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I'm having a really hard time understanding this argument. Unless I have an SLA with a provider outlining penalties, they don't owe me anything if they go down

I'm having a really hard time understanding this argument. Unless I have an SLA with a provider outlining penalties, they don't owe me anything if they go down. How is this any different?

titanomachy 7y ago
You could view it as a business decision. Will they lose reputation and customers if they don't compensate for the outage? Do they expect that the long-term cost of that loss would be more than the one-time hit of paying out now? They may not have a legal/contractual obligation here, but that doesn't mean that treating their customers poorly is without consequence.
- solidasparagus 7y ago
  That one-time hit would be massive. With the benefit of hindsight, everyone is going to say they lost money by missing the perfect trades.
- topherpalmtree 7y ago
  Yeah but your business decision was to be a high stakes gambling platform to begin with
- ivalm 7y ago
  Almost certainly they cannot compensate. If average user lost $1k that's a cool $10b they would need to compensate.
0xy 7y ago
The difference is regulation. There are very few regulations and oversight on cloud compute providers, whereas an average person cannot just spin up an app and begin selling securities in a month as you can being a cloud provider. While RH's ToS does theoretically absolve them of technical issues, they are obligated to comply with 'best execution' securities mandates, no? Separately, it'd be extremely bad for business if they refused compensation. The point is moot anyway, since they're offering "case-by-case" compensation. https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/03/robinhood-outage-cause/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/03/robinhood-outage-cause/
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Robinhood will have to deal with a flood of FINRA and SEC complaints from these outages. I'm unsure how much longer FINRA will allow them their broker dealer license with a copious amount of failure in the rear view mirror. Arbitration is forced, but Robinhood is on the hook for the fees for everyone who decides to arbitrate. Robinhood users might not get anything, but they can still cause pain.
  - sitzkrieg 7y ago
    if that were true thinkorswim would have been gone years ago. heavy futures volatility killed it for days at a time
- hcknwscommenter 7y ago
  You mean "case-by-case" denial delay and obfuscation.

I'm having a really hard time understanding this argument. Unless I have an SLA with a provider outlining penalties, they don't owe me anything if they go down. How is this any different?

titanomachy 7y ago

You could view it as a business decision. Will they lose reputation and customers if they don't compensate for the outage? Do they expect that the long-term cost of that loss would be more than the one-time hit of paying out now? They may not have a legal/contractual obligation here, but that doesn't mean that treating their customers poorly is without consequence.

solidasparagus 7y ago
That one-time hit would be massive. With the benefit of hindsight, everyone is going to say they lost money by missing the perfect trades.
topherpalmtree 7y ago
Yeah but your business decision was to be a high stakes gambling platform to begin with
ivalm 7y ago
Almost certainly they cannot compensate. If average user lost $1k that's a cool $10b they would need to compensate.

0xy 7y ago

The difference is regulation. There are very few regulations and oversight on cloud compute providers, whereas an average person cannot just spin up an app and begin selling securities in a month as you can being a cloud provider. While RH's ToS does theoretically absolve them of technical issues, they are obligated to comply with 'best execution' securities mandates, no? Separately, it'd be extremely bad for business if they refused compensation. The point is moot anyway, since they're offering "case-by-case" compensation. https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/03/robinhood-outage-cause/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/03/robinhood-outage-cause/

toomuchtodo 7y ago
Robinhood will have to deal with a flood of FINRA and SEC complaints from these outages. I'm unsure how much longer FINRA will allow them their broker dealer license with a copious amount of failure in the rear view mirror. Arbitration is forced, but Robinhood is on the hook for the fees for everyone who decides to arbitrate. Robinhood users might not get anything, but they can still cause pain.
- sitzkrieg 7y ago
  if that were true thinkorswim would have been gone years ago. heavy futures volatility killed it for days at a time
hcknwscommenter 7y ago
You mean "case-by-case" denial delay and obfuscation.