171–180 of 250 posts
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In the US, it goes both ways with just a routing and account number. It's a terribly outdated system.
Since Spotify is a Swedish company, I'm sure this is why they didn't think it would be an issue.
When I read stories about companies like Spotify creating e-waste like this, I think it’s worth pointing out that commercial companies don’t have to behave this way. As a counter-point, back around 2008, I purchased two Squeezebox music players from Logitech (digital music players that Logitech had acquired from Slim Devices: high quality DACs that supported every audio format, gap-less playback, synchronised playing…
Logitech seem to be crazy about user support somehow. I had one of their old Harmony IR remote controls, and when they discontinued the software used for programming the older generations of remotes, they sent me a brand new remote free of charge .
Great support but I was left with mixed feelings since I still had almost completely working keyboard and I think the experience would be better if they would send me just the keycap.
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In the US, it goes both ways with just a routing and account number. It's a terribly outdated system.
Since Spotify is a Swedish company, I'm sure this is why they didn't think it would be an issue.
The reason for this is simply incompetence. They were given the order from leadership to discontinue Car Thing to cut costs, and they are given a short deadline with no options for extending or unlocking the hardware. Spotify's Lawyers don't see any way out of that issue, and also see liability for having discontinued a product so quickly and with such short notice, so they recommend to the Accounts team that Car Thing customers can opt-in to a refund, and that should indemnify Spotify from any disputes.
So the Accounts team gets this new recommendation from Legal, with an even tighter deadline than sunsetting Car Thing, where customers are entitled to refunds on-demand if they bought one. Requests come in immediately, and there is absolutely zero process in place for actually issuing refunds for this, so the Accounts team works directly with the Finance team and figures they can just wire refunds directly to customers, which the Finance team is happy to do if they are provided a spreadsheet of account/routing numbers.
Nobody in the process of making these decision has any understanding of the risks, they just move to actualize what leadership asked them to, doing as little work as possible to meet the deadline. The result is refund requests arriving before any refund process has been established, and so the process is invented on-the-fly without any regard to best practice.
Tl;Dr: Discontinuing Car Thing was a hastily made decision that was announced before the company had done due-diligence, and now they are dealing with a disorganized response.
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Yea - I'm not advocating to stop participation entirely ; just with the hacks/opportunists. We are so incredibly beyond the government serving the people. They don't reside in the same plane of existence. The average DC rep would be shocked to live like I did, the average person.
There’s no meaningfully “average” lifestyle. Most Americans get some form of healthcare subsidy be that directly or through their parents. However rural hospital subsidies, Medicare, Medicaid, low income subsidies on the market, or pretax from your employer are all very different and none of them really impact VA benefits. Living on 30k/ year is meaningfully different than 50k or 500k etc. A 20 year old and a 60 year…
It's ridiculously uniform by comparison to the populace
I don't mean to overstate it; reasonable arguments can be made for, against, or as - some of that's implicit. Power/election makes a class. That's not what I'm talking about.
I was grandstanding when I got to talking about average. The class is 'crook', or hack/opportunist if we want something more modern.
To close, back to my hypothetical: the shock they feel implies that a representative person should be able to adjust.
The ones we have couldn't. They'd literally have a coronary - they manage to be several deviations off in terms of age and fitness in addition to moral sensibility.
I know every experience is different. Christ. Tree, meet forest. The problem is a lack of representative difference in the counterpart.
I harp on that word because it's important.
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That's insane. If anybody told me to send them my bank account number and routing number, I'd assume they're a scammer.
Spotify is an European company. Here it's normal to send people your bank account number, you put it on invoices, on your company website, etc. I assume someone who invented this process assumed this is normal everywhere (I learned today that in USA it isn't).
It is completely understandable that someone like you who doesn't live or work in the USA wouldn't know how sensitive a Bank Account/Routing number is here. If you exist in a modern banking system with proper security, it is easy to assume that the rest of the world works the same way.
However, there is absolutely no excuse for the decision makers at Spotify here in the USA not to understand this.
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>My (texas) city comes and picks them up at no charge, and I don't feel that's an unusual situation. That IS pretty unusual, and in a positive way. I live in one of EU's richest socialist countries (Austria) and here YOU have bare the cost of transporting your old fridge or washing machine to the city's recycling depot, which is a huge expense for your average joe as that means owning or renting a car plus renting a…
In the Netherlands, when you buy a new appliance you pay a few euros extra "recycling fee"; the company delivering the new appliance will take the old one back for recycling, and / or the money goes into a fund for recycling the product you just bought. (I just read up on it, it used to be a separate charge, it's now baked into the price, probably because people were balking about it)
Do all shops offer this in NL?
The Car Thing has already been rooted. It runs Linux. There's a clear path towards a custom firmware: https://oddsolutions.github.io/Spotify-Car-Thing-Root/
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The lack of care for e-waste produced makes me sick. Spotify should at least open the hardware or sponsor a contest for a smart re-use / open source firmware for the device, would probably cost them less at the end and make them look better.
This is going to be a hot take here, but honestly I'm not that concerned about e-waste, in the grand scheme of things. What about cars, air conditioners, dishwashers, fridges, furniture, clothing? What about when we throw all of those out? The amount of e-waste I've gotten rid of over my life is miniscule both in terms of weight and volume in comparison to the things I've listed. I think we confuse environmental impa…
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The photos of landfills full of e-scooters make me physically ill.
The current U.S. economic system doesn't support or incentivize caring about those things. Would you advocate for a system or policies that does incentivize it?
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Over the past 10 years I've recycled all of my large appliances. My (texas) city comes and picks them up at no charge, and I don't feel that's an unusual situation.
>My (texas) city comes and picks them up at no charge, and I don't feel that's an unusual situation. That IS pretty unusual, and in a positive way. I live in one of EU's richest socialist countries (Austria) and here YOU have bare the cost of transporting your old fridge or washing machine to the city's recycling depot, which is a huge expense for your average joe as that means owning or renting a car plus renting a…
I talked to an elderly man digging in my father's trash for metal recently. He's not doing it because he's poor but because he's retired and bored and gets cash for the scrap that doesn't affect his social security income.
He recycles everything with metal in it. Even pulling out individual wires when he has time. He says he gets paid more if he dismantles the appliance versus turning it in whole.