In a normal market system, you'd think a business that routines tries to fraudulently charge their guests would be punished but either by the government or the customer but due to consolidation or just the total acquiescence of customers to this kind of abuse it's just business as usual.
Good grief! We are actually going to have a shit list now:
Hertz, Hyatt are the first two entries in this historic development..
Consumer protections are not like in other places
Rest markets itself as a way to "unlock a new revenue stream"
Leave it to the bean counters to see this as an opportunity to generate new revenue streams from customers while simultaneously pissing them off.
This type of algorithmic grift is transparent to judges and people with common sense, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest at or outside of the federal level through regulators like the FTC to prevent it, just curtail certain circumstances.
Before we call it enshittification of the Hyatt brand as a whole, I am kinda curious for more details.
I would be very surprised if this happened on places like the Andaz or Park Hyatt but would not be surprised if it was like at a House or Place.
"Computer says pay me $$$"
"Why"
"AI demands it!"
Commercial fire sensors do have plastic caps which block airflow without triggering an alarm. They’re designed to be kept on during construction until each sensor is commissioned.
Also...
Man, I really hate checking into a hotel room and getting hit with that unmistakable “someone vaped in here” smell.
It was so nice traveling in parts of Asia where vaping is banned. I’d honestly rather deal with cigarette smoke outside, where I expect it, than that overly sweet, plasticky vape air inside. It’s like someone boiled a Jolly Rancher in a humidifier.
Obviously hotels should not use these unless there is some higher accuracy appeals process, but as a nonsmoker I do wish that there were universal and near certain fines for smoking indoors.
https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g60763-d93520-r9...
Look at this review from the "Park Central" in NY. The Management responded that the person agreed to this policy so it's tough luck:
> Thank you for sharing your feedback. It's concerning to hear about the experience you described. Park Central Hotel New York is dedicated to maintaining a smoke-free environment for all our guests. As per our website, smoking tobacco, pipes, vapes, e-cigarettes and marijuana are strictly prohibited within the hotel. NoiseAware is a smart device that allows hotel management to respond to smoking events without disrupting your stay. You hereby agree and consent to the use of such sensor in your room and acknowledge and agree that it is 100% privacy compliant and required by the hotel. By acknowledging the foregoing, you agree to waive any future claims related to the presence of the sensor in a room you may book. Tampering with the sensor is strictly prohibited. A non-refundable $500 smoking fee will apply should a smoking event occur inside the hotel guestroom. We regret that this policy did not meet your expectations. The consistency in handling such situations is important to us, and your experience will be reviewed to improve our protocols.
Or if there is a prolific smoking guest can they set off detections in neighboring rooms? Hmm
Also this seems like any excuse for hotel management to avoid having real interactions conversations with the cleaning staff who are perfectly competent to discover if a room has been contaminated by smoke.
I could probably get away with smoking in the room for the day or two after they clean. Not that I would - I stay at hotels that have covered smoking areas outside and I enjoy the company I meet.
In my building all flats have one. It gets triggered by workers cutting a hole in the wall or people cooking. We covered it when we had the fog machine for Halloween because that surely would have triggered it. Almost every time it went off it was a false alarm.
Which is also the second thing. It should never be silent. If it detects it needs to report audible and someone should come to your room. What happens if there is smoke because of a fire? We always had FD coming to our flat.
Algorithmic might sound smart but in the end it might just a boy that cries wolf.
A few comments claim the sensors can be triggers by non-smoking events such as hairspray, nail polish remover, perfume...
If that is accurate it seems to me one could exploit that sensor flaw by purposefully triggering a false positives with some benign action - and video record doing so - perhaps a couple of times.
Then if and when smoking is alleged, obtain a log of the alleged event times, then provide video evidence that debunks at least one alleged smoking event.
A relatively small number of activists could probably create a viral nightmare for Hyatt and anyone else implementing this system.
Obviously this is just the latest such scam. Accuse people of smoking, refuse to show them the evidence, and charge them $500 to be split between the hotel and the sensor company.
Reminds me of the UK post office scandal where hundreds of innocent people went to prison because of software errors when the powers that be insisted the software was perfect and no auditing was possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
Yet again we have normies believing marketing bullshit that says "our proprietary algorithms are foolproof." We need laws that say any algorithm that can accuse a person of wrongdoing must be auditable and if it harms innocent people, the CEO of the company is both civilly and criminally liable.
Taken at face value, you couldn't even use a pocket calculator to back up a management decision.
I predict that Rest will merge with Axon so that after they get a false positive in your room, a cop can barge in and taser you on body cam.
If Hyatt refuses to address this scam after being made aware of it, that's a different story, but for now this is a story about specific hotel properties' wrongdoing.
Here in the US, however, 5 hotel brands have been allowed to control over 70% of hotel rooms nationwide. This means a dispute with even one will cause big problems for business travelers.
Same thing with Ticketmaster/Live Nation, Google, Amazon, etc.
This extreme consolidation of market power seems to me like a degenerate form of capitalism that breaks my libertarian idealism.
So to summarize:
- Massive unexpected up-charge. - Credit card gets charged before you even click the final confirmation button. - Doubtful if you even get a reservation.
Stay away from these sites, and others like them, at all cost.
In case you wonder how my adventure ended: they added $800 to a $1600 reservation. I complained, and was eventually told that they would refund me, _if_ I did not do a charge-back on my credit card. A few days later they, amazingly, kept their word, so I didn't lose any money.
I don't think this thing has a smoke detector though?
Maybe more relevant would be oversize/overweight baggage fees. Where there is some fine print about baggage policy and you may find yourself paying expensive fees at the gate because you didn't realize the weight limit included your handbag or that the allowed dimensions are nonstandard.
