When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness • Hacker News Board

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#141

Post by mcguire » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:51 PM UTC

dx034 wrote: post #39

cj wrote: post #24

I got banned from using Zipcar last year. I lived in a condo building with an under ground parking lot in SF. A few times I rented a Zipcar and left it parked in the parking lot at my condo building. About 50% of the time, the car would not unlock. In all cases, I successfully contacted Zipcar who informed me the only thing they could do is tow the car (usually 24+ hours later). The parking lot had no cell service. O…

Honestly, the ban sounds justified to me. If you know that parking in the garage will lead to a 50% probability of them having to tow the car, repeating this is just unnecessary. It would obviously be better if they could handle such scenarios but ignoring a known limitation to incur cost to others (since you have no advantage as you also can't use the car in this scenario) sounds wrong to me.

There's at least two ways of handling serious product failings: "Oh, shit, we have to fix that!" or getting rid of the customer exposing the problem and trying to conceal the issue. One is the action of a healthy company, especially one that is trying to grow, while the other maximizes current profit levels.

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#142

Post by dharmab » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:51 PM UTC

bt848 wrote: post #29

PetahNZ wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal, but if I leave a USB charger plugged into the cigarette socket, without even anything plugged into the usb, it drains my battery overnight.

Get a refund. I leave a phone plugged into my car's USB port 24x7 and the car has its own GSM modem too and obviously it starts right up every time.

The difference is that you're using a USB port directly built into the car (which is "smart" about not draining the battery) while the other user is using a cigarette lighter to USB adapter (the cigarette lighter is a "dumb" circuit).

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#143

Post by mcguire » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:53 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #70

xzmmd wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're justifying acting like an asshole.

No I’m trying to justify using the product as it’s advertised. Otherwise it’s too easy to just falsely advertise something and ban the people that manage to figure out the catch.

As advertised?

I wonder if there's a reason why traditional rentals don't lock you out when your reservation ends.

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#144

Post by _pmf_ » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:54 PM UTC

Allowing people into the wilderness with a car that by design has these issues is very close to negligent homicide.

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#145

Post by mcguire » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:57 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #105

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than being told its a signal issue, how do you determine that? IoT crap rarely, if ever, actually communicates with the user about error conditions. You usually find out shit 'no workey' after the fact. There's a lot of articles and twitter feeds. Go look up the "Internet of Shit". There's a reason why it's called that. And Zipcars are no exception, evidently.

This isn't internet of shit though...is an iPhone shitty if you can't use cell services when you don't have cell service?

Is an iPhone shitty if you can't use it at all if you don't have cell service?

Is a car shitty if it leaves you stranded due to a known issue?

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#146

Post by mcguire » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

muststopmyths wrote: post #123

braythwayt wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I ordered the tuna salad every time I ate at the restaurant. About half of the time, the manager informed me that they were out of tuna, and had to send a truck to fetch more. After a while of this, they banned me from the restaurant for ordering the tuna salad.”

Actually, that analogy would only make sense if "you" refused to order anything but tuna salad and expected them to send the truck out without fail when they were out. And they had to comply with your request for some reason. In that case, yeah, they should ban "you".

A better analogy would be that ZipCar has a known failure mode that will leave you stranded. And they don't feel the urge to fix it.

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#147

Post by merpnderp » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 3:07 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #141

dx034 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, the ban sounds justified to me. If you know that parking in the garage will lead to a 50% probability of them having to tow the car, repeating this is just unnecessary. It would obviously be better if they could handle such scenarios but ignoring a known limitation to incur cost to others (since you have no advantage as you also can't use the car in this scenario) sounds wrong to me.

There's at least two ways of handling serious product failings: "Oh, shit, we have to fix that!" or getting rid of the customer exposing the problem and trying to conceal the issue. One is the action of a healthy company, especially one that is trying to grow, while the other maximizes current profit levels.

Doesn't parking in same place twice, knowing full well the likely cost to the person they're doing business with, seem unethical? Would you want to do business with someone who carelessly took advantage of you?

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#148

Post by mcguire » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 3:07 PM UTC

zaarn wrote: post #84

bt848 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bit about the cell phone discharge seems pretty unlikely. A charged car battery has at least 2MJ of stored energy. GSM in its highest-power mobile station state draws 800mW. Add maybe another 150mW for the GPS, call it 1W total. The battery should power such a phone for weeks. You should be able to smell-test this fact by considering that your mobile weighs nothing and runs all day whereas a car battery weighs 20…

Car batteries are generally a starter battery (minus EV ones). They don't like being closed circuit for extended periods of time. A low current is usually allowed (200mW is the top end in my experience), but anything over will, over time, sulfinate the plates in the battery and cause it too loose charge and capacity rapidly. Generally if you want to run a low current device on a lead acid battery, you should use a de…

How long does it take to damage the car battery?

How long does it take to discharge the car battery?

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#149

Post by mcguire » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 3:13 PM UTC

seltzered_ wrote: post #33

Friend in Seattle had this experience when trying to use a zipcar truck out of a garage while moving (i.e. Limited time window to get stuff out of one area to another). Ended up calling support, dealing with multiple hours of delays. Despite the issues which has led him to avoid Zipcar these days, he uses ReachNow (now defunct) and car2go (now called ShareNow) regularly and AFAIK ReachNow didn't have these limitation…

In the good old days, you could touch your TV's rabbit ear antennas and do some weird positioning exercises to improve your service.

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#150

Post by lm28469 » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 3:23 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #58

dx034 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, the ban sounds justified to me. If you know that parking in the garage will lead to a 50% probability of them having to tow the car, repeating this is just unnecessary. It would obviously be better if they could handle such scenarios but ignoring a known limitation to incur cost to others (since you have no advantage as you also can't use the car in this scenario) sounds wrong to me.

Disagreed about the ban. Since when is shitty technology (which any engineer worth their salt should’ve predicted - this is not rocket science) the fault of the customer? Unless they say in bold in their marketing statements “Only drive within cell coverage” the customer isn’t at fault for trying to use it as a normal car (in fact it’s crazy to think that parking in a place with no reception is no longer normal, at l…

Never play the "who's dumber" game with private companies you'll always lose. If it happens twice you should switch on your common sense and stop using the service, or at the very least change your behaviour/don't be surprised if you get banned.

> which any engineer worth their salt should’ve predicted - this is not rocket science

There are probably tons of other issues you don't know about. Making it work offline would probably increase the attack surface, &c.