Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Waymo Drives Off with South Bay Man's Luggage

sfist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 74 posts

Re: Waymo Drives Off with South Bay Man's Luggage

#31

Post by decimalenough »

charonn0 wrote: post #29
jcgrillo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it doesn't. It used to be when the airline lost your bag they would get it to you no matter what. They own their mistake, and make it right to the best of their ability. In the most egregious case I can recall, delivering skis and poles 4hr+ from the airport into a remote mountain village ca. 2003. This is how you build trust in your brand--when you fuck up, you take ownership and make it right. You don't just sh…

OTOH, a free trip to the depot and back is actually more than you'd get from a traditional taxi service under the same circumstances.

If this happened in a traditional taxi or even Uber, you'd call the driver or the company's dispatch line, and they'd send the cabbie back with your stuff. But it would also be mostly your own fault and you'd tip the driver for doing this.

Re: Waymo Drives Off with South Bay Man's Luggage

#33

Post by sparky_z »

disillusioned wrote: post #4
CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #2

I am surprised the trunk didn't open, and I’m very surprised that Waymo support could not turn the vehicle around. I’ve had a Waymo alert me when I left something in the back seat; I’m surprised it did not do the same for the trunk. I think the person should report this to either the California DMV or CPUC, as well as the local airport authority. For autonomous vehicles, I think people need to ‘normalize’ leaving one…

Any time I've loaded something into the trunk of a Waymo, it pre-emptively pops the trunk when I'm getting out _for_ me and reminds me to get my things from the trunk, so this is... surprising as a failure mode. Wondering if there was some issue with the latch/opening system, because it's definitely programmed to work the right way. (Or he tossed his stuff into the trunk from the main cabin, but... it's a pretty low…

Not that surprising if the thing that failed was the thing that notices whether or not you put something in the trunk in the first place. Unless it does that routine at the end of every ride, regardless of whether it thinks something is in the trunk or not, then it's not a fail safe system and occasional mishaps like this should be expected at scale.

Re: Waymo Drives Off with South Bay Man's Luggage

#34

Post by toss1 »

krupan wrote: post #21

The way this has apparently been handled saddens me. I worked for Cruise, a Waymo competitor. A Cruise vehicle famously had a very unfortunate accident and Cruise government relations employees famously tried to cover up the worst details when reporting it to the CA DMV. Of course the cover-up was discovered and guess what? Cruise lost their license and not long after lost all their funding and shut down. Self drivin…

It is also literally insanely hostile for Waymo to respond like this.

The parent company, Alphabet, is valued over four trillion dollars.

The proper response would have been: "oh, terribly sorry for the inconvenience, we'll immediately turn it around, wait there".

If that was somehow actually possible, the next response should have been: "Oh, sorry that is impossible because of [actual reason X], we are terribly sorry for the inconvenience, where are you going to be staying, we'll immediately pack and ship it all to you FedEx".

Instead, they do this petty crap.

I'm no lawyer, but as soon as someone takes off with my stuff, that sounds like theft. Sure, I willingly put it in the trunk, but it was on a contract that they would deliver me and my luggage to the destination. Refusing to allow me to retrieve it, then requiring me to come get it is just outrageous.

At the very least, instead of offering the rider two rides to come fetch his stuff that they drove off with, would be to deliver it to his home at a time convenient to him.

This tells me the company is run by a bunch of greedy losers. Not anyone with whom I might want to associate or do business.

Really disappointing

Re: Waymo Drives Off with South Bay Man's Luggage

#35

Post by BoorishBears »

krupan wrote: post #21

The way this has apparently been handled saddens me. I worked for Cruise, a Waymo competitor. A Cruise vehicle famously had a very unfortunate accident and Cruise government relations employees famously tried to cover up the worst details when reporting it to the CA DMV. Of course the cover-up was discovered and guess what? Cruise lost their license and not long after lost all their funding and shut down. Self drivin…

Waymo has been "scaling up".

In the earliest days the lost and found was 7 days a week with highly permissive hours for a manned desk at the depot.

Then one day it became weekdays-only, but with a still large window.

Then one day the window for pick up got broken up into a few smaller windows throughout the day.

Now with the larger Bay Area expansion they did switch to automated lockers, but if you're unfortunate enough in SF specifically, your belongings now end up in a locker an hour away from from the city...

Re: Waymo Drives Off with South Bay Man's Luggage

#36

Post by chihuahua »

disillusioned wrote: post #14
userbinator wrote: post #12

take two complementary rides to pick it up That seems... reasonable? They're not saying "come at your own expense" but giving him a ride there and back.

It'd be nicer if they sent someone with his luggage TO HIM rather than making HIM take his time to go on a tour to the depot, though.

Imagine if the company had self-driving cars, they wouldn't even need "someone", they could just send one of those self-driving cars!

Re: Waymo Drives Off with South Bay Man's Luggage

#37

Post by BoorishBears »

disillusioned wrote: post #4
CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #2

I am surprised the trunk didn't open, and I’m very surprised that Waymo support could not turn the vehicle around. I’ve had a Waymo alert me when I left something in the back seat; I’m surprised it did not do the same for the trunk. I think the person should report this to either the California DMV or CPUC, as well as the local airport authority. For autonomous vehicles, I think people need to ‘normalize’ leaving one…

Any time I've loaded something into the trunk of a Waymo, it pre-emptively pops the trunk when I'm getting out _for_ me and reminds me to get my things from the trunk, so this is... surprising as a failure mode. Wondering if there was some issue with the latch/opening system, because it's definitely programmed to work the right way. (Or he tossed his stuff into the trunk from the main cabin, but... it's a pretty low…

Over hundreds rides I've found it's extremely flakey on if the trunk will open again at dropoff after opening it earlier.

My guess would be the Jaguar's CAN bus being the weak link

Re: Waymo Drives Off with South Bay Man's Luggage

#38

Post by Buildstarted »

lokar wrote: post #13
ranger_danger wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting... I wonder if getting paid for closing the door still requires you to be active enough on the platform... otherwise I imagine you'd have people signing up for DoorDash just to stand in front of popular places and "hold the door open" for people... $10-20 a pop sounds like a good hustle.

As a passenger, they probably silently black-list you if you do it to much

I think the implication was that people stand around places where waymo goes often and just hold doors open for arriving waymo's to be "helpful". When the passenger leaves they just leave the door open for their doordash friends who are nearby

Re: Waymo Drives Off with South Bay Man's Luggage

#39

Post by zouhair »

disillusioned wrote: post #4
CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #2

I am surprised the trunk didn't open, and I’m very surprised that Waymo support could not turn the vehicle around. I’ve had a Waymo alert me when I left something in the back seat; I’m surprised it did not do the same for the trunk. I think the person should report this to either the California DMV or CPUC, as well as the local airport authority. For autonomous vehicles, I think people need to ‘normalize’ leaving one…

Any time I've loaded something into the trunk of a Waymo, it pre-emptively pops the trunk when I'm getting out _for_ me and reminds me to get my things from the trunk, so this is... surprising as a failure mode. Wondering if there was some issue with the latch/opening system, because it's definitely programmed to work the right way. (Or he tossed his stuff into the trunk from the main cabin, but... it's a pretty low…

None of that is the problem, shit happen, the problem is them asking them to come get their stuff instead of apologizing and sending the luggage at their own expense with a free ride at a future time.
Post reply on HN