A hotel charging $500 for smoking that didn't happen is worse than all of that, it is just fraud. Personal ticket prices is just business, controversial, but they are not trying to trick you. The fine print is bad, but at least, you can avoid the fees by being careful. Here, you have no choice but to pay and maybe hope to get your money back by filing a complain.
https://www.alternativeairlines.com/fare-basis-codes-explain...
Of course as computers have gotten more sophisticated, the machine learning/revenue optimization rules have too.
For instance it costs less for me to fly Delta from MCO (Orlando) -> ATL -> SJO (San Jose Costa Rica) than it does our friends to fly from ATL -> SJO when we are both flying the same second leg.
There are other tricks to like booking a Delta flight via AirFrance or Virgin Airlines domestically cheaper.
That makes no sense. I am the manager. I make the decision. The calculator gives me some numbers but I am still the manager, still the decision maker, and I can use any tools appropriate to inform my decisions. Even a calculator. Taken at face value, that's what it says. That the calculator doesn't make the management decision; a person does.
It's a content-free sentence. There is nothing special about a computer in that regard. It's a tool... a tool wielded by a human somewhere. Anyone who tries to blame "the computer" should not be allowed to do so, and it's weird that it ever occurred to anyone to try that.
Otherwise, I'd love to be able to preemptively and without any prior communication charge (way in excess of the room rate, of course!) hotels for broken appliances, poor cleanliness etc., and put the burden of proof that everything was fine on them.
obviously if you give them cash deposit there's not much you can do, but with a credit card you can easily dispute the transaction
I always pay my bills in full and on time, but if a merchant tries giving me the run around I will simply dispute the transaction and then the pain moves entirely to them
with a credit card the power imbalance is entirely in the consumer's favour
I'd really like to see some service that facilitates you opting out of a class action, and then comes in later representing you for your own individual case (at scale) based on the implicit admission of wrongdoing from the settlement plus documenting actual damages.
Another pillar of the problem is the corpos having excepted themselves from basic libel/slander laws through the "Fair" Credit Reporting Act. The common response should be one round of "piss off, prove it", with then a high barrier for the fraudster to substantiate such a debt in a court of law. Instead people are put on the defensive by the thought of such lies going on their permanent surveillance records, and perhaps becoming some kind of problem in the future.
Yes, don't go to them.
Love,
Canada
as if they need more incentives to surveil everything
(Yes, I'm being obtuse. In response to a simplistically obtuse point)
[Rest] markets itself as a way to "unlock a new revenue stream"
with the help of a "robust algorithm" for detecting smoking.
The awesome thing about black-box algorithms is they can't be challenged when they're wrong. And errors reliably favor the institution that manages (and profits from) them.
"Is it worth the investment?
Apparently there are way more people smoking than we thought there are or the sensor just generates a lot of false positives.
The language they are using all over the site is very interesting though, see here an example:
From how it works:
"Automatically charge
If smoking is detected, your staff gets notified, simplifying the process of charging smoking fees."
With a system with false positives, it makes total sense to use real time notifications to staff to go and check what's going on, that would be legit, but then on top saying that you automatically charge?
It almost feels like they are selling a way to fraud to their customers while covering themselves against any litigation by using the right copy in there to support that it's the responsibility of the Hotel staff to go and check in real time that the violation is actually happening.
Well that sort of says everything we'd want to know. They charged the customer $500, like they'll need to tear up the room and bring in a large team to clean everything. But they never bothered with that because they know it's a scam, and the company selling these knows exactly how their customers will use these.
Unsurprisingly, the customers just love this new technology and can't get enough of it:
(review from https://www.restsensor.com)
> "Rest’s in-room smoking detection service has helped us capture a lucrative ancillary revenue stream while also improving our guest experience." Kirsten Snyder, Asset Manager, Woodbine
[1] https://woodbinedevelopment.com/woodbinedevelopment.com/our-...
At least this chain mentions using lubrication while shafting its customers.
They removed the charges if you checked the bill and objected at checkout. But how many people don't look? I'm sure it generated enough revenue to pay for the sensors. No one is going to say it out loud, but false positives are the point.
In fact, whoever does this will lose my business ahead of time as I will never stay at any hotel that uses this service. A few minutes on Tripadvisor and you'll know.
Such incredible business myopia. Hotels are one of the few businesses that loyalty is not only a boon, but a necessity for survival. Without brand loyalty, hotels suffer.
The thing is that the cameras are supposed to make the public safer. That’s what they are meant to do. But they’re so expensive that you need a certain number of tickets to offset them (but whoever heard of public safety being a profit center instead of a loss leader?).
It’s a proven fact that short yellows lead to more accidents. So these red light cameras make everyone less safe. Public endangerment to try to balance a budget.
We should not be involving private market players as partners in 'investments' with public organizations tasked with public good, or else we get misaligned incentives since the partners both expect different types of returns.
So it's not just a $500 scam, it's also a privacy issue. I had no idea these audio sensors were even a thing.
Dunno about the legality of refusing to open the door, but it does sound like a way to get banned from a hotel chain.
Edit:
Sorry, that’s from the wrong point of view but I don’t think the answer changes. It seems Rest will have to change a lot of their marketing language to really avoid liability but if someone is actually caught smoking then it’s not likely to manifest.
I wonder if they could legally separate this from any real-world activities completely? During check-in, put a clause in the contract "if our partner company says so, you have to pay $500 extra. By signing, you agree to that" - without any reference to smoking at all.
I hope this wouldn't be legal, but it sounds like it could be.
“Save a few pennies by destroying trust.”
The Hyatt franchise needs to shut this down ASAP. Most hotels are independently operated or operated by franchise groups. Not many hotel brands actually own the hotels and essentially act as marketing firms.
