A San Francisco 'Co-Living' Startup Suddenly Shut Down, Leaving Tenants In Limbo (vice.com) 130
San Francisco-based "co-living platform" HubHaus has collapsed, saying it has no funds, leaving people using its platform to rent rooms in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and Washington DC, in limbo. From a report: HubHaus' business model seemed simple enough: lease large, single-family units and then cut them up into as many rooms as possible in order to sublet each room. Upon closer examination, however, there seem to have been numerous red flags. In interviews with tenants, the San Francisco Chronicle found that they were still being charged for services (e.g. housekeeping) that were no longer provided and some were charged double their rent after setting up auto-pay. Landlords told the Chronicle that HubHaus stopped paying for utilities and slashed its leasing payments to them. One former employee also reported that the company consistently paid him less than he earned or would pay him late, causing financial hardship that led him to quit. In a September 30 letter sent to homeowners and tenants, and obtained by the Chronicle, HubHaus owner Diablo Management Group said "HubHaus is completing a liquidation and closure of the company." As part of that process, an analysis by Diablo found there were "no funds available to pay the claims of unsecured creditors (e.g., claims by landlords, tenants, trade creditors, or contractors)."
How could you possibly screw this up (Score:4, Funny)
It seems like taking a single house, and dividing it so that 2x the number of people who were supposed to be living in it would have rooms, then charging them all apartment rates would basically be a fool-proof money printer. They must have been making so much money from all that rent, even with the house having been way overpriced from being in CA, it should have easily covered the mortgage.
So what the heck could possibly have gone wrong?
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Ineptitude knows no bounds
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So what the heck could possibly have gone wrong?
Bought too many yachts, leaving insufficient funds to actually run the money-printing-company?
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Got to really love the way Diablo group distances itself from it. An idle report, we barely heard of that HubHaus company we did not even know we totally owned and controlled it but upon investigation, oh yeah, really funny fuckers. Clearly they ran and controlled it and sucked all the money out of it to fill their own pockets and are just walking away from it, like it is some else's problem. A criminal investigation will undoubtedly lead to many other fiscal crimes committed by the Diablo group (they are s
Re:How could you possibly screw this up (Score:5, Insightful)
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I certainly wouldn't rule that out, but it's an odd one. Most scams don't involve setting up an actual business that can be relatively easily run at a profit.
It may be that it really is mismanagement - salaries too high, poor financial control, one bad actor within the company.
It's possible that they tried to grow too fast, leased too many buildings and couldn't find enough renters to cover those costs, or maybe spent too much on marketing without generating the revenues needed to sustain the business.
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So what the heck could possibly have gone wrong?
Covid.
Their business model likely assumed that some people would fail to pay their rent. But no so many and not all at once.
Low-income people who live in shared housing like this have been hit particularly hard by the economic consequences of the pandemic.
Evictions are suspended in many jurisdictions, so people are not paying rent but still using shared utilities.
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I'm more impressed by this stunning and brave invention; a way to connect people looking for roommates .. online.
But this is what happens when you're doing things that never been done before; sometimes that cutting edge gets you first.
Re: How could you possibly screw this up (Score:2)
Problem is, if 4 people are subletting the place and find they are getting along okay, they can just lease another house for less by cutting out the middleman.
And if they aren't getting along, people leave and the company has to find new tenants to sublease to.
Covid comes along, people demand rent moratoriums or at least lower rents, others move back in with relatives, and it's really hard to find new ten
Doesn't seem like the issue (Score:2)
No major incentive to maintain property if only leasing.
Maybe ( I disagree as the incentive would be to keep maintaining above market rents for a closet to sleep in) but it seems like for the purposes of this story that's not the issue - lack of maintenance would mean they'd loose renters, but they had plenty of renters and lots of incoming money...
I agree the people that own the actual houses will be on the hook for keeping the tenants there. But there could be a bright side as honestly if I owned one of
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Problem is, most landlords don't want to deal with 4 tenants in a building. It's 4 times the problems when they arise, and ins
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Which is still fraught with issues and drama, even given that someone is ultimately in charge. Now delegate that authority to an app?
someone belongs in jail (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of that sounds illegal. Company officers should be prosecuted.
