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Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

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Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#351

Post by zie »

chadlavi wrote: post #329
Merad wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He offered to pay, and they wouldn't take a credit card, PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, wire transfer, or any other modern form of payment. No, he had to go to Western Union. I'm guessing they told him to get a Western Union money order, as those can't be reversed after they're cashed (AFAIK). Most modern forms of payment offer some level of consumer protection, as in they can be canceled or reversed. TBH a repo business mi…

Isn't a cashier's check from your bank also not cancelable?

If the named payee has physical possession of the check, they can cash it and it can't be undone(without a valid court order, i.e. fraud, etc). All other situations, it can be undone, with work.

Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#352

Post by maxerickson »

VLM wrote: post #150
lmkg wrote: post #36

Well if this is how the new cars are gonna be, I guess I'll just go ahead and teach myself to be a Car Guy so that the one I have now will run forever. It's not that I'm afraid of missing a payment. At this point I would probably buy the car outright. But after the robo-signing debacle with BoA repossesssing houses that they were never party to, the mere capability renders the machine fundamentally untrustworthy.

Any user interface will be misused, so "click to repo" will mostly be used accidentally in error. The vast majority of cars are not repo'd and as such the vast majority of clicks on the "repo" button will be in error. The customer service rep will be trying to click "x" to close some other website's popups or they thought they were clicking "reset" but that's right next to "repo". Or the new hire is told to click "re…

What if they make it take like 2 steps?

Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#353

Post by Maken »

lapetitejort wrote: post #316
lmkg wrote: post #36

Well if this is how the new cars are gonna be, I guess I'll just go ahead and teach myself to be a Car Guy so that the one I have now will run forever. It's not that I'm afraid of missing a payment. At this point I would probably buy the car outright. But after the robo-signing debacle with BoA repossesssing houses that they were never party to, the mere capability renders the machine fundamentally untrustworthy.

Go one step further and become a Bicycle Guy. Consider what will still be operational 100 years from now once fossil fuels have dried up and we have fully transitioned into Life As A Service.

That's true as long as you don't use one of those ungodly bluetooth shifters with built-in end-of-life cycle.

Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#354

Post by CamperBob2 »

lasermike026 wrote: post #231
toast0 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no way for a human to operate a car safely over a mid to long period of time. My observed injury rate per vehicle mile, per trip, or per time spent, in a car is much lower than the same rates on a bicycle. Incidentally, my largest injury on a bike was due to street car rails, so thanks public transit for making the roads less safe for bicycling. I can't count the number of times I've tripped while walking,…

In the future you will not have a choice. Cars are already gone you just don't know it yet.

Wait'll you hear my plans for your future.

Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#355

Post by WheatMillington »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #148
motohagiography wrote: post #41

I work in security and anti-fraud is the use case of last resort for terrible ideas. When you finance a car, the vehicle becomes collateral for a loan, but it belongs to you. A technology like this means that the vehicle still belongs to Ford, which means if something goes wrong with it, or if you get sciatica from their shitty seats, you can class action sue them into oblivion. The reason we have laws is so that peo…

> When you finance a car, the vehicle becomes collateral for a loan, but it belongs to you. The title stays with the lender until all the payments are made per the loan agreement. I would not say the vehicle legally belongs to a borrower until they have possession of the title. > The reason we have laws is so that people have recourse to principle, whereas when you implement something like this in hardware (a car), i…

Perhaps this is true in America where apparently you still have a paper title to indicate ownership?? But under commonwealth law "title" is a legal concept, not a physical document, and can't belong to anyone except the rightful owner. An asset can be used as security collateral without the ownership changing hands.

Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#356

Post by Psychlist »

chucksmash wrote: post #327
lmkg wrote: post #36

Well if this is how the new cars are gonna be, I guess I'll just go ahead and teach myself to be a Car Guy so that the one I have now will run forever. It's not that I'm afraid of missing a payment. At this point I would probably buy the car outright. But after the robo-signing debacle with BoA repossesssing houses that they were never party to, the mere capability renders the machine fundamentally untrustworthy.

