We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments

> They said they couldn't override the software - which I don't believe at all.

This is why I'm worried by - no, I hate - the automation of bureaucracy, governmental and business alike. Software is giving bureaucrats the perfect escape hatch. "I'm sorry, but The System won't let me".

The System won't let a low-level clerk fix the mistake some algorithm made. You escalate to the manager, but The System won't let them do it either. If you're lucky, maybe they'll try to escalate to the main office on the other side of the country, someone there may or may not be able to fix the issue. If you're lucky. If you're not, the manager has a perfect, non-offensive way to refuse: "I'm sorry, The System won't let me".

Here on HN, we all know how The System works. A bunch of half-assed business logic, wrapped in a bloated webapp, developed by some outsourced team of code monkeys, who on their good day mostly care about playing with the newest JavaScript fad, inflicting yet another round of suffering on thousands of employees and millions of customers. One of those broken business rules blows a fuse, your debit card gets locked out, and there's nobody within 200 kilometers of you with the access rights to clear a flag. And no, the devs who maintain The System don't have them either; they're just monkeys in the outsourcing firm that was the best at underbidding on the tender.

(I'm totally not talking about my wife's bank, that managed to spontaneously block her card and on-line banking just before weekend, and took a lot of fighting to undo its own mistake.)

> Luckily my agent was able to call the new landlord, we all got on a call, my agent, my friend, me and the landlord.

That's why we need to have people in the loop. Empowered people. To fix the mistakes, file down the corner cases.

Automation of corporate bureaucracy is trying to fit everyone into well-defined and heavily optimized flows, whether it makes sense or not. If you fall off the assembly line, the gears will crush you.

Economically a great result, that is indisputable. A small "but" however, did you also improve the customer experience? I am asking as someone who has lived long term in many Airbnb and similar platforms, and almost every single on of them has problems, uses every trick not covered by terms and conditions and has an evasive and unresponsive customer service. Too many to list but I've experienced: No car parking available(were full) when advertised as "with free parking" Free wifi- but not installed Aircon- no aircon in sight(been renovated) Cameras in the flat- but "don't worry they are disabled and part of the alarm system" More such things and extremely annoying to resolve.

Not saying your product has these issues, just asking if this is considered and handled or if it's all purely profit oriented.

If you believe this you should get into the business

(Caretaker cofounder.)

I've been rejected/failed/banned by an emotionless machine a handful of times, and I don't know that anything else has made me feel quite so hopeless. I like to think a similar knot in my stomach keeps me honest.

Thankfully, one of our fundamental incentives as a property management business is to get more quality tenants approved for more apartments. If there are high quality renters qualified to sign a lease and fill a vacancy, mistakenly rejecting them directly impacts a landlord's bottom line. So we're motivated beyond altruism to get this right, which is important.

Along these lines (and perhaps surprisingly, relative to the automation in the post), our income verification product is decidely not fully automated. Non-salaried income reporting can be extremely tricky, and we've run into a number of renters with reliable income on a monthly basis that doesn't fit neatly onto a bi-weekly paystub. In those circumstances, we work with them manually to sort out how we can best present it to landlords on an application.

There's a lot of privilege involved in being able to navigate these kinds of social overrides, so the idea that it's good that you can get around stupid rules like this by talking to a person is.. only really true for some people.

What's wrong here isn't the idea that "the rules" could be applied evenly to everyone (that's actually a good thing). It's this kind of incredibly narrow requirement on housing where landlords get to dig deep into your financials to the point of knowing when/how you paid for things.

That's gross, and should not be allowed. It's almost certainly a part of many people's vicious cycles into poverty. It's also, as far as I know, a really recent development and part of the general trend towards more and more invasive surveillance in daily life.