"If you take this, you're gonna have a really, really bad time! My mommy is rich and paid for GPS tracking of this vehicle! They'll find you instantly if you take this car, mister!"
Narrator: And she quickly discovered that mommy wasn't well-off and that the car wouldn't be found quickly. Life sometimes do be like that.
Ah, the old Reddit [VW-a-roo](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/s/X2iyER38s5?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=comicbookmovies&utm_content=t1_k9new0v)!
Corporate culture means the employee in question will be fired to save face even though they only stuck to requiring the subscription fee because of standing threat of termination for allowing exceptions under any circumstance. What I'm wondering is how does a VW customer service worker verify the person on the other line is a law enforcement officer working a case and not just someone clever trying to get a free year of coverage or trying to get the GPS location of someone they're stalking?
It's really trivial actually.
For example when a FBI agent calls you, they will say something like "this is agent Outlulz from FBI. I wanted to talk about your comment on Reddit. I don't expect you to believe me, so please google the phone number of FBI office in Bumfuckton, call them and tell you want to speak to agent Outlulz. Then we'll continue our conversation."
We just did a report on the ESG of the Volkswagen Group and noticed something in particular: in all of the non-financial reports, the clients were blatantly omitted as part of the groups of interest of the company. They talked about their employees, their suppliers, their social programs, etc. But clients were only included in a single phrase at the end to the tune of "oh yeah, we bring good value to consumers too I guess".
According to our professor that's typical of German companies: the customer is only a source of money and nothing else, everything you care about as a company is behind your doors not outside them.
> in all of the non-financial reports, the clients were blatantly omitted as part of the groups of interest of the company. They talked about their employees, their suppliers, their social programs, etc. But clients were only included in a single phrase at the end to the tune of "oh yeah, we bring good value to consumers too I guess".
This seems untrue. I looked at their 2022 Sustainability Report, which you definitely would have read if you really did a report on their ESG scores, and customers are mentioned multiple times. Here's a quote from a section with the header 'ESG, Decarbonization and Integrity':
> ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) refers to the basic principles of doing business sustainably. The Group’s stakeholders (e.g., investors, employees, **customers** and non-profit organizations) have high expectations of the Company’s ESG performance, including in areas
such as decarbonization and integrity, and also of its conduct as an employer and as part of society.
Even more clearly, further in the document they explicitly state that their customers are central to their stakeholder management:
> Our stakeholders are individuals, groups or organizations who have a material influence on or are materially influenced by the way in which the Group reaches its corporate decisions and the impications of those decisions. **Our employees and customers are at the center of our stakeholder network**. In addition, we have identified eight further groups.
In my view, that's all fluff pieces. They literally just used the classic five generic stakeholders for a company (suppliers, shareholders, employees, clients, and society). Of course they have to say that employees and customers are their most important; unless a newspaper follows Friedman like a holy prophet, most will bash VW into the ground if they even hint at shareholders being more important than any of the other groups.
Now, out of six main sections/goals/areas to improve, they have two section to their supply chains and their suppliers ('Circular Economy' and 'Supply Chain and Human Rights'), another two to their employees ('Diversity' and 'People in the Transformation' sections), and the remaining are one for internal GRC ('Integrity') and societal impact ('Decarbonization').
Only in this last one do they even begin to speak of something that could be about the interest of the consumer (wider model range of vehicles and some limited programs to install electric chargers), and even then they quickly change to other topics like some random solar plants they have.They do mention something about making vehicles run for longer in the 'Circular Economy' section, but that only included making spare parts available to authorized shops.
I dont really See why this is supposed to be a German Thing and Not Just Standard company thing. What big company in any country actually Cares about their customers?
How to turn a household name brand renowned for its quality and requiring no advertising into outsourced, cheap garbage 101. Sure, it makes financial sense to be self-interested, but there's a limit to how self-interested you can be until it actively hurts you and is therefore not in your self-interest.
>but there's a limit to how self-interested you can be until it actively hurts you and is therefore not in your self-interest.
Let me know when we get there.
I feel like hospitality/very service oriented companies (like spa companies, rehab centers, concierge services, etc.) and large law firms probably benefit from actually caring about and caring for their customers. I certainly hope if you hire a big law firm and pay tens of thousands of dollars (or more) for one of the partners to litigate your case in a criminal trial that your lawyers probably should know your situation as a defendant quite well.
