7 ms·

Cat found after Lyft fiasco dragged on for days, Lyft to pay vet bills

80 points by arittr 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jrm4 3y ago
Wild. A good highlight of, to me, perhaps the most glaring bit of BS when it comes to our cell phones et al -- the idea that just about anything in association with the tech could get lost or stolen. These things are near perfect tracking devices, yet things like this happen; or even siller, Apple et al pretending that they couldn't (easily-but-at-a-loss-of-revenue) more-or-less never have any such thing as "a stolen iPhone."
- crooked-v 3y ago
  The story is about a cat, not a phone.
  - pritambaral 3y ago
    Yasmine from Lyft Support seems to have made the same mistake.
  - jrm4 3y ago
    Duh. The bigger point is, with all the tracking available via two phones, there's no reason this should take this long.
    - crooked-v 3y ago
      Tracking of what?
      - jrm4 3y ago
        The driver.
pests 3y ago
I dont understand this "Lyft team" the article keeps on mentioning. Is this a team of Lyft employees? A team of unrelated people who organized to solve the "Lyft issue"? Lyft investigators?
- arjvik 3y ago
  Their PR department
- adrianmonk 3y ago
  Yes, evidently Lyft employees. The cat owner has been posting updates on a local subreddit[1], and they said: > I also just got a call from a Lyft executive, they said they are trying to help organize a search party with their people in Austin. The owner had reached out to Lyft on social media. The story also made the local TV news, although I'm not sure if that's why Lyft offered help (partially because I don't know which of those two things happened first). --- [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/16wl1hd/need_help_lyft_driver_drove_off_with_my_pet_cat/k2xzm6x/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/16wl1hd/need_help_l...
manicennui 3y ago
The process for determining whether a driver is willing to transport a pet is asinine. Just add something to the app so the passenger can indicate that they have a pet, whether it is in a carrier, its approximate size, etc. and let the driver decide whether to take the job. These services are already borderline questionable given all of the problems and the increased prices now that they aren't trying to put taxis out of business. The moment one must deal with someone at the company to beg for a refund or deal with any of the other problems the equation becomes pretty one-sided.
- pyrophane 3y ago
  I believe Uber has a separate category of ride for this. Uber Pets or some such thing. It will only match drivers who are okay with having pets in their car.
  - Jagerbizzle 3y ago
    Yes and we use this service all the time when we bring our 35lb golden doodle with us. I’d way rather wait an extra 10 minutes up front instead of getting into a 5 minute discussion with the driver about how we won’t be putting our dog in the trunk.
    - thelastparadise 3y ago
      > we bring our 35lb golden doodle with us I think we saw you at the $100/plate restaurant yesterday with your emotional support animal.
      - dang 3y ago
        Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
sevenf0ur 3y ago
I hope Lyft fires the driver. There's no excuse for dumping someone's pet on the side of the road like trash. The barrier to entry for these apps must be real low.
- sandyarmstrong 3y ago
  > There's no excuse for dumping someone's pet on the side of the road like trash. Do we know that's what happened? It's what I assumed, but I hadn't followed this story until the article popped up on Ars, so I'm curious if there are more details.
  - petee 3y ago
    Short of it: cat in carrier in car; driver drove off, only responded hours later; cat found days later not in carrier covered in fleas. The cat did not let itself out of the car or carrier so the driver must have, as they have no other excuse.
- lacksconfidence 3y ago
  Indeed this whole story sounds like the driver is just a useless human. They dropped off the passenger at a pet hospital. I can't imagine how the driver realized there was still a cat in the car and did anything other than return to the pet hospital. I wonder what lyft's GPS data says, do they see the driver stop a few minutes after leaving the pet hospital, near where they found the cat? I looked for a couple other writeups on this story, but no one seems to know how the cat got from inside the car to anywhere else. Without any details, I'm left to assume the driver is a terrible human being and simply discarded the cat on the side of the road.
- skyyler 3y ago
  >I hope Lyft fires the driver. They aren't employees, are they? Your verbiage seems off. I know not continuing to work with an independent contractor is very similar to firing an employee, but isn't it a little different?
  - 3y ago
RangerScience 3y ago
Not to be trite and dismiss the severity of this, buuuuuuut - I never close the car door until I've got all my things. Not that I have the chance to check, but - I figure this both signals to the driver that I'm not done yet, and, somewhat prevents them from just driving away - they could, but then they'd have an open door while driving, and people generally don't do that.
