[dx034]

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.

[Nextgrid]

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 least according to ZipCar).

[Shorel]

I do agree it is not his fault.

But the ban also prevents that particular customer from receiving bad service. Some things are not meant to be.

[Wowfunhappy]

ZipCar should have formally requested that the customer not park cars in that lot, or what have you.

Since the customer needs to use that lot, they would probably stop using ZipCar at that point—but that's better than being banned forever if their life situation changes.

[lm28469]

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.

[fred_is_fred]

Any engineer worth their salt knows that they have 100 things to work on and this guy's corner case didn't make the cut. Easier for them to ban him and work on a new feature that generates revenue for thousands of users.

[Nextgrid]

My point is that this isn’t some minor bug that you can leave in the backlog because it’s just a minor inconvenience. This is a major dealbreaker that should’ve been thought of when designing the service in the first place.

[michaelt]

Do you see declining to serve a customer whom you could not serve well as different to banning a customer?

Because companies routinely do the former.

[fenomas]

> If you know that parking in the garage will lead to a 50% probability of..

50% is GP's after-the-fact description of how often the car failed to start. It's not an actual failure rate that GP knew about before they parked.

[jellicle]

Anyone can make an error once. Commenter talks about how they repeatedly parked the car in an underground garage that they knew had no cell signal, despite multiple towings being required.

What's the appropriate number of towings for one customer due to that customer's intentional actions before you kick them off the service?

[cj]

I'm the original poster. I misspoke in the original comment (too late to edit it).

Now that I think about it, I believe unlocking does work regardless of cell service (as long as you don't extend the reservation, and try to unlock it after the original reservation time ends).

I had the car towed twice:

1) First time, the car wouldn't start because the battery was dead while parked underground with no cell service.

2) Second time, the reservation was about to expire while parked without cell service, and I extended it on the app, but the car couldn't know that since the cellular unit couldn't phone home.

EDIT: For what it's worth, I don't blame Zipcar for banning an unprofitable customer. I acknowledge that i was definitely pushing my luck by parking there a 2nd time after the first incident.

[braythwayt]

“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.”

[muststopmyths]

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".

[braythwayt]

The fellow is parking the car in his own garage, and ZipCar claims to be in the car business, and it is normal to park cars in garages.

I say they have tuna salad on the menu, but they apparently can't always serve it to everyone.

Your suggestion that he order something else to eat is like telling a ZipCar customer to move to a different condominium or whatever.

They don't "have" to do anything, provided they aren't discriminating against him on the basis of a prohibited factor like race or gender. Just as a restaurant doesn't have to serve you (subject to the same caveat).

But the important thing here to note is that the hypothetical restaurant has organized their business in such a way that some customers cannot get what they claim to serve, just as ZipCar has organized their business such that some customers cannot enjoy the service they claim to offer.

They don't have to do anything, but I object to blaming the customer for their choice to run their business in such a way that a very ordinary thing that some customers can do, others cannot.

[mcguire]

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.

[2rsf]

> Honestly, the ban sounds justified to me

based on the story above I agree, knowingly (and after a few occurrences you should understand there's a problem) damaging the service should lead to a ban or at least a warning.

[jacquesm]

No, it should lead to someone fixing the problem. The customer centric thinking in this thread is amazing.

[greedo]

One facet of the problem (the cell coverage) is largely out of Zipcars control, no? I suppose they could add some functionality to their app so that you're alerted when you park at a location without cell coverage?

[alistairSH]

Lack of cell coverage is out of their control, but that doesn't excuse them from designing around the problem.

It appears they're aware of the problem, but certain known issues prevent access (cellular unit draining car battery seems to be the common one and sounds like something that should be fixable).

[moftz]

Add a keypad like Ford has had on their vehicles for like 20 years. Have the computer keep a short list of one time pass codes (and maybe some sort of super long master code) that can be updated whenever the car is in cell service. So in the event that you get into the car, Zipcar can provide one of the one time use codes to get you in the door.

[sangnoir]

My imagined internal security review to this issue Hard "no", closing WONTFIX. This change would significantly increase the attack surface, risking a lot for very little upside. See "Epic 769 (Offline Support - roadmap Q3 2020)" for blocking & related issues

[brohee]

The common man would think a company would try the fix with the utmost priority a mission critical issue...

[philliphaydon]

Don’t pretty much all phones have Bluetooth now? Couldn’t it backup the authorisation and allow him to connect via Bluetooth and verify and unlock? How is this absolutely his fault?

[mcguire]

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.

[merpnderp]

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?

[labawi]

I'm not sure I would do that, but I would expect them to fix their service it if it is costing them noticeably.

AFAIK they did not say you shouldn't park underground nor did they explain their various failure modes and how to avoid them.