Slashdot Mirror
High-Tech RepoMan
PlayfullyClever writes "A new gizmo is upping the odds that even the most hard-knock customer will come up with the car payment. Hooked into the ignition system, the gadget comes in a handful of versions with one common conclusion:
No pay, no start.
It's worked wonders at Norfolk's Patriot Auto Sales, where nearly every car that drives off the lot is outfitted with a PayTeck Smart Box, a system that hands over a five-digit code in exchange for each payment. Come due date, the car won't crank until the customer punches the code into a palm-size keypad wired into the dash.
I would think this "Smart Box" would get hacked way too easily, leaving car companies without their money."
And people accept this? I though the day someone introduced DRM on physical products people think they understand (unlike computers) would be the day the publik spoke out against this nonsense. If people accept "car DRM" then I guess they will accept all sorts of computer based DRM too. This is sad news.
If the company using it saved money overall and could give you a better price than the competition.
Not really. It just means that they would fall back on the existing system, that is, physical repossession. In other words, it's no worse than the current system (from their perspective), and might encourage the non-hackers (eg almost everyone) to pay up.
This is probably less expensive than having to go out and repo cars for late payments which usually results in exorbitant (300-500 dollars) charges in order to get the car back in addition to making all the late payments. At least this way, you call up, do an electronic payment and you can get your car back right away without being extorted for repo fees.
Repo men, whatever you think about their profession, risk their lives daily in order to prevent auto theft, which in a way is what failing to pay car payments is.
It isn't even like loan companies send out the repo man after your first failure to pay. You typically get several months of haggling and pleading before the loan company has no other alternative but to send someone out to repossess the automobile. And the repo man is frequently in danger from people who don't have enough money to pay the loan companies but usually enough to buy bullets.
Using a technical measure to disable cars, making them useless to the owner, is a great idea. It works with drunk drivers and car thieves. Just kill the engine and the car isn't going anywhere. The loan company can then repossess the car at their leisure, along with adding extra pressure on the defaulting "owner" to pay.
The real bottom line is not to over-extend your finances. Try to buy large items like cars with cash. The worst monetary investment you can make is to take out a loan to pay for a car you can't afford.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Security-expert-turned-law-prof Nick Szabo predicted this kind of thing many years ago. He called it a Smart Contract. The idea was to use technology to make contracts self-enforcing. Like many of Nick's ideas, he was and is way ahead of his time. These kinds of things are inevitable.
Most of the people who are not making payments are poor people who cant afford to do so or con artists looking for a free ride (pun intended), not automotive electrical engineers who can bypass the elecronic ignition cutoff that this thing must be hooked to.
.. ah yes, gamers you know the words, say them wtih me...
Could the experienced person tinker with this and get away with the car? Perhaps. I think its a good system. Its meant to be more of a pain in the ass than anything. I know of some dealers who install GPS signals into the cars they sell to their "good credit-bad-credit-no-credit-come-one-come-all" customers. No pay, they repo the car. The reciever is hidden in some crazy place like behind the dash so the customer will never find it.
Also remember that if the do go delinquent on their payments, and the dealer files the car as stolen... they are then commiting
GRAND THEFT AUTO.
Before we get too far into the comments going on and on about how we wouldn't accept these in our cars and yadda yadda, we have to stop and remember one thing.
For the majority of people, you wouldn't need a system like this. Why? Because the majority of people, especially here, have reputable credit and can get a car loan, or have cash on hand to put a significant amount down.
I have a good friend who works in auto sales, and things in the used car business have become so bad, in terms of financing, that they were getting customers on the lot, essentially 'sold' them the car, and then couldn't get any banks to finance them. So what were they left doing? Financing the sale themselves.
Basically, you agree to pay the car dealership directly, instead of a bank. This puts a lot of pressure on the dealership, because instead of getting, say $12,000 upfront, in one payment from a bank, they are now getting monthly payments of $250 for the next 5 years or so. In doing this, they are really hanging their rear out, because if that customer makes two payments, and disapears off the face of the earth, that dealership has no way of tracking them, or their car, down.
That's why these systems are catching on so quickly, not as another form of 'big brother', but as an alternative for someone out there who needs a car, and can make payments, but can't get financed through a bank. This way, a dealership can move cars off their lot, and still protect their investment.
If you don't want a system like this in your car, the solution is simple, keep good credit. If you do that, then you'll be able to get bank financing, not get ripped off by a car dealership, and don't have to worry about 'big brother' in the passanger seat.
No man is an island, But if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie them together, they make a pretty good raft.
Actually, quite a lot of the people who have bad credit _know_ how to bypass this sort of thing.
You don't ask rich people to help you fix your car. Rich people who can fix cars are called "mechanics" and "shop owners", and won't help you for a twelve pack. Poor people fix their own cars, or junk 'em and buy another one for $300.