- kyawzazaw 3y ago
  The passenger was going around the other way though, which makes sense as routine human behavior. The driver driving off right away also normal human behavior. But the driver not stopping after the passenger trying all sorts of banging (I know fear for self but doesn't seem like a case this way) is not normal.
  - millzlane 3y ago
    That last few Lyfts I have ridden in had drivers that didn't 100% understand the English language. It's very possible they mistook the banging action as something other than "Hey, stop! I've left something in the car."
    - purpleblue 3y ago
      > That last few Lyfts I have ridden in had drivers that didn't 100% understand the English language. It's very possible they mistook the banging action as something other than "Hey, stop! I've left something in the car." This is a horribly racist remark, basically saying that people from other countries are imbeciles with no understanding of basic human behavior. They can't speak English, but doesn't mean they have an intellectual disability and too stupid to understand what "hey stop" means.
      - nullc 3y ago
        That is going a little far, no? Different cultures have different norms. Are you confident none has a "knocking on the window means 'thanks, I'm good to go!'"?
pyrophane 3y ago
From a Gizmodo article: > Tux was located by Lyft’s own investigators days later just a little over a mile up the road from where she was last seen, as announced by the company in a tweet this morning. [1] It really sounds like the driver drove away and threw the cat out of the car as a form of retaliation. [1] https://gizmodo.com/tux-the-cat-found-after-lyft-driver-sped-off-with-her-1850891640 https://gizmodo.com/tux-the-cat-found-after-lyft-driver-sped...
happytoexplain 3y ago
Enormous caveat: Judging from this article, Lyft appears to be unwilling to give even a shadow of an idea of how the cat came to be lost outside. Like everybody else, I can only assume the driver abandoned it. That said: I feel out of touch, reading all the comments on Ars to the effect of "the driver should do some soul-searching". The harshest take I've seen is a single comment suggesting that they should be fired. But this is animal abuse. It is the theft (effectively, after they realized what happened) and discarding of a stranger's beloved pet. It might have never been found. It might have died. This is not even to mention the psychological damages. The driver should face jail time. When I think about a person doing this, I feel hatred. I can't help it, and I don't say that lightly - I can understand why people do all sorts of horrific things. But this is in the realm where I can't even imagine what it is like to have the mental framework to choose this course of action (not to say that it is more immoral than my unspoken examples of "horrific" things - of course not - but rather that it is more inexplicable, i.e. less human-seeming). Short of some extenuating circumstance that Lyft is inexplicably withholding, I have a hard time considering this behavior as anything other than a sign of simple incompatibility with society.
- refulgentis 3y ago
  The thing is the idea of a crime + jailing is a legal matter, right? Let's say driver sticks to "idk what happened" and Lyft says "he did it we kicked him off our network", and then dashcam footage shows a passenger taking the carrier. Lyft doesn't have the ability to investigate without speculating, it'd be a horrible idea for them to assert anything, though I'm 99.999% sure it was the driver too (based on the assumption a naive passenger would assume it was the driver's and it they took it, the driver would see them exit with the carrier)
  - singleshot_ 3y ago
    Why doesn’t Lyft have the ability to investigate?
    - refulgentis 3y ago
      They can't, for example, issue a subpoena forcing the driver to produce any dashcam footage.
purpleblue 3y ago
WTF is wrong with that driver? How could he be so uncaring like that? All it would take is a drive back with the cat, he must have knowingly just dumped it somewhere and drove off. He should definitely get removed from the platform for that.
briandear 3y ago
Lyft and Uber drivers aren’t typically the nicest people.
WillPostForFood 3y ago
Cat found after Lyft fiasco dragged on for days Definitely a fiasco, but it didn't really drag on for days. The cat was stolen and dumped on Saturday afternoon and was found by investigators hired by Lyft Monday at around 1AM. Less than a day and half to resolve.
- lsaferite 3y ago
  So, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday sounds like multiple days to me. If they'd mentioned the number of hours, then you'd have a point. The reality is that 'days' was the correct (even if a little disingenuous) word.
  - WillPostForFood 3y ago
    I agree, it is correct, but disingenuous. Especially when you thrown in "dragged on".