Wannabe slumlord goes bust (Score:3)
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This is little more than resume padding. My guess is a San-Francisco based ex-CEO of a startup is going to be a running Candidate for the Republican 2024 election.
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You're deluding yourself.
Nope. I'm only speaking to people who don't get the joke, probably because it was at the expense of their orange haired childgod.
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In the same way that a casino can go bust. Probably a financial fiddle. Not naming any names. Do I need to?
We used to have a name for these people (Score:2)
I believe it was âoeslum lordâ
When the cost of housing exceeds the range of what an average person makes, it tells you somethings wrong, but hey, this is California after all...
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I believe it was âoeslum lordâ
But this is slumlord, on a computer!. That makes it a completely novel concept worth millions to investors.
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Really terrible (Score:2)
One of my distant cousins were renting there. The entire process seemed very professional, and business model made sense.
So you take a house for $4,000, split into six rooms, and rent each for roughly $1,000 per room. Utilities are extra. This would leave $2,000 per house for operations, and they had many houses on their catalog.
How would they mess us such a simple business model is beyond me. There would be a few people in payroll, and a simple web based setup to manage the properties, and process payments
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In some areas there are a lot of young single people who can only afford to rent single rooms, and a surplus of larger houses. These people cannot afford 4k individually, and might not know people to rent together with.
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This raises the question, how is the company getting a six-bedroom house for $4k/month if the rental demand is high enough in the area that $1k/month per room could otherwise be charged?
Because the property owner doesn't want to deal with the cost and hassle of dealing with six different boarders.
Option 1: Get a $4000 check every month.
Option 2: Advertise for boarders, interview and screen them, check their credit, check their references, approve them, watch them fail to pay the rent, badger them to pay, start the eviction process, pay your lawyer, pay your lawyer more, finally get the eviction done, repair and replace the vandalized carpets and drywall, look for yet another boarder.
Which
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More than that it's commercial real-estate at that point. So potentially the middle man company was on the hook for the maintenance and taxes.
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It is not six bedrooms.
They take a three or four bedrooms house, and divide the larger bedroom into two. They also convert the living or dining space into a room.
As long as the dividers do not cover the entire height of the room that seems to be kosher. There are some restrictions for "doors" too. Basically they used huge lego like blocks, and sliding curtain like windows. Those divided rooms were usually cheaper. Say $800 for a "lego" room vs $1200 for the master bedroom with a separate bath.
Sad Deal (Score:2)
Disrupt, go bankrupt, profit! (Score:2)
Just like they teach in business school. What could possibly go wrong?
So the tenants start paying the landlord directly? (Score:2)
Beyond matching up co-living tenants with each other and a property, which all happens prior to residency, I fail to see the additional value this failing company brings to the table.
If the tenants want to stay in their current home, they should simply offer to pay the landlords directly. If the sum of payments isn't enough to cover the original lease, maybe due to an empty room, then landlords may be able to offer a different unit. Alternatively, landlords can decide if they'd rather have an empty unit, wh
Re: So the tenants start paying the landlord direc (Score:2)
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Were mid pandemic a lot of renters are not paying the landlords at all because there is no recourse presently. Lots of government giving no legal recouse currently and no help with paying their bills but still requiring them to pay out.
Again ? (Score:2)
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This cutting up of large houses into flats and bedsits is normal Moseley, Birmingham, where I have a flat. I think this was once a prosperous area in Birmingham, so there are many large houses and former hotels. I am talking about Victorian times. JRR Tolkien lived here. I see no harm in repurposing large properties to provide affordable housing. I have had the misfortune to live in a rather grotty bedsit where the landlord did not maintain the property. But mostly, you can get a good place.
The hint is in their name! (Score:2)
"Why Mr. Morningstar, I see you have branched out from nightclubs in L.A. to rentals in S.F."
"Deeeetectiiive..."