If I were to give this the “never assign malice to that which can be adequately explained by incompetence” benefit of the doubt, I think some bozo hotel manager got sold this innovative “solution” and implemented it without thinking much about it. Then they got their revenue and probably thought to themselves “Wow I knew the smoking problem was bad but I didn’t know it was this bad!!”
Meanwhile they are slow rolling the death of their location by tainting guest reviews, which are the lifeblood by which you justify your room rates.
Since then I realized that I won’t always be able to do a chargeback, and I am much more cautious with vendors.
I think these once in-a-decade or more events can be swallowed. But wouldn't be happy with a regular occurrence.
they're not allowed to make up charges wherever they feel like it just because they have your card details
the payment doesn't settle for something like 6 months anyway
It contains an air particulates detector and a CO2 detector, plus humidity, temperature, and noise and light sensors. They're probably looking for particulates and CO2 ramp up, hence the "algorithm". It's not clear how accurate this is, but it's not mysterious.
There's a version sold to schools that adds "bullying detector" capability. This adds detection of "keyword calls for help, loud sounds, and gunshots."
[1] https://fobsin.com/products/mountable-air-quality-vape-detec...
(RIP, EPA.)
I don't know... that's maybe detectable? You'd need a pretty sensitive CO2 sensor and to be tying it to other signs to avoid "someone else walked into and out of the room"... but in principle...
Monetizing fire safety. Lovely.
Appears this company rebranded from NoiseAware. More tech to monitor "valued" guests...this time on noise levels
I don't think I'm in favor of black box smoking detectors either. I'd guess housekeeping reporting the room for smoking during cleaning and a 2nd person verifying would be enough to bill a smoking fee and that would drive compliance. Sometimes you miss a room, and customers complain, and you deal with it then. Better than the sensors said X and we didn't follow up with our noses.
Agreed.
An environment of increasing interest rates exacerbates this.
1) Always, always look over the receipts of your expenses.
2) When possible, use a dedicated 'travel' credit card for these sorts of things to minimize impact on other accounts.
3) Line out that charge, photograph the receipt, and offer to pay only for the rest of the bill. If that's not acceptable, you can walk away or pay it and then immediately issue a fraud alert on the account. Not a dispute, but a fraud alert.
4) With few exceptions, credit card providers is the U.S. will not process a dispute on the account until the transaction is no longer "pending". That usually takes 2-3 business days.
5) Use that 2-3 day window to communicate with hotel management regarding this issue.
6) If the hotel will not budge, flag the charge as 'fraud'. Upload a photograph of your lined-out receipt to your credit card provider. Never use that particular hotel again.
7) If you don't have privacy concerns, share it on social media.
I haven't noticed any long-term effects on rooms with frequent vaping though
"We can come put tape on the sensors."
"What sensors?"
"There are sensors under the bed."
"Oh, so you already know about this problem but haven't fixed it. Thanks, please don't send anyone."
I then looked under the bed and sure enough there was a motion detector on each side. I removed these from their brackets and let them dangle facing the floor instead of outward. This blinded them and solved the problem. I guess they were malfunctioning or they were able to detect motion above the bed via reflections.
The next day I reported this to the front desk, who were unsympathetic and unhelpful. They told me it was for my own safety. Apparently at other hotels I have just been incredibly lucky not to have fallen down when getting out of bed.
I will not stay at a W hotel again unless I can confirm in advance that they do not have motion detectors under the bed which spuriously turn the lights on at night. Maybe I'll add Hyatt to the no-go list.
The number of bright screens on random "smart" controls that I'm trying very hard to hide before sleeping are too much.
I want to call this "responsibility laundering". You get money, but wash away any responsibility, thus cleaning it.
The app even tracks the whole fee amount in-app being collected. "Net charge", "adjusted charge amount" reasons of "guest complaint"...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_tokenization
Asset tokenization refers to the process of converting rights to a real-world asset into a digital token on a blockchain or distributed ledger. These tokens represent ownership, rights, or claims on tangible or intangible assets and can be traded or transferred on digital platforms.
> SEC.. considering changes that would promote tokenization, including an innovation exception that would allow for new trading methods and provide targeted relief to support the development of a tokenized securities ecosystem .. Atkins said the movement of assets onchain is inevitable, stating: “If it can be tokenized, it will be tokenized.”
The correct use case is "We seem to have a problem with red light runners at this intersection, so let's find out why by temporarily deploying red light cameras here."
I've seen this done and the city in question found out. They were able to make some changes to the light timing and at several intersections, that caused the amount of red light runners to drastically drop. (It was stuff like the left turn light not turning green when the straight forward light did).
One reckless endangerment in the first degree charge per every car passing through such an intersection. That is a class D felony, with a maximum penalty of 5-10 years prison time. Per car.
I can write an "algorithm" that uses hotel data to determine if you should be charged a penalty. Now we can't question it because it was an algorithm.
> def charge_extra(data): return True
> Rest constantly monitors room air quality, using a proprietary algorithm to pinpoint any tobacco, marijuana, or nicotine presence.
So a smoke detector with an "algorithm" attached. Uh huh. How does that algorithm work?
> By analyzing various factors and patterns[...]
Some cutting edge shit here!
And as for accuracy, they don't even pretend to make promises about "99.99% success rates" or anything. This is the most detailed they get:
> Q: Is it accurate?
> A: Our sophisticated smoking detection algorithm has been tested for accuracy in real-world scenarios, backed by years of development, and tens of thousands of hours of rigorous testing and validation.