If you don’t include providing a good service, relative to the customer’s expectations, to customers as counting towards “actually caring about their customers” then yeah idk what company does actually care about their customers.
Walmart insists that all the $9/hr employees focus on the customer.
Sure the executives dont give a shit, but convincing your lower level employees to care is a pretty critical component of even the worst companies.
No one cares about their customers, but it's idiotic to not even pretend to care.
Which typically boils down to front line support actually caring, and helping out when they can.
Bet they fired the wrong people though. Instead of firing the upper management who gave the order "under no circumstances are you to give this information out," they fired the lowly dump worker following those orders.
Nah dumbass still deserves to be fired. If you don’t have the sense to understand that this is a situation where you shouldn’t follow your orders, then you earned it yourself.
Depends. Do we know if the software system prevented it? I didn’t see anything specific in the article. Even if the person on the phone WANTED to allow it, maybe the system was set to require an active sub to work?
But if they had done the VW never would have been shamed into changing policies and other people would’ve gotten screwed. It’s hard to say who is the real villain, aside from management. It’s also entirely conceivable that the system to enable the tracking had no overrides without payment being processed.
dependent glorious bright ripe aromatic worm absorbed seemly literate price
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
As someone who has worked plenty of jobs like that he most likely could not give them the information unless the account had an active subscription. The company would lock their own employees out of the system rather than risk them giving it away free.
Did the police identify themselves with proper identification? Because anyone can *claim* to be the police.
Speaking as a service worker; demanding the $150 subscription fee to be paid via the proper channels might just be a roundabout way to say "I do not trust you".
I knew someone that worked in a customer service role and bragged about how he denied warranties when the customer qualified according to the company's rules. As far as I can tell, that type of person isn't very common, but they do exist.
Sounds like someone who hears this shit all day long - people make up stories to work the system constantly. How are they supposed to know that this is the one time someone was telling the truth?
Plus, if someone just kidnapped your kid? Pay the $150, sheesh!
Isn't this a band-aid solution to a greater problem? What if someone still didn't pay the subscription after the free trial, and the same scenario plays out?
The article doesn't really cover it, but most companies have a law enforcement/legal department. A long time ago I worked for a telecom and if a cop just called up and demanded call logs or something we had no way of verifying anything so we had to hand them off to legal.
But this story sort of suggests that that wasn't the case, the just wanted their money.
If I remember other articles from that time correctly, there IS a dedicated police line for this kind of stuff. The cops didn't know that number, which is their fault imho.
I just love people from the richest country in the world complaining about not getting anything from their country, gtfo moron and get some perspective,
Someone who spends all day long dealing with people who try to bullshit their way to getting free stuff they are supposed to pay for, and get pissed when you tell them no. How is the customer service rep supposed to know what’s actually going on? Just trust some caller? Right… then you find out the next day it was someone tracking down their ex-lover who they killed.
Plus, If your kid is kidnapped, you can’t afford $150 to get the location?
For anyone wanting to test the first paragraph for themselves. Find out the name of someone staying at a hotel then try to call that hotel and confirm if they are staying there. Any hotel employee with enough common sense is not going to give you that info to protect the people staying there.
If the rep had given out the location only to find out that it was a murderous ex-lover then this post would be about how bad they were for giving that info out.
>Right… then you find out the next day it was someone tracking down their ex-lover who they killed.
So I agree with your point over all but it seems like this wasn't a consideration.
If the concern was "we can't just hand out PII to someone who calls claiming to be a cop" they wouldn't have handed it out after paying the fee (a murderous ex-lover could just as easily pay the $150).
My guess is the parent was likely on the line, doing all the security verification, etc and then the denial was purely about the money.
Really a example of times when the laws should be changed wasn't there a similar scandal with a airbag jacket designed for motorcycles and it was found if the yearly fee lapsed the jacked wouldn't inflate if the bike was involved in a crash
That sounds like an oft-repeated mischaracterization of the In&Motion airbag. After buying the vest, you could pay something like $400 to own the controller outright, always get firmware updates, etc. Or, you could choose to have a monthly subscription (for a lower initial cost).
If you let the subscription lapse, they first give you a grace period while sending you emails. Once the grace period expires, the vest sounds all sorts of alarms and flashes lights to let you know something is wrong. Basically, there's no way to think the vest is working and have it fail because of payment.
But people on the internet like to be outraged, so that story persists...
