Comment by avaku | Hacker News Reader

Comment by avaku | Hacker News Reader

We recently rented a house at Niagara Falls, which looked nice in pictures, although a few people in reviews mentioned it's kind of old. When we arrived, the shower wasn't working. An hour later police showed up, as someone reported property break in. The following day, in the morning the electric company showed up and turned off electricity, at the request of the previous property manager, who was recently fired, and decided to have a revenge. Finally, when we came back after a day at the falls, there were police notices on the house stating that it's illegal for anyone to occupy the property, as it was being used as illegal vacation rental. We got our stuff and got out to a nearby hotel, which luckily had prices on last minute discount... When I though about raising a complaint with AirBnB for a refund, I've imagined exactly the same situation as happened to the author here. I've also though about all the time I would need to waste to provide the evidence to the AirBnB... In light of this, we settled for an owner's offer to refund us privately over PayPal (including AirBnB fees) in exchange for not leaving a negative feedback. Take whatever you want out of this, but the reason we settled (and didn't provide feedback which could be useful to other people) is precisely because we knew how it is to fight with the giants. Been recently fighting for a compensation from BA for 24 hour delay, and it's seriously not worth the time I had to spend on getting these 600 euro, as the number of hours spent times my salary is higher.

>in exchange for not leaving a negative feedback

This is the same reason I roll my eyes when a ride sharing app asks me to rate a driver - I assume anything less than 5 stars is going to kill their work so I just give 5 stars. The one time I had a bad experience (nice driver, liked to talk, but could not drive and talk and almost got us killed), I just skipped the review entirely.

I have this working theory that we (people privileged enough to spend lots of time per day on the Internet) are getting close to being able to spend our time in fictional spaces; one of the reasons for that is the fact we spend a lot of goddamn time lying about things in order to make systems work the way we want. Now let's you and I sit down and talk about what 4 stars in iTunes/ Spotify/ whatever means in your personal system . . .

please please please rate bad drivers correctly. Number of times I've been in 4.7+ star ubers where the driver ran red lights is too high. Uber/lyft will definitely refund you if you let them know. Those drivers should not be driving for any service.

> I assume anything less than 5 stars is going to kill their work

> almost got us killed

This seems like a perfectly acceptable time to kill someone's ability to do a job, if they're bad enough at it that they can literally kill the people they're working with.

You don’t want to kill their work, they might actually kill somebody.

I’m all for the sharing economy and helping people out but I draw a line at safety. If you cannot drive you will get a bad rating. Sorry.

If I left bad rating to carpooling drivers who drive unsafely... I’d do it every time. For some reason, although I’m ok with one offense at a time, drivers really want to both phone and drive over the speed limit, and tail the next guy, at the same time, and the 4 witnesses in the car don’t worry them...

> If I left bad rating to carpooling drivers who drive unsafely... I’d do it every time.

Um, maybe... maybe you should? I don't understand this hesitation to accurately rate people who are bad at their job, to a level where someone can be seriously injured.

What exactly does it take some of y'all to give someone less than 5 stars? "Hit a child in a crosswalk, 4 stars"

Look, I went last week to the police station reporting a minivan who tailed me, then overtook me on the right and drove back into my car. Granted I wasn’t going at full speed (I was maintaining distance with the car in front, which made the minivan driver highly unhappy), but it was at 110km/h and we could all have died. Then the driver flew off. That makes 4 counts of infringement, 5 if you include attempted murder.

Response from the judiciary: The prosecutor won’t charge the guy, because the French courts are overwhelmed with same situations with multi-casualty accidents. I wonder how we got here.

France.

I'm not sure what this has to do with giving an Uber/Lyft driver a 1-star rating for reckless driving, but I'm glad you could share a story.

That's not special to France. You wouldn't get anywhere with that complaint in most nations. In part because your testimony isn't worth much as evidence.

