I'm not a fan of the call out culture, but I really want to see KitSplit take some action and fix this problem.
Maybe covering voluntary parting would result in too many fraudulent claims. If that's the case, they should clearly explain that theft is not covered and perhaps offer an insurance supplement.
Read the CEO's comment above. She states their assessment has been effective at blocking 99.99% of bad actors and stopping millions of dollars of theft on the platform
She's almost surely exaggerating and pulling those numbers out of thin air.
Voluntary parting is when you voluntarily hand it to someone, lending or renting, and they fail to return it. Theft on the other hand is called involuntary parting.
Not sure how much of a gray area this is. If I don't return a car from the dealer for a test drive and am caught, I'll be charged by police with theft, not voluntary parting. Likewise with car and equipment rentals.
It seems like the distinction is something that only comes up in the text of insurance policies, and is not an actual legal principle from criminal law.
Police see it as theft and it's a criminal act.
But the contract you agree to defines it as voluntary parting, doesn't cover it, and does cover theft, which never happens and isn't possible on their platform, so they never have to do anything except collect a big share of the rental fee.
If I don't pay my mortgage, I don't get charged with anything. What's the difference between lending money vs a car/camera etc? I guess it all comes down to intent, but intent is hard to prove.
It's hard to imagine circumstances where any court or jury would fail to find criminal intent in this particular case given those details.
If someone borrows something and then gets lost in the woods and dies, it's not theft because there wasn't intent.
You are correct that these cases hinge on intent.
> I want to be clear that there are no insurance providers or rental platforms that we know of that do offer coverage for voluntary parting.
It takes some guts to put this in the reply when the article specifically mentions the insurance solution of their competitor. It's like they didn't even read the piece they're replying to.
> A) On our insurance page kitsplit.com/insurance We explain in underlined terms that “we recommend that owners need to get their own annual policy with voluntary parting coverage in addition to the insurance provided by the renter.”
> The sad reality is that insurance companies simply do not cover voluntary parting. As a result we are, as of now, unable to offer voluntary parting because there are no insurance partners who provide it.
Now I'm sure there's a difference between ensuring a business as a whole like that and insuring yourself, but seriously?
In this case, she's arguing that their insurance partners do not provide voluntary parting insurance. This may be technically correct. However, the way insurance works is you can always go to an insurer of last resort and ask for exceptions. Lloyd's of London will cover race cars while racing or space vessels for accidents, for example, even though those are hardly standard policies. Nearly anything can be covered if you set the premium and deductibles high enough. They have billing codes for some pretty bizarre insured cases.
An entire sharing economy of companies could easily devise an insurance product that meets these needs if they worked to make it to happen. It would be trivial to scare consumers away from competitors that do not provide this.
* Get your own coverage
* Insurance companies don't cover it. Full stop. It's not that it's unavailable "at a reasonable price." It's "woe is us, we would if we could, but those damn insurance partners won't let us."
I know her last point isn't accurate, but that's what she's saying and she's phrasing it that way intentionally to shift responsibility. It's abhorrent.
A lot of the law is based on intent - did you want to kill Jack or you didn't see him when you reversed with your forklift?
So the intent there matters. What this guy can argue in a court is that the risk was misrepresented by the company, and then it becomes theft if he can prove that he was duped into this contract.
The way it should be structured is, you let the item out to intermediary (who takes legal possession if not physical) and they in turn are on the hook for any loss, when re-let to a third party, at which point they would do a better job of betting at insuring themselves.
The NY state attorney general should be looking at these unfair and asymmetrical arrangements (especially when they are basically EULAs)
Maybe the latter is covered by business logic, maybe not.
(Ps it's 'cahoots')
However, a class-action lawsuit to address all the wronged people would probably just bankrupt the company. The hurt people would not receive restitution. The founders would not receive any punishment. They would just lose the easy stream of future income they currently enjoy. Stopping a bad company from doing further harm is worthwhile though.
Calling out is exactly what's needed here. Our society and technology are at a point where it is easy for bad actors to cause damage, relocate, and repeat. Exposing them and shutting down their future opportunities is exactly what's necessary. Back in the days of small villages, everyone knew everyone's reputation and that provided a barrier against fraud. Unfortunately, our current legal framework prevents any company from offering a reputation platform because they would get sued out of existence with libel claims.
Investors aren't very interested in the morality (or even legal technicalities) of the products in which they invest, as long as they make some money on their investments. Calling the founder out will slow her down in any future grey-zone endeavors but won't stop her completely.
Surely there were also small villages where most commit fraud too?
"Cheat and Grudger are an ESS" in The Selfish Gene.
Since this has happened before, it would be more beneficial to society at this point to convict the owners of KitSplit of fraud and put them in prison.