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Here's a tale of how you don't run a mobility startup, unless you don't care about the safety of your customers and your public image. Berlin car sharing start
by camillomiller 6y ago
Here's a tale of how you don't run a mobility startup, unless you don't care about the safety of your customers and your public image.
Berlin car sharing startup Miles is demanding thousands of Euros from customers whose car was stolen, claiming that damages caused by thieves while driving the vehicles should be covered by their users.
Turns out, Miles has always been leasing their entire car fleet, while renting it through a white-label platform they had no control over at least until recently. As a result, they failed to implement basic industry-standard safety mechanism, such as an immobilizer, that all of their competitors have been using for years. This, despite their telematics providers all offer the immobilizer as a feature.
In one case they're threatening to sue a customer for 13,000€, during a pandemic. The customer is a bar owner, and faces bankruptcy as a result. In that specific case, Miles Mobility admitted that the car could be opened and turned on hours after the user had ended the rent.
Edit, to add some elements:
- don't miss the part about how customer support suggested not to call the police. Twice.
- it's totally unclear how they are not covered by their insurance, and how can their investors be fine with all this (lead investor is Lukasz Gadowski of Delivery Hero fame, and TeamEurope Ventures founder).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- markdown 6y ago> Here's a tale of how you don't run a mobility startup You forgot the very first lesson: pick a usable, recognisable name. "Miles" for a business like this is a terrible choice.
- shwoopdiwoop 6y agoSince they are based in Berlin I guess it’s not much of a problem?
- ThePadawan 6y agoAlso highly ironic, seeing as Uber just* means "above". * leaving aside the fact that the english usage of the term changed meaning, away from being a literal translation
- cafard 6y agoYes, in German, with an umlaut--but maybe they didn't want to be mixed up with a metal band. It has a couple of meanings in Latin, one of which coincides with Kalanick's expressed interests.
- javajosh 6y agoTheir first name was worse: "Drive By".
- Barrin92 6y agoGiven that it's a German company I'm going to guess it was supposed to be an unlucky mixture of German and English given that drive by, in German "vorbeifahren" just has the literal meaning of "passing by".
- javajosh 6y agoAnd if they go through with the lawsuit, win or lose, the man will be out thousands of euros in attorney fees, plus months of stress.
- rad_gruchalski 6y agoBut in Germany you don’t pay to the lawyers until you settle or lose in court.
- kugelblitz 6y agoNot necessarily, under certain conditions, the lawyers can get an advance on the money.
- ant6n 6y agoThe months of stress are worse than the lawyer fees.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y agoThe good news is that unlike in many other financial service disasters (e.g. with financial services), he isn't actually out the money, nor blocked from something particularly critical (I'm sure there are other carsharing services he can use). So he can at least ignore them until they actually sue.