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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

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poster was talking about "human error". If you are out of a car because your lender messed up (perhaps intentionally to pocket the late fee) you are in trouble, because everyone needs a vehicle to get to work on time. And of course you have as much recourse against your lender as the people at the receiving end of the Hertz case. Didn't Peter Thiel say you need a seven-figure sum to make the legal system work for…

I don't disagree with the end point, but I have a hard time understanding why the Hertz case demonstrates that Ford is likely to lie with criminal intent about a mistaken repo. It has literally nothing in common except that it involves a car. If Ford wants to lie about repos or lie about human error, they can do that now, they don't need a computer to do it. The whole damn process is subject to human error as it is t…

On the "people lying" side of the issue you're describing, up until now a tow company needed to be involved. With this system, the middle man is gone, so potentially a single employee could initiate repossesion of a whole fleet by themself.

Will the owners have recourse after being stranded without their car explaining their boss it just went away ? probably. Will the employee be punished ? surely. Is it something we want to allow on the first place ? I'm mot so sure.

Here we're really digging on the "working as intended" side, bit the more probable issues would be it's just buggy and sometimes an older cars thinks it got repossessed, goes away, and you're left to battle for getting reparations and/or another car, knowing you're probably broke so not in a strong position for that.

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

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, I'm not the person who was repo'ed and I already texted him once today. "Stay away from GM Finance" is the lesson here.

That’s generally good advice. Buy cars you can afford, and pay cash. If you must, finance with a local credit union.

[deleted]

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

#383
post #375

In college, a roommate of mine was double-parked, or parked in a fire zone, or something, in our 8-house cul-de-sac. He ran upstairs to get something from his room, and a tow truck appeared (this all happened in well under 5 minutes). When he came out, he argued with the tow truck guys a bunch, but they kept hooking up his car and arguing back and couldn't be reasoned with, etc etc. My friend sat on the hood to keep…

Maybe a better lesson than “confront / physically endanger the tow truck driver who is doing his job” is “don’t block traffic in an 8 house cul de sac because you wanted to get something from your room but didn’t want to actually bother finding parking.”

This all reads like entitled driver behavior to me. Or dumb college antics that are best left behind.

-former car owner

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

#385

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 di…

> I'm pretty happy with the old, non-Internet-connected car that I drive.

I'm so happy with it that I will never own one that is internet connected, unless I can disable the internet connection in some way.

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

#386

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 di…

Brace yourself then, because the future of automotive is highly connected, and in many ways it already is. Every car since the early 2000s has computerized components that control everything from power steering to infotainment systems, and your car probably already communicates with some servers using a built in cellular sim. Hackers have been able to compromise cars for at least a couple of decades, and while car ma…

This is why I only buy old cars. If that becomes impossible in the future, that would be enough to get me to finally give up owning a car entirely.

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

#387
post #375

In college, a roommate of mine was double-parked, or parked in a fire zone, or something, in our 8-house cul-de-sac. He ran upstairs to get something from his room, and a tow truck appeared (this all happened in well under 5 minutes). When he came out, he argued with the tow truck guys a bunch, but they kept hooking up his car and arguing back and couldn't be reasoned with, etc etc. My friend sat on the hood to keep…

Maybe a better lesson than “confront / physically endanger the tow truck driver who is doing his job” is “don’t block traffic in an 8 house cul de sac because you wanted to get something from your room but didn’t want to actually bother finding parking.” This all reads like entitled driver behavior to me. Or dumb college antics that are best left behind. -former car owner

The amount of mental gymnastics I hear from people who illegally park or obstruct society for their own selfish reasons is beyond me. There are places to park, there are places to not park, they don't have an overlap.

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

#388
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…

How am I the first commenter to mention cash?!

Cash is so messy. You need a physical place to pay it, and a daily Brink's truck to take it to a bank.

(although, yeah, you'd think GM Finance would have all that in most metropolitan areas.)

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

#389
post #375

In college, a roommate of mine was double-parked, or parked in a fire zone, or something, in our 8-house cul-de-sac. He ran upstairs to get something from his room, and a tow truck appeared (this all happened in well under 5 minutes). When he came out, he argued with the tow truck guys a bunch, but they kept hooking up his car and arguing back and couldn't be reasoned with, etc etc. My friend sat on the hood to keep…

Maybe a better lesson than “confront / physically endanger the tow truck driver who is doing his job” is “don’t block traffic in an 8 house cul de sac because you wanted to get something from your room but didn’t want to actually bother finding parking.” This all reads like entitled driver behavior to me. Or dumb college antics that are best left behind. -former car owner

You had me until "former car owner"
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