CO2 sensors are generally pretty accurate, but PM2.5 sensors are notoriously prone to false spikes usually caused by dust in or around the sensor: https://www.reddit.com/r/Awair/comments/10r1uyo/inaccurate_p... or https://forum.airgradient.com/t/unusual-pm2-5-readings-on-ne... or https://community.purpleair.com/t/what-to-do-about-incorrect...
My guess is it's likely a sensor in a hotel room accumulates dust over time, leading to high PM2.5 measurements maybe when something (eg. suitcase) bumps against the case, shaking the accumulated dust and releasing it around the sensor.
Edit: Oh. Rest is just NoiseAware. They're just reselling NoiseAware sensors which are just - yes - a bunch of particulate sensors hooked up to an ESP32 hooked to a web dashboard.
Okay, but what were the results? https://xkcd.com/1096/
I would be willing to bet a good amount of money they have a huge pile of nothing on this
On the other comment they say they monitor PM2.5, CO2 and humidity. Congratulations, your hot water shower with hard water just triggered the sensor. $500 fee.
I do not understand what possesses people to buy this stuff without proof.
Doesn't the US have false advertisement rules/scam prevention? Around here one person would have to fight this in court to tumble the whole thing down as there is no way Rest can prove it's claim is airtight (pun intended) due to simple statistics and physics (e.g. hair drying leaves burn particulates as well). I doubt it will even come this far as it's obviously a money making scheme over the customers back and acts in bad faith ("The sensor's don't make mistakes" is a claim to innocence where none is valid as almost everyone can smell). It's probably fine as an early detection agent but you'd have to actually check.
Also the charges are disproportionate to the beach of contract, unless they steam clean the room every time they claim the money. Which they obviously don't according to the "dirty room" comments.
(Rest would have to demonstrate how its technology works in court in order to have any hope of defeating such a lawsuit. And as the hotel guests don't have contracts with Rest, they aren't bound by any arbitration agreements.)
Seriously, why does every company these days seem to be running scams? You don't need that! You already make money - just keep doing that!
Insisting and charging somoking based on implicit and obscure ways of a "revenue stream generating" detector is a pure scam or fraud. Those involved in this criminal endeavour should be procecuted.
I will avoid Hyatt just in case and discourage my social circles too, warning them! No-one needs this sleazy treatment.
Ie you’re just as likely to find these at an other brand hotels too.
Not that I think this is a good thing but the framework is there to make your life hell if you were caught doing this.
A number like 84x suggests that it's basically zero now. That kinda makes sense. The only one who would notice is the cleaning staff, and relying on their word for "it smelled like smoke" sounds like a way to get a chargeback. They'd call you on it only if they were forced to take the room out of rotation to air it out.
So maybe there are a lot of people smoking just a little (perhaps a joint), and getting away with it. That might make a number like 84x work.
Surprisingly, yes. Smoking experienced a significant uptick during COVID.
Post-COVID, a lot of the housekeeping staff wear masks when cleaning guest rooms, so they're not always able to notice the smells that a guest would notice upon first entering the room.
I've had to get 3 out of my last 10 hotel rooms changed because the previous occupant smoked. On my last business trip, this resulted in an upgrade to a suite because they had no more regular rooms available.
That said, I haven't smelled _cigarette_ smoke in a hotel in recent memory.
I'm still never staying at AirBnB's when it actually matters because they completely screwed over my gf when she booked a bachelorette party and the owner literally sold the property without cancelling the reservation and the new owner rebooked the same site, also using AirBnB. AirBnB just offered a refund, even though the monetary damages were easily 10x the cost of the reservation and obviously permanent in the fact that in ruined a major life event.
Say what you want about the amount of money your company will make. Reputations take a lifetime to build, and most people have a grim trigger when it comes to being screwed over.
If it was totally tea, why were you drinking coke?
If I knew that a hotel chain will have my room fridge stocked with beer at reasonable prices (small markup or even no markup, because this does not need to be a revenue stream!), I would pick that hotel every time. Just for the convenience, and the nice feeling of not walking a minefield.
There are always signs, but if you goof they'll always take the charge off, but you do have to be upfront about it and tell them before checking out, otherwise you'll be charged.
Though here in New Zealand most hotels I’ve gone to over the past couple of years don’t even stock the minibar anymore, it’s just for milk and optional extras you book with the room.
Of course, that's why Hyatt imposes standards on their hotels to keep the name.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In practice in many cases you move out leaving the place very habitable, you get told they "had" to clean up your mess, and it's a suspiciously round number like £80 and they have plenty more "necessary" charges like this. In theory in the UK they're required to provide receipts showing their actual expense, but in practice they're looking at this as free revenue and most of their clients can't fight back.
I was buying, freeing me from the obvious revenge if I say "Fuck you" but there were a lot of other things to do for the move and having fought them down from the original outrageous fees they wanted I gave up although I did get as far as reporting them to their regulator and threatening legal action. In hindsight I'm quite sure I could have got to $0 and possibly also got the most senior woman who was straight up lying and clearly had done all this many times removed from the register of people fit to let out properties, but I didn't and I feel bad about that.
A friend in the UK had his deposit withheld as "mail charges" by his landlord upon moving out. Turned out the fine print in his lease said that he wasn't allowed to receive mail at the house he was legally renting.
They had to go to small claims. You can't claim a repair fee for some scratches and dents in drywall that you had crowbarred out the day after vacation of the property.
It wasn't difficult, though it helped that I'd taken lots of pictures on the day I moved out
Maybe it should be called an accelerated asset deprecation fee.
- It has a lot of low frequency noise (timescale of hours to days), so you need to do some sort of high pass filter.
- The responses to different VOC compounds don’t even necessarily have the same sign.