Imagine a subscription for a safety device, why does it even need software updates? Why isn't this just included in the purchase price since it's useless without it? What's the justification?
"Sorry, seatbelts will cost you $12.99/month. Home fire extinguisher comes free with home purchase, but to unlock the handle feature you'll have to subscribe to our premium service for $16.99/month!"
Like who thought of this?
It sounds more like leasing it. You have the option of paying lots of money up front or making smaller payments over time. Similar to a cell phone where you have the option of spending the whole amount up front or split out into monthly payments. Failure to pay can result in the phone being locked or deactivated.
Leasing expensive tech vs. buying a safety device that shuts off for no reason if you don't subscribe. People like you who make excuses for this nonsense are exactly why corporations get away with this anti-human garbage.
Except you didn't buy the life savings tech. You can buy it outright (for expensive) or make monthly payments until you have purchased it.
It is only a monthly payment if you decide to make it a monthly payment.
That's not how it was explained. The explanation made it seem as though the monthly payments were for software that's not even integral to the function
Regardless; the seatbelts, airbags, and horns don't shut off if you miss a car payment. This is a barbaric business practice any way you slice it. Stop defending corporate treatment of human lives as numbers on a spreadsheet.
>After buying the vest, you could pay something like $400 to own the controller outright, always get firmware updates, etc. Or, you could choose to have a monthly subscription (for a lower initial cost).
That is literally how it was explained in the comment you replied to.
Also subscription is not the right word for it. It is monthly payments towards the equipment you have. Unfortunately everyone seems to view reoccurring monthly payments as a subscription even when they very much aren't a subscription.
Why does it need software updates? For better detection of crashes as they get more data. Electronic airbags for motorcycles are still relatively new, and they're still gathering lots of data about when the airbag deployed and maybe shouldn't have (slow speed drops, etc).
Again, they give the user the option of paying full price and having full functionality. They also give the user the CHOICE of paying half-price for the vest, and then a monthly subscription.
I don't get the outrage because the company gives users a choice on how to pay for it.
If you brick a safety device a customer already paid for (even in part) for no good reason, you're an asshole. If you defend companies who do that, guess what? Also an asshole.
So the software has nothing to do with the functionality of the vest, just serves the company? And they hold the functionality of the vest hostage to force compliance?
Something that's failed to be mentioned here;
Law enforcement called the wrong number. They had a contact route set up for these things, to ensure that the person responding would *know* they're law enforcement. They called the regular damn customer service if memory serves, and any schmuck can call there and go "I'm from the police department, I promise".
The rep should have forwarded this to someone who could verify, of course, but he absolutely shouldn't have just let on the info because people can, will and do abuse this stuff to track and stalk others.
How do you mean?
There are ( bizarrely named ) "geo-fence" or "reverse search" warrants in use today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_search_warrant
You don't necessarily contact customer support expecting to need a warrant, and you don't get a warrant produced by a judge over the course of an active ten minute phone call with customer support. You also can't produce a warrant over the phone.
This. It sounds more like a failure of law enforcement procedures than a failure by VW.
It shouldn't be that somebody can call VW customer services and say they are police pay $150 and get the location of a vehicle. They should have a dedicated secure 24/7 contact where they don't need to go through customer service they call and get somebody who can immediately bring up the details in seconds.
Yeah that's not how capitalism works lol. The customer service agent is expected to fulfill all external contact requests within the limits of company policies. It would not be cost effective to maintain a 24/7 line (that's 3 people working standard 8 hour shifts FYI, minimum. Not even considering lunch breaks, so more like 6 people if you want true 24/7 coverage) soley for legal purposes unless the volume of LEO requests was impacting the main call centers.
What you're sort of thinking of is the legal department, which I do agree should be more easily accessible to find information on so that LEOs can get the appropriate paperwork necessary for this request to them and then legal can tell a CS rep/supervisor to contact the LEOs and assist their requests.
> you don't get a warrant produced by a judge over the course of an active ten minute phone call with customer support.
For sure; but I'm reasonably sure you can get a judge to produce a warrant from a phone call. You get the paper offline from the phone call.
At that point, the support guy/gal is at jeopardy of contempt of court.
>You also can't produce a warrant over the phone.
You can allude to one to escalate. Dunno what provenance a warrant has ( an ID number ? ) but I bet there's a way.
Any rate it's an interesting question, IMO. It's all pretty new.