I guess where you draw the line at safety is your choice. I draw the line at any of the following: using your phone/texting, running a red light, changing lanes without looking or without leaving proper space, hard braking and near misses, aggressive tailgating, consistently missing turns/traffic signs/etc, aggressive speeding (+15mph more than the flow of traffic), not yielding to pedestrians, yelling at other drivers and/or losing your cool while driving.

Regarding you comment: I do it every time - I also indicate in the review what was wrong. If you can barely drive you should not drive anyone around. Sorry.

blablacar.com limits the complaints to 120 characters. And once, they gave the complaint to the driver before they rated me, so the driver rated mr 0/5.

> I assume anything less than 5 stars is going to kill their work so I just give 5 stars

I do the same. I feel like Uber drivers are already living in a world that's way too close to that Black Mirror episode, and as someone who probably makes a lot more money than they do, I'm not really comfortable having that kind of power over them. I feel like rating them 5 stars is the least I can do for someone who's doing a difficult and low-paid job and doesn't really deserve to be under constant scrutiny.

There is a Black Mirror episode of this. People run around "rating" each other positively in fear that they might get a bad rating.

Only when someone shows weakness does the hive mind pounce and pile on the negative reviews.

It's like chickens, which will viciously attack any chicken that shows weakness (i.e. if it's missing a toe, it'll likely be murdered by fellow chickens)

> I have this working theory that we (people privileged enough to spend lots of time per day on the Internet) are getting close to being able to spend our time in fictional spaces

On this note, off-topic: I had a realization the other day that we are so close to being able to replace ourselves on a regular basis with our devices. Our devices are near-perfect proxies for our physical presence, especially with tech like video chat and interacting with our physical world via app or other digital medium. Especially for people like me, who physically carry their ID/debit card strapped to their device via wallet case.

I've been picturing ordering an Uber, and instead of getting in the car...I just throw my phone in the back! On some sort of video call. That driver knows where to take "me" - lets say my meeting. That driver can check who I "am" by checking the ID in my phone's wallet case, etc.

Obviously there are a lot of holes in this, what if the driver steals my cards, etc. What intrigues me though is the idea that our phones could be stand-in proxies for us. It gets even more interesting when you take drones into account...could I fly my device to a bank with my ID and debit card attached and request a withdrawal of cash via video chat?

> anything less than 5 stars is going to kill their work

Reminded me of the Black Mirror episode Nosedive. May be we are already there. On watching the episode I thought that would never happen. But things change so slowly that it feels completely normal later.

I went to a "hot" new restaurant recently...

It was busy alright.

The owner was running around like a mad person furiously cleaning tables.

I enjoyed my meal, the service was great, but as we were leaving I was disgusted to see the owner (who was cleaning tables, mind you) cough into her hand and then use that same hand to wipe down a table.

I noticed her voice sounded a bit off as well.

Anyways sure enough, the next day, I got sick.

When I told my friends I was considering leaving a 1 star review for that restaurant as a result... they were dumfounded... how could I possibly... you pariah you!

I was flabbergasted.

This restaurant owner came into her own restaurant knowing she was sick, and was publicly cleaning tables with dirty hands that she was coughing into... and I was the one getting pushback for wanting to leave a 1 star review as a result.

I left the review, the owner apologized and essentially admitted that she had come into work sick.

But I still feel weird about the whole ordeal.

What's the point of a review system if you are pressured to always be positive? No matter the circumstances?

I guess they were thinking that the owner probably didn't have a choice. When the restaurant is just starting, they probably didn't have anyone to take over for them.

The place had been open for about 1 year already at that point.

But even if it was their opening day... it is unacceptable to be cleaning tables if you are sick to the point that you're coughing everywhere.

Capitalism shouldn't trump common sense.

The incubation period for colds and flus is several days, usually about a week, so you wouldn't get sick the next day. Unless by "sick" you mean that you got food poisoning, but that wouldn't be from the owner's cough, but rather poor hygiene in the kitchen. Presumably the owner wasn't also making the food.