So the sensor gives you a “raw” reading that you are supposed to post-process with a specific algorithm to produce a “VOC index” that, under steady state conditions, is a constant irrespective of the actual VOC level. And then you look at it over time and it will go to a higher value to indicate something like “it’s probably stinkier now than it was half an hour ago”.
This, of course, cannot distinguish smoking from perfume or from anything else, nor is it even particularly reliable at indicating anything at all.
Modern PM2.5 meters are actually pretty good, although they struggle in high humidity conditions. But they still can’t distinguish smoking from other sources on fine particles.
Quite some algorithm you got there!
The other thing that's surprisingly nasty for air quality is incense. You might live in the woods with excellent air quality, but burn some incense and suddenly all the VOC and particulate numbers look like downtown Manhattan. It's ironic that incense is a massive air pollutant, but not really surprising.
algorithms are one of the only things that make cheap equipment usable. That cheap voc sensor is going to be a noisy mess on the line.
I guess you could pedantically say see that’s an algorithm! But you know what they’re heavily implying in their marketing…
Possibly the issue was they used PIR/ultrasonic (aka dual-tech) sensors and the ultrasonic one was picking up vibrations, I’ve seen that happen in tenant spaces before and turning down the ultrasonic sensitivity fixed it.
I run electrical work and if I was asked to install these, I would’ve written a sarcastic RFI to make sure the customer actually wanted to do something this stupid and expensive vs a $2 nightlight in a receptacle.
More likely it was sold to them by some interior design firm as a luxury feature. Unfortunately it's only helpful if you're alone--even if it worked correctly you wouldn't want the room lights turning on just because your spouse got up.
I carry black electrical tape whenever I travel. It's marvelous for disabling sensors and covering up too-bright LEDs that light up the room all night.
Automatic lights in private spaces are just a hassle.
It would be unfair to charge people with just a black box algorithm. But a few door knocks could fix that, one way or the other.
This problem has already been solved in engineering domains, like electrical or civil. There is a single engineer who has to sign off on the design of an electric product or a bridge. If the bridge collapses and the problem was with the design, the engineer loses their license or may go to jail. Similarly, in EU, every company that deals with customer data needs a Data Protection Officer. Customer data leaks, the person is responsible.
This model has to be expanded to every other domain. Once people fear going to jail, a lot of fraud will go away.
I think it comes down to the fact that we still don't have a meritocracy. It is still very much who you know from you getting a job to a company securing a contract with government, vs anything based on actual merit or ideas that are collectively beneficial vs selectively beneficial. Same old roman republic today: making favors to enrich the senators, making spectacles to distract the masses from the senators picking the public pocket. We haven't really changed the paradigm since it was established thousands of years ago with our first chieftans and shamans and their friends elevated above the rest of the tribe.
If such suits were successful, would the newly tested liability set larger changes in motion?
I'm similarly curious about being around Amazon Alexa, etc. devices in circumstances that require two-party consent for recording audio.
We can't make a market do anything. But we can at least not do stupid things tasking a private enterprise which has a duty to make profits for investors to be in charge of things which lose money if done correctly. The purpose of fines is to discourage bad behavior -- if fewer people do the bad behavior then that leads to lower income. Any profit motive for collecting fines leads to the opposite of the desired outcome.
it's not an incentive, it's a raison d'etre!
(People were mentioning hair dryers)
the more it’ll become important that there is a legal right to challenge them
Here's someone at a Marriott with the same bogus smoking fee:
https://old.reddit.com/r/marriott/comments/1drhkvz/400_fee_w...
I would be perfectly OK with that.
Technically I think perfume, sweat and trace amounts of smoking residue, including formaldehyde, from personal belongings could probably also raise VOCs as hotels often have very, very poor airflow by design - open windows and balconies have historically encouraged smokers so they were removed, but now you can rarely find any hotels with fresh air in the rooms, and those you find often smell of cigarette smoke for obvious reasons. (Smokers will often stay at hotels with airflow or balconies and take advantage of these features when they can. Also, airing out a room will kill a scent temporarily but only cleaning the room or replacing natural textiles will permanently remove the scent when the window is closed.)
100 rooms times, say, 50W (5kW) is 43,000kWh. That's over 10 UK families of 4-5 (4100kWh/yr) for electricity, or 2 if you include gas usage. So for Americans, it's probably must closer to parity.
The fridge does dump heat into the room, so it has a small additional penalty for the aircon in hot countries, but a small, but inefficient compared to a heat-pump, heating offset in cold countries.
One could argue that I shouldn't because I'm "improving" their property but reasonable people could disagree about the definition of "improving." Bottom line is that it's their property and their rules but if I can make a nondestructive change to make the place more comfortable while I'm staying there, I will.
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.
So it’s the customers themselves intentionally seeking out less than completely honest businesses to spend their money at because it’s X% cheaper.
Hyatt is typically considered an above average chain but I don’t think any HN reader would have thought them to be 100% honest and straightforward in 100% of locations.
But also, you should run the exhaust fan in the bathroom when you shower, this removes at least some of the moist air and cuts down on the chance for moisture damage and mold to develop.
But the point is that machines are not particularly good at detecting smoke lol
But then you can't catch vapers in the most popular vaping place: the bathroom. Oh no! Our revenue stream! It's broken!
I think, elephant in the room here, smoking is conspicuous and does real, tangible damage. Vaping? I'm not so sure.
Yeah vaping is lame but does it actually harm properties? I mean, if someone vapes 10 feet from me I can't smell it. And if I can smell it, it's gone in < 5 seconds. There's no smoke in it, it doesn't linger.
It already had remarks on it like "blinds dirty, need professional cleaning", "scuffs on drywall, needs painting", "carpet stains, need professional cleaning".
Huh.
