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I recently moved house. I was previously living with my friend, and we had an agreement I pay sometime before the end of the month. He gave me a contract and s
by AJRF 5y ago
I recently moved house.
I was previously living with my friend, and we had an agreement I pay sometime before the end of the month. He gave me a contract and said you'll need this, just because when you go to the next place they will ask you for your previous contract. He found it online, it was boiler plate and we agreed verbally I pay him whenever during the month. We we're really good friends, and I lived there for 3 years without a single issue.
Then when I tried to rent a new place, the agent asked for lots of details, that we're then passed on to a referencing agency. I gave them all they needed. I have a maxed out credit rating on the 2 providers I can easily check in the UK. My salary was 4x the yearly rent. And the referencing company failed me.
They failed me because I didn't always pay the rent on the 20th of the month. Now granted - that is what my contract said, but it wasn't the reality of the situation.
Of course the referencing company never asked me about this and just stamped RISK on my profile. They said they couldn't override the software - which I don't believe at all.
Luckily my agent was able to call the new landlord, we all got on a call, my agent, my friend, me and the landlord.
The landlord laughed on the call and said how stupid that was, and approved my application. The call lasted 1 minute and 28 seconds.
I have a deep knot in my stomach about where all this software takes us. In the pursuit of scale, we lose all sense of nuance and humanity. I was lucky in my case, but I know others aren't. It's going to cost us dearly.
- gentleman11 5y agoAll my online dashboards I deal with for various things are buggy and inflexible. Whatever the problem is though, you can usually phone a human who can fix it. If you get rid of humans, it’s just creating a nightmare
- perlpimp 5y agoWe already know how this happens when Google cancels your account, without any warning.
- TeMPOraL 5y agoWant a sneak peek of the nightmare? Plenty of companies are now introducing conversational bots on their phone lines, desperately trying to prevent you from getting in touch with a human. And unlike traditional voice menus, pressing 0 or mashing the keypad doesn't work on them. I recently wasted a good 10 minutes trying to reach a flesh-and-blood consultant of a phone company, and I actually wanted to buy stuff from them. I just needed a human to make sure it's on the record I'm requesting a non-default service (FTTH Internet with external ONT, so that I could swap a proper router in place of the piece of garbage they normally provide). Their fancy bot actually understood what I wanted when I repeatedly said "I want to be connected with a consultant" - it kept replying, "I understand you want to talk to a consultant; before we do that, can you tell me [insert some random idiotic question]?". I almost blew a fuse there. I only persisted because for technical reasons, I couldn't go with other providers.
- rurp 5y agoThis kind of behavior should be unacceptable by companies whose services are essential, which definitely includes ISPs these days. If it's some company I can do without I'm really quick to drop them when I run into this sort of thing, even if it means going without something I want. I just hate giving money to sleezy companies.
- compsciphd 5y agoserious Q. how in the world would any credit agency know what day you are paying the rent? In the US, I don't believe any credit agency has insight into my personal bank accounts re size (I think?) or when things are paid to whom they are paid or the like (pretty sure about this). they know about my debts, but unless the landlord puts me into collection, I ca't imagine a reason for my rent appearing on the report (it's been a while since I looked at one, but dont remember seeing them)
- mlinhares 5y agoCredit agencies can 100% know when you pay you rent as the receiver can send this information to them. Credit cards also say when you pay so they can keep track of when you're delinquent or late for payments.
- frumper 5y agoI think the person you are replying to is surprised that a landlord would bother reporting that information to a credit agency. I have never heard of that, and after using some of the bigger name property management companies in my area as both a renter and landlord, it just isn't normal here.
- Broken_Hippo 5y agoCredit agencies - at least in the US - really don't know when you pay the rent, though, unless the landlord reports this. Same for payments: This is a big part of the reason you cannot simply live within your means [1] and have good credit later in life. You won't. Many companies - utilities, landlords, hospitals, and so on - simply won't report anything unless it is negative. The negatives are usually sending something to in-house collections, a collection agency, or filing a civil suit to get the money. Loans, in general, will report. This includes credit cards. Some of the buy here/pay here places won't report, though, so you get no help on your credit. [1] What I mean by "live within your means" is to simply do things like pay cash for a used car, rent an affordable place, and simply pay your bills on time.
- AJRF 5y ago
- NoOneNew 5y agoHumanity is the sickness. Only through software and bureaucracy can humans cure their ailment and achieve the proper goals. It's 2021, get with the times.