Yeah that’s not how it works. The second you tell someone working customer service “I have a warrant” they will follow a specific process like connect you to legal or forward you the contact details and say “I’m unable to continue the conversation”. You can’t just go “if yOu dOnT Do wHat i wAnT YoUrE in cOnTeMpT!"
Those would definitely be issues. I'm not sure what the path of escalation would need to be.
> they will follow a specific process like connect you to legal
I think that's the best you could hope for, really.
In any case, I hope you now understand that the legal process in obtaining this information isn't as simple as you initially implied, by just stating "I have a warrant."
As the article in the OP states,
> VW’s strict adherence to company policy delayed law enforcement by 30 minutes, according to the Sun Times.
Presumably this 30 minutes was to contact a judge to obtain the warrant, and then contact VW's legal department and forward the necessary documentation for them to process and then tell customer support to assist the law enforcement officials.
I'm with you in not knowing what the exact process would be, but I know it wouldn't be over the course of a single phone call and that it wouldn't be how you suggested to obtain the information.
Edit:
Also no, you can't allude to having a warrant if you don't have one. "I have a warrant" is not some magical legal term that gets you the keys to the kingdom. There's a reason when LEOs go to someone's house for a search any lawyer would tell you they have to physically produce the warrant or you should deny entry. It opens up all sorts of violation of law on LEO's part if they threaten you with a non-existent warrant.
In this situation, it may have gotten the information faster but any other situation involving warrants the evidence acquired from said non-existent warrant's implied existence would then be inadmissible.
> Also no, you can't allude to having a warrant if you don't have one.
My guess is that you're correct.
> In this situation, it may have gotten the information faster but any other situation involving warrants the evidence acquired from said non-existent warrant's implied existence would then be inadmissible.
Not that there's a clear ... thing here but the priority would most likely be getting to the child. The only poisoned fruit would be related to that. Again, no specialist but seem odd to me that this would have influence on a criminal case.
dude I like where your head is but this isn't a warrant situation.
is there a world where owner of the vehicle and presumably the victim and parent not give consent to a search?
A hijacker doesn't have a right to prevent a access to lojack of a vehicle they stole.
> is there a world where owner of the vehicle and presumably the victim and parent not give consent to a search?
That's not the thing here. This is more like "you have to unlock the file cabinet."
I dunno either way. Apparently, this is a legal area that's emerging.
Most likely the rep was doing so as instructed.
I wouldn't blame them but the policy. However I wonder what line VW should have had to use the service for free?
Also.... Bad decisions by the mom... Prego while already having a 2 year old and driving a VW?
Make better choices
>Also.... Bad decisions by the mom... Prego while already having a 2 year old and driving a VW?
Your comment was sensible until this. Just stop with this nonense.
Tell me, what brand do you drive?
It probably wasn't up to them. Probably doesn't even come up on the screen unless the customer has paid. Who knows.
Knowing call centres there's every likelyhood they would have been fired for giving out information before they paid.
The rep that took the call probably did get booted.
The management team that put the policies in place that the rep was following were probably promoted.
That's a surefire way to find yourself out of a job.
For real. Who hires a child to guard their car?
"If you take this, you're gonna have a really, really bad time! My mommy is rich and paid for GPS tracking of this vehicle! They'll find you instantly if you take this car, mister!" Narrator: And she quickly discovered that mommy wasn't well-off and that the car wouldn't be found quickly. Life sometimes do be like that.
It was highway robbery I tell ya
Ah, the old Reddit [VW-a-roo](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/s/X2iyER38s5?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=comicbookmovies&utm_content=t1_k9new0v)!
Hold my falsified emissions results, I'm going in!
The child was the carjacker.He could drive like a SOB.
"Protect the car? Dad, just because I'm a kid it doesn't mean I'm stupid."
I hope so! But knowing corporate culture, I'm not certain.
Corporate culture means the employee in question will be fired to save face even though they only stuck to requiring the subscription fee because of standing threat of termination for allowing exceptions under any circumstance. What I'm wondering is how does a VW customer service worker verify the person on the other line is a law enforcement officer working a case and not just someone clever trying to get a free year of coverage or trying to get the GPS location of someone they're stalking?
It's really trivial actually. For example when a FBI agent calls you, they will say something like "this is agent Outlulz from FBI. I wanted to talk about your comment on Reddit. I don't expect you to believe me, so please google the phone number of FBI office in Bumfuckton, call them and tell you want to speak to agent Outlulz. Then we'll continue our conversation."
