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The article says it well. The GPS only benefits the dealers, and they demand that the customers pay the fees to install, maintain, and remove the devices. 60
by metalliqaz 9y ago
The article says it well. The GPS only benefits the dealers, and they demand that the customers pay the fees to install, maintain, and remove the devices. 60 years ago this kind of hostile, predatory bullshit would have been met with torches and pitchforks. Today people just have to eat it.
- compiler-guy 9y agoExcept the guy didn't eat it. They tried to make him, his representative disputed, and he didn't end up paying it.
- grasshopperpurp 9y agoStill, a wide gap from torches and pitchforks.
- wdewind 9y agoBecause they weren't necessary because the legal system worked just fine in this case?
- grasshopperpurp 9y agoDid I miss the part where the legal system punished the dealership?
- fmj 9y agoYou realize the situation was just resolved yesterday, right? I'm not that familiar with the Canadian legal system, but if its anything like the US its going to take more than a few days to work its way through the legal system. Just give it some time.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- javajosh 9y agoPeople don't have to eat anything they don't like. They can sue if there is a law against it; if there is no law they can lobby their legislature to pass laws against it. The problem is that petty injustices like this are hard to fight because finding other plaintiffs is hard. The only thing connecting them is the defendant, who is not interested in helping them find each other. (In general, I believe that the sum of the damage of petty injustice is far greater than the major injustices that occasionally get some action on them, and that addressing these smaller injustices is a big juicy problem for society to solve.)
- averagewall 9y agoWhat's the alternative? Don't lend money to people with a bad credit history, even if they need a car to get a job to pay their debt, like this guy seems to? What would have happened 60 years ago in that situation? You can't just keep trusting people to pay their debts when they didn't before. I made that mistake and the guy still owes me thousands of dollars which I might never see.
- cowsandmilk 9y agoThe alternative is that you build the cost of installing, maintaining, and removing the GPS into your loan terms and/or purchase price. Breaking stuff out into fees can make sense when you want to discourage certain behaviors and therefore charge a fee for them. But everyone with a loan will have the device installed, maintained during the term, and removed at the end of the term or on default. There is not a behavior to modify, so these fees are stupid nonsense.
- SilasX 9y agoThe original comment was objecting to GPS tracking/disabling on high-risk loans altogether. You're talking about the issue of the GPS removal being a separate fee, which is a different issue.
- yahna 9y agoIt's not even about lending. It's about consumer rights being eroded all over the place and losing any real concept of ownership. You buy a tesla, but oh it's not really yours to do with as you please. You agreed to terms on the software. Get fucked by a company. Can't sue anymore, mandatory arbitration clauses. Farmers can't fix their tractor anymore.
- robrenaud 9y agoWhat if the GPS remote disabler was de-risked the car loan enough that it made the difference between the guy getting the car and having no car at all? It's plausible that in an alternate world with no remote disable function, the car loan would be too risky to be worthwhile.
- TylerE 9y agoIt benefits the customer because otherwise no one is going to sell even a very cheap car to a broke-ass barely-employed with terrible credit.