- newsclues 5y agoHumanity is fine but we’ve tolerated cancers that have gained control of the brain and are running the show.
- NoOneNew 5y agoI'm perfectly okay with AI and algorithms being used as red flaggers to help a human find out what needs immediate attention or even potential concerns. I'm 100% against algorithms and AI making the actual decisions.
- newsclues 5y agoI was talking about MBAs, but find your idea to be logical and likely. AI/human hybrids where humans make decisions based on AI processed information.
- nicbou 5y agoI am far more concerned about software automating what used to be left to human judgement. AI will judge us just the same, just faster and with no way to appeal to common sense.
- nly 5y agoWhy did you pay him on willy nilly days instead of just setting up a recurring standing order and being done with it?
- kaishiro 5y agoWhy does this matter if all parties involved were satisfied with the arrangement?
- pishpash 5y agoIt's still a risk, the new landlord may not want an unstable source of income even if the previous one did.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- hguant 5y agoBecause for certain professions income is reliable but not set to a 14 day pay cycle. Could be that OP is a freelance author and is paid depending on when stories are picked up, or is contracting for multiple employers and has an irregular payment schedule depending on their invoicing. Not everyone conforms to the same set of employment/fiscal assumptions we (here meaning "educated white collar US tech workers") may have.
- solveit 5y agoSo OP is illiquid? Then categorising OP as a risk is perfectly correct.
- AJRF 5y agoNope not illiquid (quite the jump made there on your behalf given the available information). I get paid “on or around the 20th” every month. In some cases it’s earlier (if the 20th falls on a weekend I’ll be paid the Thursday before that weekend), and on those occasions I paid the rent before the 20th. I like to manually pay bills where I can as I will then write them off in a ledger I keep, especially for rent as I tend to balance everything when I get paid. Also, and very important point here, the previous landlord, my friend, did not care at all when I paid rent as long as it was before the end of the month. Also by using Faster Payments bank to bank transfer my friend got the money same day rather than +/-3 days like direct debit. Again he didn’t care, but it was a nice benefit, right?
- IanCal 5y agoThis is why there are or are incoming (long time since I've looked at the details) rules in the EU about fully automated decision making. It may not have covered this example, but it's a good reminder of the reasons why this kind of legislation exists. https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/reform/rules-business-and-organisations/dealing-citizens/are-there-restrictions-use-automated-decision-making_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo... (edit - grammar)
- flipbrad 5y agoThe EU and UK GDPRs have these rules. In fact, they were in earlier data protection law as well. Even if you don't understand or can't use (to your advantage) the rule on automated decision-making, you can still insist that data processing be "fair" - fairness is one of the fundamental rules of EU and UK data protection law, including in the current EU and UK GDPRs. Learn your rights!!
- tobiasSoftware 5y agoI have a similar story. I got married and my wife moved to my state and was in the middle of the process of getting a license when COVID hit. She had gotten a learner's permit to practice for the driving test, and it expired but got extended due to COVID. We decided it was finally time to sort out the mess. However, to get that learner's permit required her to take a couple written tests. We were told she would have to retake those tests because the software had them down as expired. Then when she went to take the test, they told her she didn't need to because she had already taken them! Our second visit they finally sorted it out but we had to wait multiple hours while they got managers involved to assist us.
- rurp 5y agoI had a similar DMV experience. My login for the online site wasn't working so I went to reset the password, but after entering my information it said I had no account. Ok I thought, I'll create a new account. Of course when I tried that, using the same information I tried to reset the password with, it failed saying that I already had an account. There was no direct way to contact anyone on the website and the person I spoke to at the physical office told me to contact the state headquarters. After multiple calls and emails I finally got ahold of someone involved in the website... who completely blew me off. Every year when my registration came due I'd give it a few more tries, hoping to avoid a trip to the office. Finally after almost a decade I got someone to actually fix my account. Even then they didn't admit that anything was wrong on their end, they tried to gaslight me and pretend it was working this whole time. This was enraging and the only cost was some inconvenience. I'm terrified of this happening with a critical service.
- benburleson 5y agoFurther, companies already exist [https://carpe.io/ https://carpe.io/] that mine your online presence to help calculate your risk score.
- sigg3 5y agoCan't really blame software for housing policy. That's a societal issue.
- AJRF 5y agoBut the landlord (the societal arbiter) agreed in this case - the software denied me. Very much an issue of the software in this case.
- brundolf 5y agoThe issue is that policy alone is insufficient. Humans can look past the policy's rigidity when necessary; software can't.