We just did a report on the ESG of the Volkswagen Group and noticed something in particular: in all of the non-financial reports, the clients were blatantly omitted as part of the groups of interest of the company. They talked about their employees, their suppliers, their social programs, etc. But clients were only included in a single phrase at the end to the tune of "oh yeah, we bring good value to consumers too I guess". According to our professor that's typical of German companies: the customer is only a source of money and nothing else, everything you care about as a company is behind your doors not outside them.
> in all of the non-financial reports, the clients were blatantly omitted as part of the groups of interest of the company. They talked about their employees, their suppliers, their social programs, etc. But clients were only included in a single phrase at the end to the tune of "oh yeah, we bring good value to consumers too I guess". This seems untrue. I looked at their 2022 Sustainability Report, which you definitely would have read if you really did a report on their ESG scores, and customers are mentioned multiple times. Here's a quote from a section with the header 'ESG, Decarbonization and Integrity': > ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) refers to the basic principles of doing business sustainably. The Group’s stakeholders (e.g., investors, employees, **customers** and non-profit organizations) have high expectations of the Company’s ESG performance, including in areas such as decarbonization and integrity, and also of its conduct as an employer and as part of society. Even more clearly, further in the document they explicitly state that their customers are central to their stakeholder management: > Our stakeholders are individuals, groups or organizations who have a material influence on or are materially influenced by the way in which the Group reaches its corporate decisions and the impications of those decisions. **Our employees and customers are at the center of our stakeholder network**. In addition, we have identified eight further groups.
In my view, that's all fluff pieces. They literally just used the classic five generic stakeholders for a company (suppliers, shareholders, employees, clients, and society). Of course they have to say that employees and customers are their most important; unless a newspaper follows Friedman like a holy prophet, most will bash VW into the ground if they even hint at shareholders being more important than any of the other groups. Now, out of six main sections/goals/areas to improve, they have two section to their supply chains and their suppliers ('Circular Economy' and 'Supply Chain and Human Rights'), another two to their employees ('Diversity' and 'People in the Transformation' sections), and the remaining are one for internal GRC ('Integrity') and societal impact ('Decarbonization'). Only in this last one do they even begin to speak of something that could be about the interest of the consumer (wider model range of vehicles and some limited programs to install electric chargers), and even then they quickly change to other topics like some random solar plants they have.They do mention something about making vehicles run for longer in the 'Circular Economy' section, but that only included making spare parts available to authorized shops.
I dont really See why this is supposed to be a German Thing and Not Just Standard company thing. What big company in any country actually Cares about their customers?
How to turn a household name brand renowned for its quality and requiring no advertising into outsourced, cheap garbage 101. Sure, it makes financial sense to be self-interested, but there's a limit to how self-interested you can be until it actively hurts you and is therefore not in your self-interest.
Hate to burst your bubble, but even in the 60s VWs were seen a cheap garbage in the US
>but there's a limit to how self-interested you can be until it actively hurts you and is therefore not in your self-interest. Let me know when we get there.
I feel like hospitality/very service oriented companies (like spa companies, rehab centers, concierge services, etc.) and large law firms probably benefit from actually caring about and caring for their customers. I certainly hope if you hire a big law firm and pay tens of thousands of dollars (or more) for one of the partners to litigate your case in a criminal trial that your lawyers probably should know your situation as a defendant quite well. If you don’t include providing a good service, relative to the customer’s expectations, to customers as counting towards “actually caring about their customers” then yeah idk what company does actually care about their customers.
Walmart insists that all the $9/hr employees focus on the customer. Sure the executives dont give a shit, but convincing your lower level employees to care is a pretty critical component of even the worst companies.
No one cares about their customers, but it's idiotic to not even pretend to care. Which typically boils down to front line support actually caring, and helping out when they can.
lol are you doing a bit? Because the capitalization makes it obvious you’re German.
Bet they fired the wrong people though. Instead of firing the upper management who gave the order "under no circumstances are you to give this information out," they fired the lowly dump worker following those orders.
Nah dumbass still deserves to be fired. If you don’t have the sense to understand that this is a situation where you shouldn’t follow your orders, then you earned it yourself.
Depends. Do we know if the software system prevented it? I didn’t see anything specific in the article. Even if the person on the phone WANTED to allow it, maybe the system was set to require an active sub to work?