Old scam is *old* (Score:2)
Autopay (Score:2)
This is why you never use autopay. Yeah it's a pain, but doing your bills manually keeps things "push" instead of the "pull" that gives utilities way too much power over your money.
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For the benefit of the strange Americans, here's what people must sign up for to use the UK bank transfer payment scheme:
If an error is made in the payment of your Direct Debit, by the organisation or your bank or building society, you are entitled to a full and immediate refund of the amount paid from your bank or building society
-- https://www.directdebit.co.uk/... [directdebit.co.uk]
I've worked on systems on both sides of that scheme (service provider and bank) and that guarantee is taken seriously by both. It's why people trust the scheme and it gets so heavily used. Shit, I pay my credit card through it - they just charge the outstanding balance to my current account every month.
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If an error is made in the payment of your Direct Debit, by the organization or your bank or building society, you are entitled to a full and immediate refund of the amount paid from your bank or building society
As a fellow European: you're right, of course, the problem is the definition of error. Let's say you pay about EUR 50 per month for your electric bill. You should actually pay 60, but something went wrong (e.g. a software somewhere miscalculated something; your meter is not functioning properly; the same meter has not been actually read in a long time and the invoicing is only based on estimates, etc.) and you are unsuspectingly paying less.
Fast forward to five years later, when someone or something correct
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In your example the utility is required to provide me with at least one month's notice of that charge, and without that notice I can indeed instruct my bank to refund me due to it being an abnormal payment.
That one month gives me time to negotiate with the utility regarding a more appropriate repayment approach.
(Right now my utilities owe me money, because I track these things, because I manage my finances - by April I'll owe them money again, but that'll reverse once more in the summer).
The Direct Debit sc
Isn't this against the lease agreement? (Score:2)
Isn't what they are doing not allowed by most lease agreements?
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Making something illegal does not stop it happening. If it is a crime, e.g. fraud, then law enforcement has a struggle prosecuting it, which gives crims an opportunity to grab the loot and run. If it is a civil infraction of a contract, their lawyers are bigger than your lawyers.
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What I meant was how can a company get away with publicly telling it's customers to violate lease agreements? Of course people violate them all the time.
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I'm just talking shit, the death penalty is actually morally indefensible in any circumstance. These fucktards just piss me off, and they seem to get away with it far too often in today's society. Meanwhile, poor folks who commit some minor crime spend years in prison, or pay with their lives, gunned down in the street.
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If someone doesn't have the morals to not murder or rape someone (or rape then murder someone), I have no moral qualms about executing them. They obviously didn't care about what they did to that person (or people), there's no need for us to care about them.
Executing them ensures they will never do anything to anyone ever again.
Re:Execution is your solution? (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's merely an argument for a high bar to the death penalty. Not one for abolishing it. I think if a society accepts that it is lawful for someone to use lethal force to defend themselves from lethal force, which at least most common law nations do, then the death penalty is inherently acceptable. The difference between a victim shooting and killing someone trying to murder them and the state putting said murderer on death row after they murdered their victim is mostly temporal. Either way they deserved t
Re: Execution is your solution? (Score:2)
The death penalty is too good for some people. Like Charles Manson or the Unabomber. Rotting in jail for the rest of your sorry lif, worrying that a "lapse in security " lets someone become a jailhouse hero by shifting you, and after 30 years in the can half-hoping that you won't get paroled because you'd be literally a dead man walking not knowing how to work a smartphone, pay by tapping a smart card on a terminal, an alien to the Internet, and everyone is a masked stranger and you see them looking at you
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Eliminate the appeals. Have an execution site set up on the courthouse grounds, and execute them on-site immediately after handing down the sentence. P.S., better a thousand innocents hang than a guilty man ever walk free.
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We already claim to have a high bar for the death penalty, yet innocents have been executed. Apparently we suck at setting the bar for the death penalty. I see no evidence that we've gotten any better at it since then. In fact, the harder we look, the more evidence we find that innocents are being convicted through prosecutorial mis-conduct.