She comes in, grabs the paperwork from her desk and says "Alright, let's do this". "Actually, I couldn't help but notice you'd already started charging me for things before we've even inspected the apartment". Cue some stammering. "Oh... uhh... that's strange. That must have already been on the form when I copied it from someone else's" (Oh, really, the printed form with my info with blue pen writing?).
And then there was the time that I needed a six month lease, but the PM company didn't want to do less than 12. I said "what it I pay the six months in full, up front, and the lease has no extension, so you know that I'll be gone and you can be planning for the next tenant in advance?". They talk to the owner, sure, that will work. I write a check for $14,000, six months rent at $2,000/mo, plus a security deposit. "That will be $18,000, actually." Huh? "We also need first and last month." Uhhh, what? It took far too long to explain to them that they were getting first, last, and the intermediary in the form of $12K. And got the distinct impression, from the stubborn inability to "comprehend" and "explain" that they thought that I wouldn't question it and just hand over another $4,000.
I'm skeptical about this. Normal adult tidal volume is about 500mg, with a normal respiratory rate of 12/min, so 6L/min. Normal air is about 0.05% CO2, so you're at 3 grams/minute atmospherically that is inspired and expired.
We actually output closer to 4% CO2. 240ml/minute. With the windows and doors closed in my 10x20 living space and 4 people, CO2 can easily go from a baseline 4-500PPM to over 1000 in an hour. That's not 240 grams of CO2 doing that.
https://airly.org/en/the-composition-of-inhaled-and-exhaled-...
Most figures I see peg 1mL of CO2 at closer to 2mg (it's about 50% heavier than the equivalent atmospheric volume, since that's mostly N2 with some O2). Your estimate of 240 mL / minute is about 346L per day, or about 700g of CO2. That's roughly the same order of magnitude as the cited 1 kg / person / day.
edit: Another way of thinking about it: if you scale up your numbers to grams per day, you'd end up with a ludicrous 346 kg / human / day. Multiply that by 12/44 (mass of Carbon-12 vs CO2), and that's the equivalent of a human shedding 100kg of carbon every day from just breathing. Most humans don't even weigh that much.
I don't know where I originally got that value from, it's one that has stuck in my head for years.
Pretty sure that is not a stipulation you can legally put in a tenancy contract. Because both parties have to be able to serve notice on the other via post in writing. Same reason you are legally entitled to know the postal address of the landlord.
Not a native speaker. How do you refer to the pieces of paper that the Royal Mail sometimes drop through your letterbox?
This is unlike the US Postal Service, which delivers "mail".
You realize there's a difference between cigarette smoke and mustard gas, right? Standing at the door of a room that someone smoked in will have no effect on your health whatsoever. You need to be standing in the room, while they're smoking, preferably for a few decades.
Covid happened and everything was cancelled. The airline refused to refund, only give credit. The issue is that it was on an airline that was useless to me because this trip was cancelled and we were going to be rescheduling.
Did a chargeback with Apple even though I was past the date, they still gave me my money back. I was shocked
Unfortunately some European banks aren't too familiar with these rules, especially when bankruptcy law is involved.
If it's the former, then your bank didn't properly handle your chargeback case. There was no Covid exemption for regular "goods/services not provided" chargebacks, which includes canceled flights.
You not being able to take a flight due to travel restrictions (even if imposed after booking) is usually not covered under that, though.
If the country entry requirements changed, that’s not the airline that’s liable - just like if the country cancelled your visa. Talk to your insurance company.
Plenty alternatives to renting a car in Europe. Hit them where it hertz. Take a punt on smaller companies that are competing with eg total all inclusive insurance. Yup they're a bit more expensive sometimes but can result in an better overall experience (there are lots of scammy local companies too)
I'd rather be charged a bit more upfront than to see mystery charges showing up on my card after I check out or return a car in the same condition I received it.
Allowing this type of stuff to go unpunished also just hurts honest businesses and distorts the market, since in travel search aggregators, the primary sorting criterion is price.
Extracting rents comes in all shapes and sizes.
https://www.wallstreetsurvivor.com/mcdonalds-beyond-the-burg...
An attention grabbing headline that feels smart but is really just careful half-truth writing.
McDonald's chargers fees that are a percentage of a stores gross sales and rent that is usually a base fee plus a percentage of sales.
What they are actually doing is folding part of the food sales cut into rent so they can evict you if they don't like you.
So while "McDonald's is actually a real estate company" gets clicks, the truth is they are a hamburger company with a huge cash flow from selling burgers, which they funnel through "Rent" for control. They also do own a ton of commercial real estate, but they aren't cashing out on that.
Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by grift.
> 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.
But no, I have not seen the coolers with video screens for doors anywhere around here either.
The what now?
There are lots of small operators, so I doubt that there's some industry wide list.
But there are only a few large operators. I'd be shocked if some of them didn't share info.
There is a whole tier of hotels and other services targeted at the traveling working class which you won't encounter as a highly paid tech professional simply because your company won't book you there.
Why can't there be a human membership union that sets these automatic binding arbitration agreements on service providers on behalf of members? Is there any law preventing a class of people from creating such a customer's union?
Those already exist, we call those things 'governments'.
The correct and only solution is for Congress to define what constitutes someone agreeing to a contract, and penalizing anyone who even raises the notion in a court of law that you have agreed to something without having performed that statutory gesture.
First, agreements can't be made unless both parties are present. If they don't bother to send a representative to you with a piece of paper, not an agreement. If they don't get your signature on the paper (or some legislatively defined equivalent), not an agreement. If they've attempted to hide or cheat or confuse, such that it's not apparent, nothing has been agreed.
This would get rid of much of the bullshit we have today with EULAs, binding arbitration horseshit, and all the other chicanery. Have Congress make it a law.