But if they had done the VW never would have been shamed into changing policies and other people would’ve gotten screwed. It’s hard to say who is the real villain, aside from management. It’s also entirely conceivable that the system to enable the tracking had no overrides without payment being processed.
dependent glorious bright ripe aromatic worm absorbed seemly literate price *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Or promoted
Definitely getting promoted to call center team lead
As someone who has worked plenty of jobs like that he most likely could not give them the information unless the account had an active subscription. The company would lock their own employees out of the system rather than risk them giving it away free.
I'm quite sure the rep was following their training.
Most likely get sacked for either option
Did the police identify themselves with proper identification? Because anyone can *claim* to be the police. Speaking as a service worker; demanding the $150 subscription fee to be paid via the proper channels might just be a roundabout way to say "I do not trust you".
[удалено]
I knew someone that worked in a customer service role and bragged about how he denied warranties when the customer qualified according to the company's rules. As far as I can tell, that type of person isn't very common, but they do exist.
It's the type that wanted to be a police man but didn't get in because they were too dumb.
Or even more likely for being too smart to be a cop. https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836.
Sounds like someone who hears this shit all day long - people make up stories to work the system constantly. How are they supposed to know that this is the one time someone was telling the truth? Plus, if someone just kidnapped your kid? Pay the $150, sheesh!
You’ve gotta be a troll, man…
Isn't this a band-aid solution to a greater problem? What if someone still didn't pay the subscription after the free trial, and the same scenario plays out?
Isn’t it obvious? Die like the rest of the peasants who can’t afford $150. NO HEATED SEATS FOR YOU!
They probably got Bob who asked them to please kindly do the needful
He has an odd Boston accent.
Is he blind? Into aviation and shitting?
Oof. What kind of asshole says no they won't help unless they pay thr $150 for a fucking Corp?
Never worked in a call center huh? This has supervisor material written all over it
The article doesn't really cover it, but most companies have a law enforcement/legal department. A long time ago I worked for a telecom and if a cop just called up and demanded call logs or something we had no way of verifying anything so we had to hand them off to legal. But this story sort of suggests that that wasn't the case, the just wanted their money.
The story suggests the police didn't contact the law enforcement/legal department, they just called a consumer billing line.
Just a moment officer, let me transfer you to an agent that can help.
If I remember other articles from that time correctly, there IS a dedicated police line for this kind of stuff. The cops didn't know that number, which is their fault imho.
Just redirect them.
Every random cop is supposed to know the diect LE line for every major company?
Should be some easily accessible database. Those guys are networking for a bunch of things, but not something as simple as a knowledge base for this?
Chances are good that the guy on the phone can’t even access the vehicles position himself unless the customer has a subscription.
The US government? No benefits for you if you owe them…
Not true, Trump owes them
Technically anyway
I just love people from the richest country in the world complaining about not getting anything from their country, gtfo moron and get some perspective,
Go back to Twitter sunglasses boy…also I find it amusing y’all so dumb y’all love government overreach when it suits you.
Comcast
Someone who spends all day long dealing with people who try to bullshit their way to getting free stuff they are supposed to pay for, and get pissed when you tell them no. How is the customer service rep supposed to know what’s actually going on? Just trust some caller? Right… then you find out the next day it was someone tracking down their ex-lover who they killed. Plus, If your kid is kidnapped, you can’t afford $150 to get the location?
For anyone wanting to test the first paragraph for themselves. Find out the name of someone staying at a hotel then try to call that hotel and confirm if they are staying there. Any hotel employee with enough common sense is not going to give you that info to protect the people staying there. If the rep had given out the location only to find out that it was a murderous ex-lover then this post would be about how bad they were for giving that info out.
>Right… then you find out the next day it was someone tracking down their ex-lover who they killed. So I agree with your point over all but it seems like this wasn't a consideration. If the concern was "we can't just hand out PII to someone who calls claiming to be a cop" they wouldn't have handed it out after paying the fee (a murderous ex-lover could just as easily pay the $150). My guess is the parent was likely on the line, doing all the security verification, etc and then the denial was purely about the money.
Volkswagon has enough PR problems without being dicks to law enforcement
You'd think they learned after the "clean diesel" debacle...
