[HN Gopher] Fisker lost track of millions of dollars in customer...
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Fisker lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments for
months
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 60 points
Date : 2024-03-27 19:08 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| bragr wrote:
| >In a few cases, it delivered vehicles without collecting any
| form of payment at all
|
| That's crazy. I'm curious what happened in those instances. I
| suppose it depends a lot on the jurisdiction, but can Fisker come
| back and demand payment, or did those people just get free cars?
| foobarian wrote:
| I was utterly confused until I realized this is not Fisk*a*r
| the scissor maker.
| moogly wrote:
| Fiskars
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| For something as valuable as a car, they definitely can. You
| still agreed to pay them.
|
| However, you can decide to take the whole thing to court and
| see what a judge thinks about it. In a way, they screwed up and
| that may affect the contract.
| Atotalnoob wrote:
| They might have a case to keep the car!
|
| There are laws around sending people packages and then
| demanding payment.
|
| I think it was to stop trolls from mailing you garbage and
| demanding payment afterwards...
|
| I'm not a lawyer, them having a purchase agreement in place
| probably changes things, but a clever lawyer might be able to
| make a case
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| How are they going to register without a title?
| recursive wrote:
| Unregistered car fines are probably less than the cost of
| the car in many use cases.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Those laws are for sending things unsolicited. In this
| case, the customer asked for the car and agreed to pay for
| it. The company failed to process the payment. Very
| different scenario.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| > There are laws around sending people packages and then
| demanding payment.
|
| Laws are different when you request the package. I don't
| believe Fisker sent cars to random people.
| Atotalnoob wrote:
| They might have a case to keep the car!
|
| There are laws around sending people packages and then
| demanding payment.
|
| I think it was to stop trolls from mailing you garbage and
| demanding payment afterwards...
|
| I'm not a lawyer, them having a purchase agreement in place
| probably changes things, but a clever lawyer might be able to
| make a case, but I'm just spitballing
| miohtama wrote:
| "Checks were not cashed in a timely manner or just lost
| altogether" only in the US of A, or movies from 70s, something
| like this.
| petercooper wrote:
| To be fair, my mother is in a protracted situation with one of
| Europe's largest banks and the UK government's savings scheme.
| She made a transfer of a sum of money to the savings scheme but
| the bank refused for various reasons, yet the savings scheme
| acted as if they had received it. She now has the lump sum in
| both the bank account _and_ the savings scheme with both of
| them claiming everything is fine and refusing to investigate
| further unless she files an official complaint at having 2x the
| money(!)
|
| If a global bank and the UK government can't figure this stuff
| out, I can certainly see how a company like Fisker might drop
| the ball.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| OP was commenting on the use of cheques, which is comical in
| the rest of the world. Banking errors can happen anywhere.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Guess she should close the savings account and see how much
| they send her?
| throwway120385 wrote:
| "Bank error in your favor. Collect $200."
| foobarian wrote:
| Heh. Couple months ago my mortgage company applied a payment
| to two consecutive months, also paid by paper check. Maybe
| check processing skills are getting lost from the workforce.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I am now trying to set up direct deposit in an investment
| account I own. Despite being able to buy and sell online in
| that account, to enable direct deposit I need to mail them
| a paper form, with notarized signature, and include a
| voided blank check. I have not written a paper check in
| years and I'm not even sure I have any.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| Truly. I had no idea anyone was still using cheques in 2024.
| Why weren't they simply doing bank transfers? I don't know if
| you even _could_ buy a car with a cheque in Australia.
|
| In fact we're ending the cheque system entirely in the next few
| years. I'm 34 and have never written a cheque, and only
| received about 4 - none of which were in the last 5 years.
| firecall wrote:
| You can get a Bank Cheque!
|
| I've purchased a car privately this way.
|
| Although, very sensibly, the seller met us at his bank and
| paid the Cheque in to his account whilst we were there. Fake
| Bank Cheques are a thing.
|
| I havent used a Cheque Book since the late 1990s. We used to
| order take-away food in London and then pay with a Cheque and
| Cheque Guarantee Card when the driver got to the door!
|
| Which of course meant you could buy food on a Friday if you
| had no money and didnt get paid until Monday! LOL :-)
|
| The original BNPL Scheme! ;-)
|
| But yes, I dont think they issue Cheque Books here in AU
| anymore. And if they did, what would you even do with one!
|
| Can you imagine trying to pay in a shop with one!
| Talanes wrote:
| To shed some light on why Americans kept checks for so long:
| I'm 33 and have never done a bank transfer. I can't even say
| what the flaws in our system are, because I grew up in a
| family where it was never considered as an option: money was
| sent as cash or checks only.
| neilv wrote:
| Could the accounting problems be due to intentionally delaying
| having accurate revenue numbers?
|
| Or (looking at vehicles delivered without payment) sales dept.
| breaking rules?
|
| Or (always a good guess) is it actually a software fiasco, and
| people trying to work around non-working software?
|
| Or did they not have an adequate accounting organization set up
| when they started taking orders, and for some reason let that
| persist for months?
| peter_l_downs wrote:
| Yes, to every single one of your questions.
| gangstead wrote:
| They've also slashed prices
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-27/fisker-sl... .
| Presumably that's on existing inventory as the manufacturing is
| paused. So even if they do cash your check it won't be as big as
| it used to be.
|
| It looks like bankruptcy is imminent. If they do go under does
| that mean there would be no one there to collect the telemetry?
| Would an electric car made by a bankrupt company be the first
| electric car not to constantly be spying on its owners?
| leptons wrote:
| Someone else could still do the spying.
| londons_explore wrote:
| More importantly, electric cars use a TLS protocol for
| charging, and that TLS protocol requires the manufacturers to
| issue new certificates every (90?) days.
|
| If the servers go down, these cars won't be able to charge with
| DC chargers at all (which requires the TLS protocol), and maybe
| not with home chargers either (which sometimes uses the TLS
| protocol).
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Fisker Trading Suspended by NYSE_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39821335
| chasers wrote:
| Rivian lost my full payment for an R1S.
| gangstead wrote:
| What was the outcome? Free car? A strongly worded letter and
| you wrote another check?
| peter_l_downs wrote:
| That's astonishing. What ended up happening?
| thih9 wrote:
| Recent discussion about Fisker in the context of a popular
| negative review of their car ("the worst car I've ever
| reviewed"): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39650115
| reilly3000 wrote:
| "Material Weakness" is audit-speak for royal f-up. As a public
| company I'm amazed they were able to make it through prior
| financial statements without proper controls. If their quality
| control related suits don't take them down the investor ones sure
| could.
| peter_l_downs wrote:
| Billing and Accounts Payable will always seem like a "how could
| you mess that up?" problem to engineers, but it literally is
| difficult and complicated and rife with ways to very seriously
| and permanently fuck your relationship with your customer. And
| potentially with your auditors, investors, and whoever performs
| legal oversight in your jurisdiction. All of the largest
| companies in the tech world have been hit by AP fraud. Billing,
| collecting taxes, etc. is just fundamentally complicated
| (fundamentally = by laws of the lands.) There's a reason Stripe
| is a bazillion dollar business!
|
| That said, this screams of amateur hour. If Fisker can't keep
| track of the money I certainly wouldn't trust them to build a car
| correctly.
|
| EDIT: I didn't realize they were already a public company. How in
| the fuck did they pull that off? It's so over for them.
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