Re: Execution is your solution? (Score:2)
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Again, that is merely an argument for setting a high bar. You are saying that the state killed people it shouldn't have which is different from saying the state shouldn't kill anyone. I think we can all agree that there are certain criminals who commit terrible enough acts that the death penalty is justified right? So then we can move on to the separate but related discussion of how we make sure that the power is wielded carefully and responsibly.
Re: Execution is your solution? (Score:2)
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Clearly the system needs reform. I think that's actually a major political topic right now is it not?
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Even they could be admitting it under duress (e.g. "plead guilty or we'll kill your family," "plead guilty and we'll pay off your house so your wife and kids won't be on the streets," etc.). Or they could be covering for a loved one wh
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Or they're not actually even competent to stand trial and are so confused they have been convinced that they did it.
The final nail in the coffin for the death penalty (so to speak) is that we already claim that an extraordinary degree of certainty is used, yet we know factually that innocent people have been executed in spite of that.
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Life in prison with no possibility of parole is, in my mind, a greater punishment.
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I sure fucking hope not. But there are some really gnarly myths...
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Or those old Greek ones, like "Oh you hungry? Be a shame if this branch of fruit just sorta... moved away from you."
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Wrong again, dipshit. But thanks for playing, you get a copy of our home game "idiots talking shit."
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Economics often conflicts with morality.
A while back I was having some hard times, and I had accidentally overdrafted my Checking account then the bank decides to charge me $30 for the overdraft. I was low on cash, and because of that (and the timing of some bills getting auto paid, and the bank not getting my direct deposit processed, and for me not checking my account that minute) I have to pay more money that I really don't have. I am being punished for being poor.
However economically it makes sense, T
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Economics often conflicts with morality. A while back I was having some hard times, and I had accidentally overdrafted my Checking account then the bank decides to charge me $30 for the overdraft. I was low on cash, and because of that (and the timing of some bills getting auto paid, and the bank not getting my direct deposit processed, and for me not checking my account that minute) I have to pay more money that I really don't have. I am being punished for being poor. However economically it makes sense, The bank doesn't want me to spend money I do not have, and being unwise to spend more than what you have, you should get a degree of pain from the mistake, to make sure it doesn't become a habit.
Except that in practice, it doesn't prevent them from doing that. They just get paycheck loans at 300% interest, and they don't learn their lesson, because they keep doing it month after month and getting deeper and deeper into debt.
Also the Overdraft prevented the check from bouncing causing another set of problems.
Except that the only reason bounced checks are a problem is because banks charge exorbitant fees for them, even though it costs the bank nothing to say, "No." It might have been higher risk back in the day when physical checks moved around, because the recipient could be spend
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One of Terry Pratchett's characters, Sam Vimes had what he thought of as the boots theory of economic unfairness. Basically the idea was that Vimes theorized that he spent far more on boots than a rich man would need to because a rich man could afford good boots that would last, whereas he had to keep buying cheap boots that fell apart in no time. It's not a perfect theory, but it definitely does seem to apply in many cases. For example people who have the money can buy where poor people have to rent, often
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That's exactly it. The people who demand that the poor just need to make better choices seem blind to the simple fact that the poor don't have those better choices to choose from. It's morally equivalent to "let them eat cake" (the authenticity of that quote notwithstanding).
The fact is that a relatively poor person that has always eventually managed to pay their debts has a much harder time getting loans or investments than a relatively rich person who's declared bankruptcy multiple times.
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While they are choices that the Poor can do that will make things better. These are not always obvious, and when they are in the middle of trying to survive, the better choice may not seem appropriate at the time.
Instead of getting that xbox and a few games, you should use that money for a suite that will get you a better job, or invest it into stocks.
However if you are living a life full of stress, that XBox may seem the best form of relaxation, to give you a few moments away from such stress.
It is a bad
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And yet a LOT of it is people don't take a moment to think. Poor, bored cool learn to cook from scratch. Heck you can make pancakes with a bowl and 1 pan. Get youself a sack of flour and sack of sugar, a little salt, and few sticks of butter and you have LOT of cheap meals. You can also learn a skill.