Or fantasize about? :)
It's a fun fantasy, but the fact we're happy to see it highlights our impotency - even a line worker sympathetic to the power imbalance would be left at "Anyways, we'll charge the fee to your card on file"
Edit: For context, the first sentence of the version I commented on was "You do realize that class action lawsuits are a boon for corpos, right?", which comes across as quite snarky. It was edited at some point.
I said realistic scenario.
Because when your revenue goes from $10 million to half a billion, you just say that. Percentages are papering over bad initial or final conditions.
Orthogonal. I said it doesn’t imply it, and it doesn’t. It may suggest it’s likely - and it does - but it does not imply it.
Frankly it tracks that almost no one was caught before.
How? How does this track?
Cigarette smoking is very conspicuous. I know, I used to smoke. It's not easy to hide!
If you smoke inside, it will smell like smoke. Fabric and even plaster in walls will hold onto smoke for a long time. Not to mention the smoke smell goes under doors, too, so someone outside the room could smell it.
If someone smokes in a room and you walk in any time in the next 12 hours, you will be able to tell. That means the cleaning staff should be able to detect smoke very well. Keep in mind, this is assuming you don't set off the smoke alarms, which is ALSO very easy to do in a hotel room because the ceilings are very low!
The only way around this is smoking outside, like on a balcony. Which, I'm sure, is against the rules too - but it doesn't harm anyone if you can't even detect it, so I'm not sure it's a problem.
Places like Vegas have a huge amount of recreational sales to tourists. They're clearly smoking the product somewhere, and it's not on the casino floor. One might bet they are engaging in some amount of activity with the potential to generate revenue for the hotel.
Hotel cleaning staff could be an exception, I don't know, it would strike me as a mildly but not hugely surprising one.
That's why they demand a deposit (or a card), by the way.
There are various scenarios but I think the one you are thinking of is you show up to the hotel, hand them your cash, and pay at the desk. Often times, though I have not been in a hotel that will not ask for a card, they ask you for a credit card and put an authorization on there in case you smoke in the room, or maybe turn it into spaghetti or any other random incidentals.
An authorization is basically the hotel telling the credit card that they're "reserving space" so to speak on your credit limit on the card.
Regarding your rental car experience, that's a common scam and again moreso seen in Europe, but not really anything to do with the method of payment. They would have just mailed you a bill for the damages instead. I guess you could ignore it.
Partial chargebacks would be an interesting concept in this case.
It's the same here but I'm not sure how it could work another way? They have to make sure you have the money to pay for the fuel you're pumping, it doesn't seem weird to me.
I can't imagine a pump that allows you to pump as you wish and then just begs you to pay. That works for the manned stations with low traffic only.
If I use either my cashapp or chime card I had better have the full $100-200 on there or it will fail the authorisation.
On the other hand my main bank is a local bank and they treat all gas station preauth's as a $1 charge. So I can have say $30 in the account and still get $25 in gas whereas many other cards/banks would just decline.
Well, it’s the issuing banks money, not mine. At the end of the day the process ends up the same. If I tell the credit card company to pound sand on a charge I disagree with they send me a bill and then send it to collections.
If I tell the rental car company to pound sand, they send me a bill and send it to collections.
You actually have more power and leeway when using a credit card because if there are enough disputes or issues then the rental agency can be banned from access to the network. If you pay with cash there’s nobody else involved.
The credit card is even better because if you dispute a charge and have evidence you have someone on your side against the rental agency.
Even with all that being said, it’s worth getting a few thousand or so bucks/year back in cash back on the off chance something like this happens while you continue to pay full price for everything you buy.
I can't remember ever NOT having to leave a CC for a deposit in any hotel I've ever stayed at in any country in my life. I'm sure it's happened, but it sure isn't remarkable when they DO require a card.
I do most of my bookings from US soil with a credit card for guarantee or pre-pay (I do a mix of both), but never direct bank account. So one could imagine the rules for my bookings are different than yours. However I do sometimes make bookings mid-trip, and have not noticed a different damage policy, and, in Europe, I check in with an EU passport so I'd probably be subjected to the same rules/policies as any other European.
The comment claiming not to know what "mail" was clearly struck people as a little dismissive of US English (any native English speaker knows both "mail" and "post", regardless of which one is used locally)
This type of creepy stuff, together with Airbnb's horrible business practices (last time they wanted access to my checking account transaction history via Plaid!) and enabling scammy hosts, is why I'm back to just staying at regular hotels.
Sad to see some of them are now start adopting the same type of customer-hostile technology as well.
Of course Airbnbs are also a real problem in general with the way they increase the scarcity of housing, so I'm pretty happy all in all to see you saying you're being driven back to hotels.
Of course, a long term neighbor it is different. There the police would be a last resort.
Look, if you have a house in a tourist spot and you say "no parties!", you're not gonna make any money. And if the residents don't like said parties, they can rally together to make AirBNBs illegal in their area. That's how many (most?) touristy places are.
They are, which is why residential properties that are used as hotels should be seized and auctioned off.
What's the actual mechanism for airbnbs to prevent housing construction?
https://hackaday.com/2017/09/20/spy-tech-nonlinear-junction-...
It would be nice if someone could make them and sell them cheaply. I would buy into that Kickstarter.
The other commenter is absolutely right that partyers in AirBnBs cause nuisances for local residents, but the owners will have to find another way to sort that out or close up shop
No one wants to live next to an Airbnb house blasting music at 3am.
I’ll also consider these things to be microphones unless their manufacturer explicitly says otherwise, yet on their website I’ve only seen vague assurances about them being privacy-friendly.