80 points by arittr 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jrm4 3y ago

Wild. A good highlight of, to me, perhaps the most glaring bit of BS when it comes to our cell phones et al -- the idea that just about anything in association with the tech could get lost or stolen. These things are near perfect tracking devices, yet things like this happen; or even siller, Apple et al pretending that they couldn't (easily-but-at-a-loss-of-revenue) more-or-less never have any such thing as "a stolen iPhone."

crooked-v 3y ago
The story is about a cat, not a phone.
- pritambaral 3y ago
  Yasmine from Lyft Support seems to have made the same mistake.
- jrm4 3y ago
  Duh. The bigger point is, with all the tracking available via two phones, there's no reason this should take this long.
  - crooked-v 3y ago
    Tracking of what?
    - jrm4 3y ago
      The driver.

pests 3y ago

I dont understand this "Lyft team" the article keeps on mentioning. Is this a team of Lyft employees? A team of unrelated people who organized to solve the "Lyft issue"? Lyft investigators?

arjvik 3y ago
Their PR department
adrianmonk 3y ago
Yes, evidently Lyft employees. The cat owner has been posting updates on a local subreddit[1], and they said: > I also just got a call from a Lyft executive, they said they are trying to help organize a search party with their people in Austin. The owner had reached out to Lyft on social media. The story also made the local TV news, although I'm not sure if that's why Lyft offered help (partially because I don't know which of those two things happened first). --- [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/16wl1hd/need_help_lyft_driver_drove_off_with_my_pet_cat/k2xzm6x/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/16wl1hd/need_help_l...

manicennui 3y ago

The process for determining whether a driver is willing to transport a pet is asinine. Just add something to the app so the passenger can indicate that they have a pet, whether it is in a carrier, its approximate size, etc. and let the driver decide whether to take the job. These services are already borderline questionable given all of the problems and the increased prices now that they aren't trying to put taxis out of business. The moment one must deal with someone at the company to beg for a refund or deal with any of the other problems the equation becomes pretty one-sided.

pyrophane 3y ago
I believe Uber has a separate category of ride for this. Uber Pets or some such thing. It will only match drivers who are okay with having pets in their car.
- Jagerbizzle 3y ago
  Yes and we use this service all the time when we bring our 35lb golden doodle with us. I’d way rather wait an extra 10 minutes up front instead of getting into a 5 minute discussion with the driver about how we won’t be putting our dog in the trunk.
  - thelastparadise 3y ago
    > we bring our 35lb golden doodle with us I think we saw you at the $100/plate restaurant yesterday with your emotional support animal.
    - dang 3y ago
      Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

sevenf0ur 3y ago

I hope Lyft fires the driver. There's no excuse for dumping someone's pet on the side of the road like trash. The barrier to entry for these apps must be real low.

sandyarmstrong 3y ago
> There's no excuse for dumping someone's pet on the side of the road like trash. Do we know that's what happened? It's what I assumed, but I hadn't followed this story until the article popped up on Ars, so I'm curious if there are more details.
- petee 3y ago
  Short of it: cat in carrier in car; driver drove off, only responded hours later; cat found days later not in carrier covered in fleas. The cat did not let itself out of the car or carrier so the driver must have, as they have no other excuse.
lacksconfidence 3y ago
Indeed this whole story sounds like the driver is just a useless human. They dropped off the passenger at a pet hospital. I can't imagine how the driver realized there was still a cat in the car and did anything other than return to the pet hospital. I wonder what lyft's GPS data says, do they see the driver stop a few minutes after leaving the pet hospital, near where they found the cat? I looked for a couple other writeups on this story, but no one seems to know how the cat got from inside the car to anywhere else. Without any details, I'm left to assume the driver is a terrible human being and simply discarded the cat on the side of the road.
skyyler 3y ago
>I hope Lyft fires the driver. They aren't employees, are they? Your verbiage seems off. I know not continuing to work with an independent contractor is very similar to firing an employee, but isn't it a little different?
- 3y ago

RangerScience 3y ago

Not to be trite and dismiss the severity of this, buuuuuuut - I never close the car door until I've got all my things. Not that I have the chance to check, but - I figure this both signals to the driver that I'm not done yet, and, somewhat prevents them from just driving away - they could, but then they'd have an open door while driving, and people generally don't do that.