Entertainment too, is often about not being lazy. I have literally never been bored in the woods ever; there is always something to see and find. For the cost of bus ride and cheap plastic water bottle you g
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Poorer people generally work in blue-collar jobs, which are likely to be physically demanding/being on your feet all day, and working longer hours. It's understandable that at the end of the day, all they want to do is collapse on the couch with a $1 McMeal.
Living in poverty isn't just about a lack of money, but also a lack of time, a lack of energy, and a lack of both physical & mental health.
And due to the cycle of poverty, it's also likely you didn't grow up with the best of educations of many health
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All of the things you mention have a time cost. Poor people are often poor on spare time as well as money. Also, the cheap meals that you specifically mention aren't all that healthy. Not that you can't get cheap chicken/pork and legumes and fresh fruit and vegetables for meals. In any case, the simple fact is that, for many poor people, that still uses up their food budget. A trip to the woods can also be a time sink. Also, I wonder where your love of the woods came from? I love the woods and open spaces m
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Considerations like that make the question a little muddier. Sometimes the reasoning behind those decisions is also not obvious.
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Well, let's be frank, there were a sizeable minority of our founding fathers who wanted to simply replace the old aristocracy with themselves. Thankfully, they did not entirely get their way.
Hell, even in the monarchy we left behind, the king had to follow the rules.
Maybe it's time to try direct democracy (with a constitution, of course, tat requires a supermajority to edit.)
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I really do not see any strong safeguard for minority rights in most of our founders' actions. Perhaps a strong safeguard for the minority in the protected class of white male property owners. But not an overall protection of minority rights.
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Look, I am not going to argue against violent revolution, (that is a more complex debate, one to which I am not sure we are equipped to come to a good conclusion about), but I see little value to execution post revolution as your post implies. Just as I see little value to execution in any scenario.
What OP said was:
Overprivileged sons and daughters of wealthy, connected assholes need to be first against the wall come the revolution.
Not post revolution. The executions are the revolution.
It's a failed "regulatory innovation", not a scam (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: It's a failed "regulatory innovation", not a s (Score:2)
It's a symptom of an economic model failing a significant portion of the population. Just as the Internet is #irrationalExuberance2.0
Re:Oh look, another startup that's just a scam. (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't just target Silicon Valley, but it happens everywhere.
Whenever a product or service becomes popular, there a number of copycat companies, that will just twist the business model, just so they can get easy money, for little overall work.
Mix Uber with AirB&B say it is some sort of new tech firm.
While the idea isn't bad, the business will need to be more involved than what it actually is.
A good way to share the cost of housing is to have roomates. Young adults do this all the time, Because a 1 Bedroom may cost $1000 a month, a 2 Bedroom costs $1600 a month and a 3 bedroom may be $2000 a month (depending on quality and location...) So if you got 2 roommates they will each pay $800 a month, and 3 would pay $666.66 a month. Which may allow them to have decent housing at a price they can afford. This isn't Millennials generation thing, this has been happening for generations.
That said having roommates creates problems, They will need to pay on time, otherwise you can be affected, You need them to follow acceptable decorum otherwise you too can be fined... As well you will need to be sure that we manage living in the same area effectively, especially in common areas like Bathrooms, Kitchen and Living room.
This company if operated correctly may have been able to help fix some of these problems, Allowing for advanced payment, Giving some limited insurance to cover the bill if one of the roomates is late, or be able to cover if a roommate leaves. However it shortly gets very expensive and complex to operate, more than just a PHP Script hooked up to a database and a credit card processor.
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...lease large, single-family units and then cut them up into as many rooms as possible in order to sublet each room. Upon closer examination, however, there seem to have been numerous red flags. ...
That's not already a red flag?
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Just another example of "I'll do X but on the Internet, while exploiting workers and customers, and pretending the laws governing X don't apply to me, because INTERNET!"
Re:widen that wealth gap! (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's tax generational wealth by raising the inheritance tax. Let's put a small transaction tax on stock trading. And let's raise the tax on ANY income, no matter the source, over $10,000,000 per year to 90%. Our highest tax bracket used to be 90%. It encourages business owners to pay higher wages, when they can give a worker a $1 dollar (before tax) raise for only $0.10 out of their pocket.