Now, bad with credit != poor, but bad with credit != stupid, either. And poor != stupid as well. But most people I know who are handy with a wrench fall below the poverty line.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
I was in the navy and yes I was stationed in Norfolk, VA. Most of these used car dealerships in Norfolk area are some of the most sleazy joints I have ever encountered. I have seen some of them sell poor newbie sailors crap like a 500 dollar beat up pinto for tens of thousands of dollars. Hell I used to be a mechanic in the area and some of the patch jobs I did on engines and stuff for some of these sleazy dealerships was simply scary. They used to bring me stuff that had rings so shot that the cars looked like a mosquito fogger going down the road. I would swap out the oil with some good ole synthetic (does not smoke when burning) and shoot it down the road. The dealership would sell it to some fool with a 30 day warranty on the engine and laugh their way to the bank.
The state could step up and do something about it by applying reasonable intrest rate caps like a bunch of states do.
Got Code?
You can point till the cows come home. Legally your still wrong.
Umm, bullshit. Do you not know what a Lien is? To quote: "In U.S. law, lien is the broadest term for any sort of charge or encumbrance against an item of property that secures the payment of a debt or performance of some other obligation."
A lien tells somebody who might be looking to buy your property that somebody else has a security interest in it. This does not mean that you don't own the property. It will probably prevent you from transferring ownership of that property until that lien is satisfied but it does not change the fact that you own that property yourself.
In fact, even if the property is transferred the lien will usually survive and the new owner has to deal with it. A good example would be a house that was seized by the government for taxes that still had a mortgage against it. If you buy that house at government auction you are going to have to come to terms with the bank that holds the lien against it.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Only on Slashdot could I find out about an article like this, about a device that only affects people who do NOT make their contracted car payment, and then find comment after comment after comment talking about how horrible this is. I guess its just terrible the way those bad old car lots expect people to actually follow their agreement and *pay* for their car.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
I seem to be posting this a lot, but I have a buy-here, pay-here car lot and I have not lost a SINGLE customer because of installing starter interrupt devices! Zero! ZILCH! ABSOLUTELY NONE! Remember, the customers that must have these installed have sub-prime credit! If someone walked on my lot, wanted my '99 Mustang GT, and they had $3,000 down and a 600 beacon, THEY'RE GETTING THE CAR! If they request no device installed, FINE! It won't be installed!
Long time lurker here... I think I am qualified as an expert, having come from a family of car salesmen. I have been actively involved in the new and used car business for over 20 years. I currently work as internet sales manager at a medium sized Big 3 dealership. Like all other dealerships, we regularly run "come one, come all" types of sales. While these sales bring out several people with strong credit, it also drags in the absolute dregs of society. We make our living selling cars. Most of these scumbags are simply societal misfits. They are not people with "no credit". There are people with abysmal credit. We see Transunion scores under 500 on a regular basis. These people could not finance a pack of chewing gum without a 700+ score co-buyer. So where does that leave them? Why at the "b" lot "buy here-pay here" operation. I have a personal friend that is involved in this business. He is a small businessman with limited resources. He does not carry a large inventory, but the cars he does have are decent. He does his best to make sure that the cars he sells are in good running order, as he knows that if the car isn't running, the customer is not going to be paying. He charges exhorbitant interest rates, but he is the one taking all the risk. If the customer skips town with the car, he has the expense of trying to reclaim it. Most of his customers are pretty faithful in paying, but that is only because he is very selective about who he sells to. Why people think that profit is some kind of crime in the car business is beyond me. Nobody faults the factory worker building the car for pushing for bigger money and benefits. There is no union for salespeople in the car biz. Most dealers offer pretty poor benefit packages. This device is being used successfully by several dealers. They have invested in technology to protect their financial interests. How is this different than a tech guy investing in quality software to protect their property?
> You know what? A lot of poor people deserve it, so fuck 'em.
Now I take it you're not poor at the moment. I'm not poor at the moment. I'm in college, as it happens. If I walk around campus on a Friday (or even Thursday or Wednesday these days) night, what do I see? Hundreds of spoiled rich frat boys partying it up and basically trashing the campus area, leaving garbage all over the place, vandalizing property (I've had the side mirrors kicked off my car, and someone attempted to steal my bike, which was locked to itself because there was no space in the rack; this attempt apparently led to the lock getting stuck in the spokes, hopefully throwing the would-be thief painfully to the ground). When I arrive at class, these people walk in and talk through the lecture about how they're going to spend the evening at bar crawls, or how they need to restore the prestige of their fraternity by increasing the level of hazing (I literally heard this conversation directly behind me in an engineering class, it was surreal). They pass their classes because they have files at the frat of old homework assignments that they copy. They get their college degree and get well-paying jobs, even if they slacked their way through; nobody cares because the jobs don't really require much intelligence anyway. They might get promoted into management through some kind of good-old-boy-ish network that they're in because they have a college degree and fit into the culture (where "the culture" == "yay conspicuous consumption" + "yay to sexism and classism with a subtle hint of racism sometimes" + "yay manipulative personalities and objectification"). These kids are quite rich; they wear the latest fashionable clothing and clearly they aren't paying a cent towards their education (if they were they wouldn't have time for all the barcrawls and hazing).
What I said is not true of everyone in any particular situation; there are plenty of good people with money, there are plenty of good people in the Greek system. But if a lot of poor people deserve to be poor, then there are also a lot of rich people that deserve it just as much. They're just lucky enough to have their future well-being handed to them no matter how much they choose to screw around.