kyawzazaw 3y ago
The passenger was going around the other way though, which makes sense as routine human behavior. The driver driving off right away also normal human behavior. But the driver not stopping after the passenger trying all sorts of banging (I know fear for self but doesn't seem like a case this way) is not normal.
- millzlane 3y ago
  That last few Lyfts I have ridden in had drivers that didn't 100% understand the English language. It's very possible they mistook the banging action as something other than "Hey, stop! I've left something in the car."
  - purpleblue 3y ago
    > That last few Lyfts I have ridden in had drivers that didn't 100% understand the English language. It's very possible they mistook the banging action as something other than "Hey, stop! I've left something in the car." This is a horribly racist remark, basically saying that people from other countries are imbeciles with no understanding of basic human behavior. They can't speak English, but doesn't mean they have an intellectual disability and too stupid to understand what "hey stop" means.
    - nullc 3y ago
      That is going a little far, no? Different cultures have different norms. Are you confident none has a "knocking on the window means 'thanks, I'm good to go!'"?

pyrophane 3y ago

From a Gizmodo article: > Tux was located by Lyft’s own investigators days later just a little over a mile up the road from where she was last seen, as announced by the company in a tweet this morning. [1] It really sounds like the driver drove away and threw the cat out of the car as a form of retaliation. [1] https://gizmodo.com/tux-the-cat-found-after-lyft-driver-sped-off-with-her-1850891640 https://gizmodo.com/tux-the-cat-found-after-lyft-driver-sped...

happytoexplain 3y ago

Enormous caveat: Judging from this article, Lyft appears to be unwilling to give even a shadow of an idea of how the cat came to be lost outside. Like everybody else, I can only assume the driver abandoned it. That said: I feel out of touch, reading all the comments on Ars to the effect of "the driver should do some soul-searching". The harshest take I've seen is a single comment suggesting that they should be fired. But this is animal abuse. It is the theft (effectively, after they realized what happened) and discarding of a stranger's beloved pet. It might have never been found. It might have died. This is not even to mention the psychological damages. The driver should face jail time. When I think about a person doing this, I feel hatred. I can't help it, and I don't say that lightly - I can understand why people do all sorts of horrific things. But this is in the realm where I can't even imagine what it is like to have the mental framework to choose this course of action (not to say that it is more immoral than my unspoken examples of "horrific" things - of course not - but rather that it is more inexplicable, i.e. less human-seeming). Short of some extenuating circumstance that Lyft is inexplicably withholding, I have a hard time considering this behavior as anything other than a sign of simple incompatibility with society.

refulgentis 3y ago
The thing is the idea of a crime + jailing is a legal matter, right? Let's say driver sticks to "idk what happened" and Lyft says "he did it we kicked him off our network", and then dashcam footage shows a passenger taking the carrier. Lyft doesn't have the ability to investigate without speculating, it'd be a horrible idea for them to assert anything, though I'm 99.999% sure it was the driver too (based on the assumption a naive passenger would assume it was the driver's and it they took it, the driver would see them exit with the carrier)
- singleshot_ 3y ago
  Why doesn’t Lyft have the ability to investigate?
  - refulgentis 3y ago
    They can't, for example, issue a subpoena forcing the driver to produce any dashcam footage.

purpleblue 3y ago

WTF is wrong with that driver? How could he be so uncaring like that? All it would take is a drive back with the cat, he must have knowingly just dumped it somewhere and drove off. He should definitely get removed from the platform for that.

briandear 3y ago

Lyft and Uber drivers aren’t typically the nicest people.

WillPostForFood 3y ago

Cat found after Lyft fiasco dragged on for days Definitely a fiasco, but it didn't really drag on for days. The cat was stolen and dumped on Saturday afternoon and was found by investigators hired by Lyft Monday at around 1AM. Less than a day and half to resolve.

lsaferite 3y ago
So, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday sounds like multiple days to me. If they'd mentioned the number of hours, then you'd have a point. The reality is that 'days' was the correct (even if a little disingenuous) word.
- WillPostForFood 3y ago
  I agree, it is correct, but disingenuous. Especially when you thrown in "dragged on".