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If I got one of these I'd pay it and never, ever, ever stay at any hotel owned by the entity again. Being that I spend $25k-50k a year on hotels, their loss is

• vintermann 1y ago
  Often I wonder if some scammers (and this is totally a scam) basically pay a premium to feel like they've outsmarted people, or for the smirking satisfaction that their victims can't do anything about it. Some scams are so much work for so little gain, or so obviously counterproductive in anything but the short term, that it seems like that.
  • DudeOpotomus 1y ago
    No, it's just stupidity and myopia. Like those screens that replaced glass beverage cases in liquor stores a few years ago. Not one customer liked them. Not one customer wanted them and the results were beyond terrible. People literally stopped buying. But people actually invested millions into that company and other people actually bought their products and thought "gee this is great". Imagine how disconnected you have to be from your customers to make such an investment and/or installation for a few bucks? Stupid is as stupid does...
    • egypturnash 1y ago
      I seem to recall hearing that there was a person high up in the management of at least one of the store chains that did this who had a ton of financial interest in the company that made those door-screens.
      • kirubakaran 1y ago
        Whenever some decision doesn't make sense, you can count on corruption (self-dealing, nepotism, kick-backs, or plain old embezzlement). Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by grift.
    • SoftTalker 1y ago
      Maybe I don't go to liquor stores often enough but I can't imagine what you are talking about.
      • archagon 1y ago
        https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/03/12/business/walgreens-freezer-screens https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/03/12/business/walgreens-freeze...
        • SoftTalker 1y ago
          LOL. Screens as in video. I was imagining wire mesh. I guess that shows my age. But no, I have not seen the coolers with video screens for doors anywhere around here either.
        • eszed 1y ago
          LOL! I'd never seen those, either. Must not be a priority in my region, or I haven't been to a Walgreens recently. But, here's the reason: > front-facing sensors used to anonymously track shoppers interacting with the platform From my (albeit limited) experience with tech platforms like this, it probably is anonymous - but they're scary good at identifying your age and gender, and what you look at before you buy. That's the data they're immediately after. Of course, they've probably already built a "shadow" profile of you based on your mobile phone identity, so they could cross-reference that if they cared to, and then a loyalty profile they could connect to that. So, yeah... The fridge data is technically anonymous, but, you know, data can be connected together in all sorts of ways. Privacy is dead.
    • badc0ffee 1y ago
      > Like those screens that replaced glass beverage cases in liquor stores a few years ago. The what now?
    • mindslight 1y ago
      For what it's worth, when I run into trash like that, I just open the door(s) and eave/prop them open while I browse. The entire point of having glass was so that people could browse without having to open the door, but apparently that doesn't matter to them any more.
• NewJazz 1y ago
  The hotel chain probably had no input into the decision to add this. Hyatt is just a franchise for many hotels. Call up /email the chain's corporate folks and tell them about the charge and that you'll not stay in their chain of hotels unless they can guarantee the devices are banned from the franchise. If you really spend that much on hotels every year your demand would at least raise some eyebrows.
  • deleted 1y ago
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• zeroonetwothree 1y ago
  It’s tricky because the chains (like “Hyatt”) don’t actually own any hotels. They are generally owned by local ownership groups and it can be hard to figure out the real owner. That’s also why one Hyatt could be 5/5 and another 1/5. The chains don’t do a great job of quality control.
  • hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
    That's a cop out. What's the point of a brand if quality control is all over the place? Most McDonald's are franchises, and they famously give very similar experiences wherever you are. Not identical, obviously, but a Big Mac is a Big Mac. This is absolutely on Hyatt corporate. They should have policies regulating these types of detection systems.
    • dhalsten 1y ago
      I agree that Hyatt needs to take some responsibility, but not all franchises are equal, e.g. prior to inflation it was ~1-2M USD investment average to startup a McDonalds, you still must follow their rules, and it’s not hands-off.
    • inetknght 1y ago
      > What's the point of a brand if quality control is all over the place? Extracting rents comes in all shapes and sizes.
      • lblume 1y ago
        But in that case brand association is an empty signal. As a paying customer, I can't meaningfully infer anything from it, and would thus best disregard it entirely.
        • asdff 1y ago
          They lock you in mostly with loyalty incentives vs brand recognition. Ask any of your friends who travels for work frequently where they stay and why. The answer always has to do with the points on offer not the experience which is more or less the same across most hotels and pricepoints until you reach a very very high pricepoint.