I misspoke. It was a few days between my visiting the restaurant and my getting sick.

This transpired a long time ago now.

I totally agree that coughing into your hands and then touching things that other people touch, especially in a restaurant is disgusting.

However the fact that you got sick doesn't prove anything at all. It could have been one of hundreds of coincidences that we come across every day that we don't really pay attention to until it matters.

Actually, the incubation period can also be the case if it comes to 'stomach bugs'. It could be something you ate couple of days ago that is giving you hard time. It alway perplexes me how people immediately associate their stomach or intestine discomfort (and I am talking about something a bit more serious like diarrhea or vomiting) with the last meal they ate. Which also normally leads people to ban the restaurant, take away they ate from immediately.

How many times it has happened that you at the same thing as other people and you were the only one sick? Plenty, I am sure.

I wonder if this is an American thing, just as calling even mediocre stuff awesome. In my small European country there are no such pressures.

I once left a 2 star review because we had to wait 15 minutes in a restaurant before we could order so we stood up and went elsewhere. Last week I gave a Uber driver 4 stars because he took other road than the GPS suggested and we ended up in a traffic jam costing us about 10 minutes.

Yeah, this is a major problem.

I can't ever issue a chargeback on an Amazon charge, as doing so would risk thousands of dollars of Kindle books as well as some fairly important stuff in AWS.

(And no, a separate AWS account doesn't help. If they can link them both to you, they'll take action against both.)

>as doing so would risk thousands of dollars of Kindle books

OT: this is exactly the reason why DRM/"licensed content" only harms legitimate users.

I had fraudulent Amazon charges once and worked through their support. According to Amazon, someone had added my card to their account and bought stuff. They had already identified the fraud before I called, but hadn't bothered to let me know or initiate a refund (!?).

Their final advice was to initiate a chargeback on the Visa card with my bank (this wasn't an Amazon card) and they wouldn't challenge the chargeback. I confirmed 3 times with Amazon support whether this would be counted against me in any way. They assured me, no, it wouldn't. I don't believe them but did the chargeback anyway. So far, so good, but I'm super hesitant to do returns with Amazon anymore. These giants are really doing a good job training their customers to bend over.

I'm not surprised that went OK.

My concern is more the "I got a counterfeit, going through support didn't work" sort of scenario, where Amazon tells me they've investigated and don't agree I deserve a refund.

So, here's my story on this.

I am probably the worst Amazon customer ever.

I have had packages left outside my door (and stolen), I have had packages sent empty (like not opened... empty), I have called Amazon to complain about a microphone (and then found out it was the sound card output that was fucked)

Every single time they have sided with me. I'm sure they bring the banhammer on people who do really fradulent stuff but I've never had an issue with chargebacks.

Same story here. One of the major reasons I continue to buy almost everything from Amazon is the fantastic customer service I've always received. I've literally never asked for a refund and not gotten it, granted that's been < 1% of my total orders.

Honestly, a situation that bad should be handled through AirBNB.

Yes, maybe they wouldn't have banned me, as we had photos of all the evidence. However, I don't have time for uploading, describing, following up etc. Maybe a great idea for some conflict resolution startup? :)

At least a simplified complaint bot. In Sweden there is a bot that automatically makes a complaint about faulty parking tickets for you by answering some questions. https://botboten.se/

As opposed to the US version, which is more akin to this episode of The Simpsons - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VBiTHckkH8

"Thank you for calling the Parking Violations Bureau. To plead Not Guilty, press 1 now."

"Your plea has been [no pause] rejected."

> Maybe a great idea for some conflict resolution startup? :)

My inner cynic can't help but think this would be filled with the digital equivalent of vexatious litigants with the end result being yet another firm that will ban you at the drop of a hat.

I think simply giving them the feedback you just gave would be worth it.

Hah, I recently stayed at once which sounds similar. Was it on the Canada side?

Interesting, airlines in the united states will often give a voucher for a delay if you just ask for it, even if they legally don't have to.

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