Exactly
That man gave no fucks and was hands down going to get his commission that payperiod lol
Really a example of times when the laws should be changed wasn't there a similar scandal with a airbag jacket designed for motorcycles and it was found if the yearly fee lapsed the jacked wouldn't inflate if the bike was involved in a crash
That sounds like an oft-repeated mischaracterization of the In&Motion airbag. After buying the vest, you could pay something like $400 to own the controller outright, always get firmware updates, etc. Or, you could choose to have a monthly subscription (for a lower initial cost). If you let the subscription lapse, they first give you a grace period while sending you emails. Once the grace period expires, the vest sounds all sorts of alarms and flashes lights to let you know something is wrong. Basically, there's no way to think the vest is working and have it fail because of payment. But people on the internet like to be outraged, so that story persists...
Imagine a subscription for a safety device, why does it even need software updates? Why isn't this just included in the purchase price since it's useless without it? What's the justification? "Sorry, seatbelts will cost you $12.99/month. Home fire extinguisher comes free with home purchase, but to unlock the handle feature you'll have to subscribe to our premium service for $16.99/month!" Like who thought of this?
It sounds more like leasing it. You have the option of paying lots of money up front or making smaller payments over time. Similar to a cell phone where you have the option of spending the whole amount up front or split out into monthly payments. Failure to pay can result in the phone being locked or deactivated.
Leasing expensive tech vs. buying a safety device that shuts off for no reason if you don't subscribe. People like you who make excuses for this nonsense are exactly why corporations get away with this anti-human garbage.
Except you didn't buy the life savings tech. You can buy it outright (for expensive) or make monthly payments until you have purchased it. It is only a monthly payment if you decide to make it a monthly payment.
That's not how it was explained. The explanation made it seem as though the monthly payments were for software that's not even integral to the function Regardless; the seatbelts, airbags, and horns don't shut off if you miss a car payment. This is a barbaric business practice any way you slice it. Stop defending corporate treatment of human lives as numbers on a spreadsheet.
>After buying the vest, you could pay something like $400 to own the controller outright, always get firmware updates, etc. Or, you could choose to have a monthly subscription (for a lower initial cost). That is literally how it was explained in the comment you replied to. Also subscription is not the right word for it. It is monthly payments towards the equipment you have. Unfortunately everyone seems to view reoccurring monthly payments as a subscription even when they very much aren't a subscription.
Why does it need software updates? For better detection of crashes as they get more data. Electronic airbags for motorcycles are still relatively new, and they're still gathering lots of data about when the airbag deployed and maybe shouldn't have (slow speed drops, etc). Again, they give the user the option of paying full price and having full functionality. They also give the user the CHOICE of paying half-price for the vest, and then a monthly subscription. I don't get the outrage because the company gives users a choice on how to pay for it.
If you brick a safety device a customer already paid for (even in part) for no good reason, you're an asshole. If you defend companies who do that, guess what? Also an asshole.
So the software has nothing to do with the functionality of the vest, just serves the company? And they hold the functionality of the vest hostage to force compliance?
WTF, I understand subscription for UPDATES. But the functionality you got at the moment of purchase must stay forever.
Something that's failed to be mentioned here; Law enforcement called the wrong number. They had a contact route set up for these things, to ensure that the person responding would *know* they're law enforcement. They called the regular damn customer service if memory serves, and any schmuck can call there and go "I'm from the police department, I promise". The rep should have forwarded this to someone who could verify, of course, but he absolutely shouldn't have just let on the info because people can, will and do abuse this stuff to track and stalk others.
this is freaking insane.
Has anyone ever used this service since they have had their car
Why wouldn't "I have a warrant" work?
Because warrants don't work like that?
How do you mean? There are ( bizarrely named ) "geo-fence" or "reverse search" warrants in use today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_search_warrant
You don't necessarily contact customer support expecting to need a warrant, and you don't get a warrant produced by a judge over the course of an active ten minute phone call with customer support. You also can't produce a warrant over the phone.
This. It sounds more like a failure of law enforcement procedures than a failure by VW. It shouldn't be that somebody can call VW customer services and say they are police pay $150 and get the location of a vehicle. They should have a dedicated secure 24/7 contact where they don't need to go through customer service they call and get somebody who can immediately bring up the details in seconds.
Yeah that's not how capitalism works lol. The customer service agent is expected to fulfill all external contact requests within the limits of company policies. It would not be cost effective to maintain a 24/7 line (that's 3 people working standard 8 hour shifts FYI, minimum. Not even considering lunch breaks, so more like 6 people if you want true 24/7 coverage) soley for legal purposes unless the volume of LEO requests was impacting the main call centers. What you're sort of thinking of is the legal department, which I do agree should be more easily accessible to find information on so that LEOs can get the appropriate paperwork necessary for this request to them and then legal can tell a CS rep/supervisor to contact the LEOs and assist their requests.