- TeMPOraL 5y agoMore than that - policy is designed to be interpreted by humans, to be bent or overriden when needed. There are processes in place for that - from a simple handshake deal, through a written contract amendment, to the court system. When software is tasked with enforcing policies, there is no bending, no overriding, no special cases. In this way, software breaks the policies.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago> They said they couldn't override the software - which I don't believe at all. This is why I'm worried by - no, I hate - the automation of bureaucracy, governmental and business alike. Software is giving bureaucrats the perfect escape hatch. "I'm sorry, but The System won't let me". The System won't let a low-level clerk fix the mistake some algorithm made. You escalate to the manager, but The System won't let them do it either. If you're lucky, maybe they'll try to escalate to the main office on the other side of the country, someone there may or may not be able to fix the issue. If you're lucky. If you're not, the manager has a perfect, non-offensive way to refuse: "I'm sorry, The System won't let me". Here on HN, we all know how The System works. A bunch of half-assed business logic, wrapped in a bloated webapp, developed by some outsourced team of code monkeys, who on their good day mostly care about playing with the newest JavaScript fad, inflicting yet another round of suffering on thousands of employees and millions of customers. One of those broken business rules blows a fuse, your debit card gets locked out, and there's nobody within 200 kilometers of you with the access rights to clear a flag. And no, the devs who maintain The System don't have them either; they're just monkeys in the outsourcing firm that was the best at underbidding on the tender. (I'm totally not talking about my wife's bank, that managed to spontaneously block her card and on-line banking just before weekend, and took a lot of fighting to undo its own mistake.) > Luckily my agent was able to call the new landlord, we all got on a call, my agent, my friend, me and the landlord. That's why we need to have people in the loop. Empowered people. To fix the mistakes, file down the corner cases. Automation of corporate bureaucracy is trying to fit everyone into well-defined and heavily optimized flows, whether it makes sense or not. If you fall off the assembly line, the gears will crush you.
- bombcar 5y agoYou can always override the system somewhere, but nobody gets fired for doing the System.
- mathgladiator 5y agoComputer says no: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n_Ty_72Qds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n_Ty_72Qds
- deleted 5y ago
- rdgthree 5y ago(Caretaker cofounder.) I've been rejected/failed/banned by an emotionless machine a handful of times, and I don't know that anything else has made me feel quite so hopeless. I like to think a similar knot in my stomach keeps me honest. Thankfully, one of our fundamental incentives as a property management business is to get more quality tenants approved for more apartments. If there are high quality renters qualified to sign a lease and fill a vacancy, mistakenly rejecting them directly impacts a landlord's bottom line. So we're motivated beyond altruism to get this right, which is important. Along these lines (and perhaps surprisingly, relative to the automation in the post), our income verification product is decidely not fully automated. Non-salaried income reporting can be extremely tricky, and we've run into a number of renters with reliable income on a monthly basis that doesn't fit neatly onto a bi-weekly paystub. In those circumstances, we work with them manually to sort out how we can best present it to landlords on an application.
- stormbrew 5y agoThere's a lot of privilege involved in being able to navigate these kinds of social overrides, so the idea that it's good that you can get around stupid rules like this by talking to a person is.. only really true for some people. What's wrong here isn't the idea that "the rules" could be applied evenly to everyone (that's actually a good thing). It's this kind of incredibly narrow requirement on housing where landlords get to dig deep into your financials to the point of knowing when/how you paid for things. That's gross, and should not be allowed. It's almost certainly a part of many people's vicious cycles into poverty. It's also, as far as I know, a really recent development and part of the general trend towards more and more invasive surveillance in daily life.
- wanderingmind 5y agoI had the experience other way around. I did my graduate degree developing solvers and algorithms to analyze mechanical and civil structures. Heck, I even did TA for one of these grad level courses. However, when it was time to find a job, software screening cleared me but it was impossible to find a job because I could not convince the HR and hiring manager that I have the necessary experience using softwares that run such algorithms to design structures. I would happily adapt a software system that has less bias (or atleast bias normalized from different viewpoints and quantified) that having to deal with human bias that is not easily identifiable or quantifiable. Also such human bias is particularly harsh against poor and marginalized groups.
- dools 5y agoThe problem isn’t with automated management but with economic inequality. Automating the job of property management and leasing makes perfect sense, having a system where people can be unfairly evicted and wind up homeless and jobless does not. Fortunately we can fix the real problem with some relatively simple policy changes.