[HN Gopher] Three AM 911 call, 9 AM salesman
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Three AM 911 call, 9 AM salesman
Author : wawayanda
Score : 152 points
Date : 2025-01-31 17:47 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (a.wholelottanothing.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (a.wholelottanothing.org)
| smelendez wrote:
| This can be a sleazy industry. Servpro is the big corporate side,
| but the New York Times reported a few years ago about actual
| criminal intimidation in the industry
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/03/nyregion/fire-truck-chase...)
| WaxProlix wrote:
| ServPro is actually one of the less bad ones. BELFOR are even
| pushier, and take advantage of the fact that building owners and
| building renters tend to have different priorities in fire cases
| to gain unlawful access to damaged units. I had Belfor people in
| my smoke-damaged home without my knowledge constantly, and they
| made off with a bit of valuable stuff during that unsupervised
| time. I was renting back then, and of course my say meant nothing
| to these people.
|
| Very scummy industry overall, everyone we interacted with in the
| wake of that fire left a bad taste in our mouths. ServPro was the
| original company on the job before Belfor somehow took the
| contract from em, and they were at least professional and
| understanding of the awful circumstance people were in.
| parliament32 wrote:
| Meta but why are there seemingly random full-size images inserted
| every few paragraphs in the article?
| RandomBacon wrote:
| Idk, but to me it seemed like a fun expression of the author's
| feelings.
| bitwize wrote:
| Is the sign with the cougar a suggestion on how to treat
| salesmen?
|
| If so, I dig it.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| That's my interpretation.
| trevithick wrote:
| Since you brought up the topic--in the snow picture, is the red
| vehicle on the right an older 4Runner with some kind of pickup
| truck cap on it? Something that turns it into a Chevy Avalanche
| configuration.
| acureau wrote:
| I used to do freelance writing. We did this as a way to break
| up large blocks of text, it makes the post more digestible.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| That was a blogging standard late 90s/early 00s. Loads of
| pretty unrelated photos -- usually personal photos as everyone
| is a photographer -- intermixed with content. For some reason I
| always think of Philip Greenspun when I see that style of
| content.
| dcchuck wrote:
| Thank you for sharing. I particularly enjoyed the call out where
| you highlight what you learned from the incident. Took the post
| from fear-brain to information-brain for me (don't mind my
| curiosity haha).
|
| I had a much less intrusive incident but equally "alarming" ;).
| The apartment I live in has hard wired smoke/carbon monoxide
| alarms (with backup battery). One night, ~2am 1 of them starts
| beeping that the battery is dead. I confirm the breaker didn't
| flip or anything...finally decided to complete disassemble it and
| get some sleep. 4 of these in the apartment. Head hits the pillow
| and a second one goes off! Take all 4 down and live dangerously
| for an evening.
|
| In the morning I do my research - turns out these things just
| start doing that after 10 years. "Get a new one!" it peeps
| incessantly.
|
| Shame me please - as I bought replacements. I'll save this post
| for myself in 10 years so at least I can be the one to say "I
| told you so".
| rwky wrote:
| 10 years, you're lucky, one of mine just started doing it after
| 4 years, it comes with a 5 year guarantee but of course I don't
| have the receipt and even if I did I don't have the will to
| fight for a replacement. I think these new alarms are designed
| to fail early I've never had one fail before but after checking
| up on different makes and models they all seem to fail
| randomly.
| duskwuff wrote:
| This is by design, and it's for a good reason. The carbon
| monoxide sensor chemically degrades over time. Good CO
| detectors will perform self-tests periodically, and will go
| into an end-of-life mode when those tests fail, or when the
| sensor's expected lifetime has expired.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I have a plug-in CO detector that's probably 30 years old.
| Has never given any "end of life" alerts but maybe they
| didn't have them back then. Guess I should replace it.
| duskwuff wrote:
| You definitely should. 30 years is almost certainly
| beyond the useful life of the sensor.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Yep, and that's a big reason why combined Smoke + CO
| detectors are a bad idea. The smoke detector side doesn't
| wear out, the CO detector side does.
|
| The beep patterns for "dead battery" and "detector worn
| out" are usually different. Generally they're printed
| somewhere on the unit, in a tiny font that's hard to see
| bleary-eyed at 3AM when it inevitably starts.