Having trouble thinking what user-facing technology cars have gained recently that I actually need. Backup cameras are nice, my last two cars had them but my current one does not. Life goes on. Heard anecdotally that new cars in US require then now, so I guess next car will probably have one again. Blindspot indicators on side mirrors are nice too, but physically turning and looking is too engrained in me to stop doi…

There's a lot that can be done by disintegrated systems, too.

I put cameras onto a box truck so I had reversing etc, but I used an 8-camera wired security system with video recorder and eSIM for that. The screen was optional but I found one that only had one button (to toggle views) rather than a "command console" type that by its nature gave full control over the security system. Driving around displaying the bumper-height rear camera on the screen was quite handy, normally it's a blind spot of trucks.

Likewise the GPS tracking system, I bought a stand-alone navigation system (you need a truck-specific one that you can at the very least type height and weight into so it doesn't direct you down roads you can't fit through), and obviously a separate anti-theft tracker (well, two, because the immobiliser also had one).

And of course there was a radio/CD player in the cab, no need to wire that into the one computer to rule them all that modern mobile infotainment systems have. I mean, "computers with wheels" or whatever the transport as a service companies call their devices these days.

Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#357

Post by brigade »

bko wrote: post #283
bluGill wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the scummy low end of the auto loan business. They want you to pay for a couple months and then reposes the car. They are selling older cars, so just a couple months of payment is more $ than the depreciation of the car, and when it comes back they can sell it again. While they maybe have to pay you back for the value of your owned part of the car, they can charge repossession and detail for sale fees first. They…

You understand that if i lend you $100 to buy a car, you pay off 50%, i can sell the car for $70, i would have to give you $20 (you only owe me $50). There are strict rules what you can do state by state, but generally you can't repossess something worth more than the outstanding balance and keep the rest as a profit For example here's NY state If you've already paid more than 60 percent of the amount you owe when th…

An 84 month loan at New York’s maximum 16% interest means that the 60% threshold isn’t reached for 5 years, far after the expected loan lifetime.

And the car isn’t the only thing being sold, there might be a bundled reconditioning fee, a GPS installation fee, a documentation fee, a service fee, origination fee, nitrogen fee, etc. So when they sell the car again for the same $2000 plus fees that you bought it for, they’ll happily deduct that $2000 from the $3000 you still owe.

Since you mentioned subprime loans, to clarify: this is about the level below that, for people that can’t qualify for a loan from any real bank, even Santander.

Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#358

Post by HomeDeLaPot »

The problem with this isn't the idea of a car repossessing itself per se, because repossession is already a legitimate thing; it's the idea that your car can be remotely controlled by anyone other than you. There are already so many things that can go wrong. I don't want to buy a car that can be remotely disabled because I drove near a protest, or because there was a "clerical error" at Ford, or because my payment didn't go through, or because of a spotty connection or a software bug or a hacker! I'm also not sure I want to drive a car that collects and uploads analytics to my insurance company. (Although maybe it would be interesting as an opt-in system with a hardware kill switch that saves you boatloads of money if you don't drive like an a-hole...)

I'm pretty happy with the old, non-Internet-connected car that I drive. My phone already has all the smarts that my car needs for navigation and playing media and stuff. And from backup cameras to safer lane changing to full self driving, I can't think of a feature that I'd want to be built into the car and Internet-connected except for remote start (not sure I'd use it) or full-on "tell my car to drive somewhere without me."

Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#360

Post by [deleted] »

spiritplumber wrote: post #333
AlbertCory wrote: post #191

True story: my neighbor's lease payment was under, by a dollar or two, no more. An error in his banking practices, I guess. They came and repossessed it in the middle of the night. He offered to pay, and they wouldn't take a credit card, PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, wire transfer, or any other modern form of payment. No, he had to go to Western Union. Someone who's more up on this sort of stuff can explain that. A week late…

I saw someone's RV getting repossessed over $50 in 2019. They were clearly living in it. I walked over and handed the repo guy $60. He wouldn't take it. This was in a cul de sac. I parked my truck across the way so that it would not be possible to enter or leave the cul de sac. Someone called the cops. The cops showed up after a few minutes, good response time. The lady living in the RV was told that she could not pa…

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