Tilt is shutting down
blog.tilt.com
blog.tilt.com
I highly doubt that is legal. If you hold third party funds you can't just make some arbitrary statement or the money is yours.
They will have to make a reasonable effort to reach the affected parties and they will have to give them ample time to withdraw their funds.
All the cases that I'm personally familiar with the money eventually turned up. In some cases this took 6 months.
That doesn't excuse them but they do have some responsibilities, especially since here in the EU they are seen as a bank and have a Luxembourgian banking license.
This means that if a buyer charges back on a virtual sale, the buyer always wins. Even large companies such as Valve are affected by this[0]
[0]: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6687-HJV...
Google finds me plenty of reports where it apparently didn't.
Also, they really should take down some parts of their website. I just went to their site after a long time, and noticed I was still logged in, and it stated that Tilt isn't available in my country yet and if I am one of the first 100 people to sign up for a launch notification, I can get a Tilt t-shirt. It also says the following below it:
> We're expanding quickly and currently have offices in the U.S., Canada, UK, and other locations. Interested in joining our international team? Sign up above and we'll reach out when we launch in your region!
It feels like the EOL announcement of Tilt was really done quickly and sloppily. They should have taken down things that reference Tilt being an alive product, rather than just something that is existing because they won't want to be completely terrible and kill the product immediately.
There's also very limited scope for investment. So it's pointless retaining such funds; we try to disburse at the earliest opportunity.
I'd expect any successor entity to Tilt will remain liable. If Tilt are doing anything with the ridiculous "deadline", it's encouraging people to get that liability off their balance sheet. Speculation: perhaps some aspect of their acquisition deal is driving it, such liabilities might reduce TEV.
This is all basic comms stuff, would have thought Airbnb would have been all over it. All it takes is a little line: "after 12 June, you will still be able to claim any unredeemed funds by contacting XYZ@tilt.com, from the email address associated with your account..., this may take 10-12 weeks, so we advise you withdraw using our fast and simple bank account withdrawals before 12 June." or something.
Considered, if possible, that if money isn't out by the deadline that they will do… some other legal and responsible thing with the money. Hand it over the the governing jurisdiction as "unclaimed property"? More pro-actively reach out to people?
Nothing in this statement says they are going to do something illegal. There is no "…or we'll keep it". That line isn't in there. Your mind had to fabricate it.
I don't understand the desire to actively interpret things in the worst possible way. When I read stuff like this my entire emotional reaction is "…okay". My mental model for the state of the world has been mutated, fine. Some people seem to read stuff and want to fight with whoever wrote it. It's a press release. It was a mildly important three hours of two people's day. They do not have time to deal with people who set out to misinterpret their intentions. How does anyone have time for this? Why am I still typing!
When I do have a negative interpretation of someone's words, and I'm sure I'm less good at this than I like to imagine myself, I like to think that I at least try to imagine how they would have liked me to interpret those words. This sounds kind of, moral platitude-ish. I don't mean it in that way. Attempting to interpret someone charitably is a self defense. It's for me. I need to think this way to keep myself settled. If I don't, I end up angry at everything.
I think you're right and I appreciate the insight. Thanks.
Corporations are entities in which the most selfish rise to the top.
Any reading of intentions that gives corporate press releases even the slightest benefits of doubt is probably too charitable.
Corporations at the best of times don't chop you up and feed you to pigs because you or your next of kin would stop giving them money. When it's on its way downhill even that incentive isn't terribly strong.
Various corporate entities have repeatedly proved they would literally rather kill people than make less money if they think they can escape culpability and people still don't understand that you have no value to these people.
"You can also initiate withdrawals for any collected funds to your bank account through the Tilt platform until June 12, 2017"
A plain reading of these words is after 6-12 you cannot withdraw your money. If you were unclear you could check out the faq which reiterates this.
The most charitable reading possible is that they know this would be illegal and intend to mislead people into believing this so that they will be able to close up shop easier.
The statement itself violates the law. It is setting up a deadline for customers to withdraw their funds which is completely illegal in all Europe.
it doesn't matter, the nature itself of the statement is illegal in Europe at least.
I have to say I'm super disappointed in Airbnb buying and then destroying this company, especially with the shockingly small amount of notice. Between their new logo, their ill conceived muni advertising, the ability for their platform to facilitate racism, and their handling of this I have to wonder why they haven't hired a better marketing and PR team (or if they're just ignoring the team they have). Sometimes it seems like they actively hate their own brand.
Hunh? Care to elaborate on a) what specifically AirBNB does to facilitate racism, and b) what you'd expect them to change about their 'platform' to stop people from being horrible?
Stuff like a black male tries to rent for a certain date, gets denied, and then an hour later a white female tries to rent it for the same date and is approved by the owner.
I believe in the example I'm citing the person affected actually created the second account of the "white female" and tried to keep the language very similar when they booked, so this example was pretty egregious.
There were also cases, although this probably fits in the category of mentally ill and just really mean, of people sending messages like "sorry no Asians" after denying a renters request.
AirBnB did respond though. One of the changes they made was how the profile picture was displayed during the booking process. Either they made it smaller or removed it completely if you were an owner approving people.
They are aware of a problem with some hosts discriminating against certain guests. Here is an article describing some things they're trying to combat this in California in particular.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/04/28/airbnb-l...
Our company WeTravel has seen quite an uptick since tilt shut down, particularly from burning man camps and private people. Tilt was always a formidable but impossible competitor. It's hard to compete with 'totally free', especially given that they had a war chest of $60M in VC funding. However, it apparently wasn't enough.
though that could also relate to layoffs maybe as well..