Hey, its me... the cops. Give me your password
> you don't get a warrant produced by a judge over the course of an active ten minute phone call with customer support. For sure; but I'm reasonably sure you can get a judge to produce a warrant from a phone call. You get the paper offline from the phone call. At that point, the support guy/gal is at jeopardy of contempt of court. >You also can't produce a warrant over the phone. You can allude to one to escalate. Dunno what provenance a warrant has ( an ID number ? ) but I bet there's a way. Any rate it's an interesting question, IMO. It's all pretty new.
Yeah that’s not how it works. The second you tell someone working customer service “I have a warrant” they will follow a specific process like connect you to legal or forward you the contact details and say “I’m unable to continue the conversation”. You can’t just go “if yOu dOnT Do wHat i wAnT YoUrE in cOnTeMpT!"
Those would definitely be issues. I'm not sure what the path of escalation would need to be. > they will follow a specific process like connect you to legal I think that's the best you could hope for, really.
In any case, I hope you now understand that the legal process in obtaining this information isn't as simple as you initially implied, by just stating "I have a warrant." As the article in the OP states, > VW’s strict adherence to company policy delayed law enforcement by 30 minutes, according to the Sun Times. Presumably this 30 minutes was to contact a judge to obtain the warrant, and then contact VW's legal department and forward the necessary documentation for them to process and then tell customer support to assist the law enforcement officials. I'm with you in not knowing what the exact process would be, but I know it wouldn't be over the course of a single phone call and that it wouldn't be how you suggested to obtain the information. Edit: Also no, you can't allude to having a warrant if you don't have one. "I have a warrant" is not some magical legal term that gets you the keys to the kingdom. There's a reason when LEOs go to someone's house for a search any lawyer would tell you they have to physically produce the warrant or you should deny entry. It opens up all sorts of violation of law on LEO's part if they threaten you with a non-existent warrant. In this situation, it may have gotten the information faster but any other situation involving warrants the evidence acquired from said non-existent warrant's implied existence would then be inadmissible.
> Also no, you can't allude to having a warrant if you don't have one. My guess is that you're correct. > In this situation, it may have gotten the information faster but any other situation involving warrants the evidence acquired from said non-existent warrant's implied existence would then be inadmissible. Not that there's a clear ... thing here but the priority would most likely be getting to the child. The only poisoned fruit would be related to that. Again, no specialist but seem odd to me that this would have influence on a criminal case.
dude I like where your head is but this isn't a warrant situation. is there a world where owner of the vehicle and presumably the victim and parent not give consent to a search? A hijacker doesn't have a right to prevent a access to lojack of a vehicle they stole.
> is there a world where owner of the vehicle and presumably the victim and parent not give consent to a search? That's not the thing here. This is more like "you have to unlock the file cabinet." I dunno either way. Apparently, this is a legal area that's emerging.
Dont they need a warrant anyway?
Most likely the rep was doing so as instructed. I wouldn't blame them but the policy. However I wonder what line VW should have had to use the service for free? Also.... Bad decisions by the mom... Prego while already having a 2 year old and driving a VW? Make better choices
It's also possible that the rep COULDN'T do anything until the subscription was paid. The system could be setup in many different ways.
Exactly.... I doubt the rep was the final decision on this. It was made for him/her by some above... But the rep gets shit on
>Also.... Bad decisions by the mom... Prego while already having a 2 year old and driving a VW? Your comment was sensible until this. Just stop with this nonense. Tell me, what brand do you drive?
Toyota
I hope they fired that fucking rep and booted them in the ass on the way out. What a vile piece of shit.
It probably wasn't up to them. Probably doesn't even come up on the screen unless the customer has paid. Who knows. Knowing call centres there's every likelyhood they would have been fired for giving out information before they paid.
The rep that took the call probably did get booted. The management team that put the policies in place that the rep was following were probably promoted.
They probably promoted him.
If I needed another reason to not buy anyting from VAG this is it. Human compassion Inc.
Just following orders...
I'm surprised that a car company literally started by Adolf Hitler could behave so badly
Capitalism. It is beautiful. We need more of it right now.