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Fisker lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments for months

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Re: Fisker lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments for months

#61

Post by echoangle »

pkphilip wrote: post #60
nickjj wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Billing and Accounts Payable will always seem like a "how could you mess that up?" problem to engineers, but it literally is difficult and complicated and rife with ways to very seriously and permanently fuck your relationship with your customer Yep. Over the years I've seen some pretty crazy payment related errors that you can't think is possible, like a 12+ year old publicly traded company who generates $60 milli…

Believe it or not, I have seen the same problem on an insurance website for a very large insurance company. The issue was that the developers were storing the rates in session variables and so when you open a new product in a separate tab with a different rate, it would overwrite the session variables with the rates for the newly opened product. Then when the user went to the previous tab to purchase the product they…

I hope they didn’t store the literal rate, but only the selected product id, in the session. Otherwise, you could just modify your request and set a low rate…

Re: Fisker lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments for months

#62

Post by ehnto »

londons_explore wrote: post #33
gangstead wrote: post #11

They've also slashed prices https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-27/fisker-sl... . Presumably that's on existing inventory as the manufacturing is paused. So even if they do cash your check it won't be as big as it used to be. It looks like bankruptcy is imminent. If they do go under does that mean there would be no one there to collect the telemetry? Would an electric car made by a bankrupt company be the…

More importantly, electric cars use a TLS protocol for charging, and that TLS protocol requires the manufacturers to issue new certificates every (90?) days. If the servers go down, these cars won't be able to charge with DC chargers at all (which requires the TLS protocol), and maybe not with home chargers either (which sometimes uses the TLS protocol).

That is the funniest thing I have read today, thank you.

I understand the need for an encrypted connection, but it is worrying to see cars getting built more or less like phone or web apps, and encountering the same obtuse issues.

Re: Fisker lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments for months

#63

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

pkphilip wrote: post #60
nickjj wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Billing and Accounts Payable will always seem like a "how could you mess that up?" problem to engineers, but it literally is difficult and complicated and rife with ways to very seriously and permanently fuck your relationship with your customer Yep. Over the years I've seen some pretty crazy payment related errors that you can't think is possible, like a 12+ year old publicly traded company who generates $60 milli…

Believe it or not, I have seen the same problem on an insurance website for a very large insurance company. The issue was that the developers were storing the rates in session variables and so when you open a new product in a separate tab with a different rate, it would overwrite the session variables with the rates for the newly opened product. Then when the user went to the previous tab to purchase the product they…

Yeah, I had this problem with the world's only ultra-low-cost airline.

We were working on an analytics system and this sortof stuff was pervasive. The entire frontend basically didn't handle multiple tabs.

Mind you, this was in 2012, I assume they've fixed it by now.

Re: Fisker lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments for months

#64

Post by indymike »

miohtama wrote: post #3

“Checks were not cashed in a timely manner or just lost altogether” only in the US of A, or movies from 70s, something like this.

I sometimes advise small and midsize businesses that are having financial problems. Most of them have this exact issue: accounts receivable are a mess. Often, it's because they try outsourcing it to their accountant, who means well but doesn't quite understand that trading money for services/products is the core function of most businesses. Often, instead of buying billing/POS software that fits the business, the accountant has everything being billed out of quick books, and no one but accounting has access to it.

* Sales can't price products accurately and quickly and eventually get frustrated with being stuck with quota pressure and no way to sell the product. Eventually, they start doing bad deals.

* Cash and payment handling is not disciplined. So think PCI nightmare and easily pilfered cash and checks.

* Eventually, the issue becomes, "Where did all the money go?"

This problem is usually really easy to fix as long as the financial problems haven't turned malignant.