I don't know too many progressives who want to fuck over the working wealthy as you suggest. Most want to go after the billionaires and the idle rich. As any sane citizen would.
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But right wing conservatives think that taxing the rich harms trickle down. And right-libertarians think taxes are theft. And third-way neo-liberals think we should take taxes and re-invest it into the same industries that the rich control.
You offer up out any solution, but nobody is interested in a solution.
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I'm working on getting progressives elected. I volunteered for a progressive rep in my state, so did my wife. We support the Justice Democrats group financially. I can see the tide turning. Don't give strength to the propaganda that says change is impossible.
Trickle down has been proven not to work, by the fact that wages have stagnated while we enrich the richest. If taxes are theft, then all property is theft. If property is not theft, then taxes are just the user fee the collective owners (i.e. we, the
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Of course, the only thing that actually trickles down is urine. Anything more valuable than that gets sopped up before it trickles.
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We should go after the top 5%, but not the top 1%. The top 1% are the real drivers of our economy and we should make huge monuments to their greatness. But those top 5% of brain surgeons, investors, etc are a bunch of leeches. Sure they show up to work, often 6 or 7 days a week, but somehow they're all a bunch of rich grifters.
Or is this just the rabble clawing at the closest thing they see. They're so far down they can't see the guys standing at the top of the mountain, even while pissing rain down on the 99%.
While there is some truth to this concept, it is also true that the "merely" upper middle class (and above) do get a whole lot of tax incentives handed to them that do little or nothing for the bottom end of the curve. Things like IRAs, educational savings funds, mortgage interest deductions and much much more end up benefiting many who do not need the help, and the cost of reducing taxation income for the country at large.
I wonder what the effect of means-testing and clawing back all of these sorts of thin
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Fuck you are delusional. What in the everloving FUCK makes you think I support that orange gasbag?
Let me guess, you are a Silicon Valley scam artist, oh excuse me, "entrepreneur."
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Unlike you, I don't have to sound out words while I type. And also unlike you, I'm not a mouth breathing troglodyte.
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The fuck is your point here, dipshit? Nobody mentioned socialism you simplistic ass.
Re:APPS! (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm guessing that's sarcasm, but to be honest, I'd rather have an app. Backed by a company. With proper insurance / oversight.
People don't add anything to any service that I use. The less people involved, the less hassle, the less script-reading, and the less upselling.
My car insurance has gone from a battle of talking lots of fine details to people who then try to upsell me, only to give me a price that's nowhere near competitive, for a service I will only ever use when I absolutely need to contact them anyway - to an app / comparison website search.
My purchasing has gone from multiple dozens of stores trying to sell me the only products they want to sell (e.g. brands they push, etc.), know nothing about those products, won't deliver, can't support, etc. - to an app / website search. (P.S. I once had a guy phone up all threateningly and very rudely from a company, talking about cancelling an order I'd made for a custom-built electrical cable... because HE got a lot of fraud when people bought those things apparently, and he wanted to make sure I was a genuine purchaser. He took several minutes to calm down, even though I'd ALREADY PAID IN ADVANCE. and I had to explain exactly what I needed the cable for and why I'd ordered what I'd ordered - a very specific specialist cable of a particular length / connector. It nearly cost him all my business, and it was not a cheap purchase. I don't get that kind of response online normally!)
My grocery shopping has gone from lots of battling other people's trolleys in the supermarket to an online repeating order with some slight changes. It's delivered to my door and not packed, unpacked, scanned, packed again, wheeled to the car, unpacked, packed into the car, unpacked at home, packed into the cupboards.
My banking is AMAZING now. The banking app holds a number. If they collapse I get that number back, by law, under compensation schemes. I apply for things with a couple of clicks. I never have to deal with a human, have my history questioned, go through arcane processes to do simple things (like increase an overdraft, etc.), go into town, etc. So much better with no humans in the loop.
