn't the same thing as throwing them into a dumpster.

Likewise, unless it is registered as a vehicle (and I doubt these scooters are), impounding probably wouldn't happen, and there is no law against tossing abandoned "garbage" that appears on your property.

Interesting. Precedence will eventually be set and then we'll know.