Re: Fisker lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments for months

#65

Post by indymike »

peterldowns wrote: post #30

Billing and Accounts Payable will always seem like a "how could you mess that up?" problem to engineers, but it literally is difficult and complicated and rife with ways to very seriously and permanently fuck your relationship with your customer. And potentially with your auditors, investors, and whoever performs legal oversight in your jurisdiction. All of the largest companies in the tech world have been hit by AP…

> Billing and Accounts Payable will always seem like a "how could you mess that up?" problem

After owning five businesses, I agree with this. When I do due diligence on a company before investing, I can usually tell if it is worth investing in by looking at their billing practices, billing reporting and AR aging and history. Good businesses are machines for trading money for whatever they sell. Billing is core functionality.

Re: Fisker lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments for months

#66

Post by korhojoa »

bigiain wrote: post #45
jmholla wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 90 days limit is a Let's Encrypt limit. I don't think TLS limits that length in and of itself. Except that it might need to be finite. But I'm not sure that the `Not After` field is required.

For maybe 5 years or so, the maximum expiry time for a TLS cert (for anything under the purview of the Certification Authority Browser Forum) has been just under 400 days. That's also not a hard technical limit in the TLS spec, you can easily generate a self signed cert that expires in the year 3000 if you want, but it's voluntarily abided by from all the Certificate Authorities that want to have their root certs inc…

These aren't browsers, so that doesn't apply. Their authorities are completely separate. Check out "White Paper of Charging Interface Initiative e. V." from Charins website. https://www.charin.global/media/pages/technology/plug-charge...

Re: Fisker lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments for months

#67

Post by recursive »

pornel wrote: post #55
recursive wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 43, and I don't even know how to do a bank transfer. Sounds amazing. I don't like checks at all. If I don't mind paying a fee, I'll use one of the apps. But for moving money around, checks are all I know. I don't think I'm that unusual in the USA.

It’s amazing how different the customs can be. I’ve only received a check once in my life, in 2004 from a US company. I could not cash it with my regular (online) bank in Poland. I had to open a foreign currency account with the national bank, just for this check, and go to their special customer service department in person, at their HQ. It was like bringing them an alien artifact.

Hah. Once I had to get a wire transfer from a foreign company for some consulting work. I had to open up a new bank account just for that. It's like a mirror image.

Re: Fisker lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments for months

#68

Post by jfray2k22 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #34
foobarian wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh. Couple months ago my mortgage company applied a payment to two consecutive months, also paid by paper check. Maybe check processing skills are getting lost from the workforce.

I am now trying to set up direct deposit in an investment account I own. Despite being able to buy and sell online in that account, to enable direct deposit I need to mail them a paper form, with notarized signature, and include a voided blank check. I have not written a paper check in years and I'm not even sure I have any.

Most banks will print a sheet of 3 on demand at a branch. I think they're called counter checks? I haven't used a checkbook in probably about a decade, so when they've been needed for some reason, I just get those.

Re: Fisker lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments for months

#69

Post by pkphilip »

echoangle wrote: post #61
pkphilip wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not, I have seen the same problem on an insurance website for a very large insurance company. The issue was that the developers were storing the rates in session variables and so when you open a new product in a separate tab with a different rate, it would overwrite the session variables with the rates for the newly opened product. Then when the user went to the previous tab to purchase the product they…

I hope they didn’t store the literal rate, but only the selected product id, in the session. Otherwise, you could just modify your request and set a low rate…

Nope. They stored a WHOLE RANGE of fields which was also used to display the rates directly to the customers. A total mess!

Re: Fisker lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments for months

#70

Post by miohtama »

usr1106 wrote: post #58
Talanes wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To shed some light on why Americans kept checks for so long: I'm 33 and have never done a bank transfer. I can't even say what the flaws in our system are, because I grew up in a family where it was never considered as an option: money was sent as cash or checks only.

I moved Finland 30 years ago. Checks for private customers did no longer exist at that time. (Checks for businesses reportedly still existed a couple of years.) Since the pandemic started I have not carried a wallet (paying cash was seen as some kind anti-social behavior with high risk to infect someone) There are zero places where I would need cash. An increasing number of places does not accept cash. For some ten y…

An American mind cannot comprehend what you just said.
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