• photonthug 1y ago
  > Without brand loyalty, hotels suffer. Executive decision makers won't though. It's clear that consolidation in many sectors has gotten to the point that consumer power is an absolute joke and "ignore them, abuse them, and just defraud them" is a standard business model. Even if there's litigation.. this crap just overwhelms services so that basically the public pays twice. Witness the situation where various attorney generals have said that Facebook outsources customer support to the taxpayer when the attitude for handling everything is simply "don't like it? so sue us, good luck" For anything smaller than Facebook though, it's hard to understand why brands/investors/business owners tolerate their decision makers encouraging wild abuse and short-term thinking like this, knowing that after brand loyalty is destroyed the Hyatt leadership will still get a bonus and fail upwards to another position at another company after claiming they helped to "modernize" a legacy brand. Is the thinking just that destroying everything is fine, because investors in the know will all exit before a crash and leave someone else holding the bag? With leadership and investors taking this attitude, I think it's natural that more and more workers get onboard with their own petty exploitation and whatever sabotage they can manage (hanging up on customers, quiet-quitting to defraud their bosses, etc). And that's how/why the social contract is just broken now at almost every level.
  • DudeOpotomus 1y ago
    This is what actually kills brands. The funny thing is our collective memory is short, so a brand killed by poor product and bad decisions is often revitalized by PE a few years later, because of brand recognition.
    • photonthug 1y ago
      Actually I think the public tends to generalize their complaints/injuries and act in the most spiteful ways that are available to them. For example, decades of bad experiences at the DMV translates into cries that we should defund the post-office, NSF, etc, no matter how irrational that is. But capital has a playbook now that's pretty effective at dodging this kind of backlash, like the "advertising without signal" thing that's also on the front page right now is pointing out. That article mentions "Disposable brand identities" which does seem relevant here even if that piece is mainly talking about the relationship between amazon/manufacturers/consumers. Part of what PE is accomplishing is brand/liability laundering, but brands head in this direction anyway before they fail. Consumers can't typically look at list of 10-20 "different" hotel brands and really tell which are under the same umbrella. And all this is kind of assuming consumer choice exists and is still meaningful, but when you need a hotel you need a hotel. If Hyatt gets away with this abuse, every hotel will do it soon, and capital can just wait out any boycott.
• b112 1y ago
  I wonder if the company making the detectors, pitched them on a free install. They sound networked, so what if they only get cash, every time there is a hit? So the hotel is getting 1/2. And with contracts like these, come with hefty fines if people back out. Even if the hotel now realises it's too sensitive, lots of false positives, the hotel now has to prove it, or pay big. If the hotel refunds the guest, the hotel still owes the fee! Quite the trap for the hotel.
  • mrandish 1y ago
    Sounds similar to the red light traffic camera revenue sharing scam. Free or discounted install and then revenue share. Both the supplier and location owner have every incentive to trigger false positives to make more money. In both cases this 'business model' is exploiting asymmetry in power dynamics. Also, in both cases it's subverting and abusing a cost-effective technology which, if used appropriately, could be beneficial and all-around positive. If it was really about stopping illicit smoking in hotels, preventing annoying other guests with the smell and potential extra cleaning, the front desk would just call the room and say they got an alert on the smoke detector and will have to send someone up if it triggers again. If people are smoking/vaping, they'll very likely stop. Problem solved. Instead they silently stick a charge on the bill received at check out, proving what they really care about. Because of this scummy money-grabbing misuse of the tech, it will get a terrible reputation and consumer push back like boycotts, lawsuits, regulation or banning will eventually lead to it being restricted even for appropriate, beneficial applications. The same thing happened with red light traffic cameras. My city banned them without ever adopting them because of the abusive scams happening in other cities. It's sad because when someone blows through a red light at high speed long after the light changed to red, it can kill people. Fortunately, that's quite rare but it does happen. Since the potentially life-saving use was too rare to be a big revenue opportunity, those cameras became all about catching someone trying to slide through a yellow light a quarter second after it turned to red, which happens more frequently (especially when the company shortened the yellow light time) but is also almost never a serious risk of injuring anyone since cross traffic is still stopped or not in the intersection yet. And now we lost the potentially life-saving beneficial application due to some assholes trying to scam people.
• HWR_14 1y ago
  It's not myopia. The hotel owner only owns one or two locations. They damage the national brand but they make more money for themselves. As long as new people loyal to Hyatt keep coming to their location, they are fine. Of course, that's why Hyatt imposes standards on their hotels to keep the name.
  • NewJazz 1y ago
    And those standards always need updating to keep up with social norms, new technologies, consumer expectations, et cetera. Hence my recommendation to start by communicating with Hyatt or whatever franchise.
• munsonbh 1y ago
  They undoubtedly wouldn’t charge someone like you. They would overcharge people who do not have an existing or potentially lucrative relationship with them, like families in town for a wedding.