[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.