For some, “on-device speech recognition that only sends voice samples for cloud analysis in exceptional cases” would probably also meet that bar, but it doesn’t for me.
I once stayed at an AirBnB with some friends and the power went out in the evening one day of the trip. The next door neighbor also lost power, and came over to check on us - and didn't even step in the house. The next morning I got a nasty email from the host accusing me of abusing the occupancy limit. Clearly there were some hidden cameras or something in the house.
As silly as this example is, its just another annoying example of how technology is abused to monitor compliance with what should be a social issue.
I ran into traveling road crews (as in CalTrans contractors building highways) visiting a facility for my current employer. Interesting crowd. The pay is good, and the only real requirements seem to be the willingness to wake up early, work hard, and not be insufferable to work with.
There's no way to conceal cigarette smoke indoors. It's painfully obvious that a room's been smoked in.
Vapes are way lower-key, and as a non-smoker/vaper/etc, unlike cigarettes, someone vaping in a space really doesn't bother me.
https://chatgpt.com/share/687d38d1-101c-8004-8119-6c433dd32c...
Fortunately, the mid-sized places I've been at generally trust the employee's story when it comes to expenses -- at least unless it becomes a pattern.
If my workplace took the hotel's side for a bogus charge, I'm not sure I'd want to stay working there...
There must be a better answer than "pass a law so the american multinational does a better job at regulating its rentals"
In Finland the has pump firsts ask you to choose how big an authorization you want to do when you enter your card to the slot. It will not allow you to pump more than that and the authorization is then replaced by real charge before you enter you car.
I've only had this specific problem in France. Funny enough my American Express cards worked better than my Visa or Mastercard did.
Maybe even more… so what kind of cash based solution could there be? (that’s not physically preventing them from ever travelling)
It might still be possible to pay cash in fleabag hotels; I don't know.
I know that because the experience of being turned away from hotels while driving across country was why I applied for my first credit card.
Possibly you can also put down the same amount they take as a hold on the card in cash, but I've never tried it.
Last time I visited the US was in 2016 and back then my country wasn't an international outcast so I had a debit card that counted as credit in the system. I'm just curious what people like me would do these days. Or maybe the hotels I stayed at were too cheap.
Unfortunately people who simply choose to live without using credit are caught up in that too.
I avoided getting credit cards for years, but you really do need on if you travel a lot.
AirBnB rentals typically make more money for apartment and condo owners than long-term rentals, at least in big cities (that attract tourists) where there's often already scarce housing and not a lot of new affordable construction.
So as housing units get taken off the long-term market rental (i.e. actually being used for housing) to be turned into short-term rental for AirBnB, it reduces the available stock for renters.
And in many large cities small condos and purpose-built rentals are mostly what get built, because that's what investors are asking for - and builders build what they expect to sell and what they can profit on.
But then the investors who buy these "homes" don't actually put them up for rent, they turn them into short-term rentals for tourists and visitors, and those dwellings are not available for the people who actually need to live in the city.
This dual pressure on scarcity then drives up the rent on available properties because the demand goes up since there's less and less long-term rentals available for residents.
So they don't necessarily "prevent housing construction" (what housing gets built is a topic a bit too complex to get into here) but they absolutely do reduce available housing in large cities and in-demand areas, in the ways outlined above.
This is why many large metropolitan areas have either banned AirBnB or heavily regulated them (with mixed success, and rarely the honest participation of AirBnB themselves).
This tells me that you think that treating housing supply as a relevant factor to the price of housing is a stupidly obvious error.
> So they don't necessarily "prevent housing construction" (what housing gets built is a topic a bit too complex to get into here) but they absolutely do reduce available housing in large cities and in-demand areas, in the ways outlined above.
That you for agreeing that they do not prevent housing supply from increasing to meet the increased demand.
> This tells me that you think that treating housing supply as a relevant factor to the price of housing is a stupidly obvious error.
Nah it's just that we've had trolls in here before who try to make bad faith arguments about AirBnB, by pretending they don't see the problems created by turning housing into short-term rentals.
> > So they don't necessarily "prevent housing construction" (what housing gets built is a topic a bit too complex to get into here) but they absolutely do reduce available housing in large cities and in-demand areas, in the ways outlined above.
> That you for agreeing that they do not prevent housing supply from increasing to meet the increased demand.
I definitely don't agree with that. I said "necessarily" for a reason, meaning it's not the _only_ factor, nor it is _always_ a factor (depending on location etc) but it certainly is one of the major impacts on housing supply.
As for meeting demand, here's one way AirBnB is "preventing" supply from meeting demand:
Builders build what sells, and what buyers want. For the last while in many/most large western cities (I only know Canada and the US mostly, making a few loose assumptions here about elsewhere), real estate investors have been pushing for lots of single-bedroom condo units because those are the kinds of units that are popular as short-term rentals.
So builders prioritize these kinds of units for sale to investors who have no intention of making them available as housing, even though they are zoned and built as housing.
So... I think you can draw a pretty solid line between this kind of economic incentive and a lack of housing to meet demand, since there is a finite capacity for building housing (based on available builders - i.e. capital and manpower).
Secondly, remember impacting supply is not just about adding new housing but also about how affordable the available housing is.
When people convert existing housing to short-term rental, it reduces the total supply. And when you squeeze the supply, prices go up, and people get priced out of the places they live.
A few links for you:
https://ricochet.media/justice/housing/how-airbnb-and-short-...
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-621-m/11-621-m2024010...
p.s. If you want to reply again and discuss, try not to cherry-pick a few low-relevancy sentences out of context to ignore my broader point.
This is the only actually relevant point in the post.
And the only situation where it can be true is if ability to build more housing isn't subject to market forces, ie is constricted by bad policy.