My internet install was a breeze. I ordered a 4G stick, plugged it into a wifi router that supported it, ordered a SIM card online, paid for it, it all worked. The alternative is waiting for a human to come round, umm and arr over the cabling, charge me a fortune to activate a decades-old phone line, wait for them to plumb in cabling and hardware where I don't want it and will only have to move it anyway. If I get bad service or they go bankrupt... I just buy another SIM online. Done.
I post things abroad. I wrap them up, press a few buttons, a guy comes to my house the next day, picks up the parcel, sends it internationally, and it's actually CHEAPER and QUICKER than using the post office and I can check on the parcel every inch of the way, as can my recipient.
Everything. The second you remove humans from the points of contact (and coronavirus is actually HELPING make these services better, in my opinion, as people learn they can just work from home or do things online and don't need "the human touch"), everything starts working better.
I pay my council tax online. My car tax. My phone. My Internet. My groceries. I can literally live with zero human interaction if I so wish.
And yet I remember DECADES where my mother had to wait in line at council offices, supermarkets, tax offices, the post office, etc. for HOURS to get the simplest of things done by a human.
It's 2020. I shouldn't have to require a human to manually do things that EVERY PERSON IN THE COUNTRY has to do anyway, beyond a bit of lifting and carrying.
Gimme an app any day. The only time I ever use a human is to complain, and the complaint is almost ALWAYS the fault of a human somewhere along the line. Yet even Amazon's largely-automated returns service is so much easier to use... click, reason, explanation, someone reads it, presses Yes or No. Drop the product in this Amazon dropbox next time you're passing and we'll refund you. Never had a problem yet.
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My car insurance has gone from a battle of talking lots of fine details to people who then try to upsell me, only to give me a price that's nowhere near competitive, for a service I will only ever use when I absolutely need to contact them anyway - to an app / comparison website search.
Every car insurance app I have ever tried has been grossly overpriced, or the quoted figure radically changes once I get the official quote. In my opinion they are nothing more than another middleman getting a commission.
Re: APPS! (Score:2)
Same as the humans who picked your order, the ones running the warehouse, the truckers, the distributors, the farmers, butcher, Baker, etc.
The people plowing the street after a snowstorm, repairing broken sewer, water, power, etc.
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Nope. I removed them from my sight, and my interactions as a customer.
I reduced my reliance on humans, and things got better. Damn sure if we get robots allowed to deliver, they won't get lost, bored, not bother to knock on my door, deliver it to my neighbour because it's closer, or lob it over my garden fence.
But as you remove the humans from the interfaces, everything gets better. As you automate the automatable jobs (e.g. an ATM - do you want to go back to having to walk into a bank and ask a teller a
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I can literally live with zero human interaction if I so wish.
Be careful what you wish for. I have been working from home and mostly isolated from human contact for over a year now, because I was recovering from cancer treatment, then the lockdown started just as I was getting ready to go back to work. Even for a naturally solitary person like me, this continued isolation is taking its toll.
The risk is that you go mad, in some sense, when deprived of friendly human company. My strategy for dealing with this is to deliberately do slightly potty things anyway, like post
and under Landlord-Tenant laws they may not be (Score:2)
and under Landlord-Tenant laws they may not be to just kick them out that fast.
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and under Landlord-Tenant laws they may not be to just kick them out that fast.
They aren't tenants. They are boarders.
Boarders have far fewer rights than tenants.
A tenant rents an independent living space.
Boarders share living spaces, such as bathrooms and kitchens.
Boarders can be evicted much easier. They also have fewer protections against discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, children, etc.
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Wouldn't a boarder be a lodger living with the landlord?
They're sharing the house with others but collectively they're all tenants.
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That's what I was wondering. You do business with a company called Diablo Management, then complaint that you get the pointy spike.
It would appear they were rather upfront about their intentions.
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If it sounds like a VC funded business that converts capital into income by investing in high value property and making it available at lower cost then it doesn't sound like a scam.
Shit, I know someone that owns an entire property portfolio that he's built up doing exactly this. He doesn't even lease the property, he buys it.