| tlavoie wrote:
| Smoke detectors usually have something like a 10-year
| usable life, and should have a sticker to that effect
| along with its manufacture date.
|
| I've had a couple that when they aged out, went straight
| to full-on alarm beeping.
| fallinghawks wrote:
| FWIW some smoke alarms have a manufacture date printed on the
| side, so a receipt might not be necessary.
| ChoGGi wrote:
| How would you prove it came from a certain store?
| prerok wrote:
| But... you have to go to a shop to get the replacement. I
| suppose you could mail it by yourself to the manufacturer,
| though I must admit I never tried that. It requires too
| much effort, contacting manufacturer, describing the
| problem, etc. Do people do this?
| bagels wrote:
| Two in the same night? I wouldn't have been so quick to dismiss
| it as "it just happens". Scary.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Hmmmm, we had two cheap quartz wristwatches with a drift of
| +/- 15 seconds per month, and they were allowed to run for 5
| years, drifting in opposite directions, we might expect a
| difference between them of 0.5 hours.
|
| So having two of these detectors going wonky with "just" a
| 4-hour difference doesn't seem too far outside the
| capabilities of some kind of "replace me" timer circuit.
|
| Obviously it could _also_ be Invisible Evil Gas Traces, and
| the impact of being wrong is severe, so I wouldn 't blithely
| dismiss the alarms as planned obsolescence either.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Obviously it could also be Invisible Evil Gas Traces, and
| the impact of being wrong is severe, so I wouldn't blithely
| dismiss the alarms as planned obsolescence either.
|
| And that is why I only buy CO alarms which display the ppm
| they measure.
|
| "I'm out of sensor lifetime / battery, please replace me"
| is a very different level of priority than 300ppm CO. And
| how I react to 300ppm is very different from how I would
| react to 3200ppm.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Fixed lifetime suggests ionization rather than optical sensor?
| If so yeah, they have a specific lifetime, it's just physics.
| There's an Americium-241 source, a tiny, tiny amount of
| radioctive material in a sensor which is decaying constantly,
| and once it has decayed a certain amount too bad, buy a new
| smoke detector.
|
| There are arguments for or against both types, but ultimately
| "Make sure you replace it every ten years" doesn't feel like a
| huge problem. If you really can't do that, then the optical
| sensors don't have this property - they will still need new
| batteries, but of course you can just swap those out on a
| schedule when it suits you, they're typically a cheap household
| 9volt battery (yes even for a mains smoke alarm, fires don't
| magically stop when the power goes out)
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I installed some gas sensors like this a while back. It says
| in the manual that some date after installation they trigger
| and stay that way permanently.
| oniony wrote:
| No, but you'd think they could charge a battery/capacitor
| during the good times and use that charge during the outage.
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| > Fixed lifetime suggests ionization rather than optical
| sensor?
|
| Not at all. The 10 year lifetime is something that was set by
| people concerned by the lifetime of the electronics. The half
| life of the isotope in smoke detectors allow them to last
| well beyond 10 years. (The half life is 432.2 years)
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| same thing happened to me at about 3 am one morning. I'm
| thinking the house is burning down. Eventually find out there
| is no fire. Get the ladder, take down the smoke alarm. Go to
| remove the battery. On the back it says "non replaceable
| battery, unit can not be serviced". So sledge hammer + trash
| can it is!
|
| The next day I tell my landlord I destroyed the thing and need
| a new one. His reply was that I had vandalized his property.
| mjevans wrote:
| I would love the wired ones to just have a built in super
| capacitor; enough to give it 5-10 min (minimum) runtime during
| a power outage. No Battery. ONLY alarm loudly for sensor
| detects possible smoke (known positive detection), very softly
| for sensor broken (failed self test).
| saaaaaam wrote:
| The battery isn't for incidental power outages. It's for when
| a fire starts somewhere in the building while you are asleep
| and melts some wiring, knocking out the power to the smoke
| alarm. An hour later you wake up in a house full of smoke and
| die.
|
| That's why smoke alarms have batteries.
| bluGill wrote:
| That is also why smoke alarms have interconnects, and there
| should be smoke detectors all over. The fire should be
| detected and sound an alarm long before it melts wiring.
|
| Though smoke detectors only detect 40-50% of all fires in
| time to get out (dual sensor detectors can do much
| better!). A lot better than nothing, but still not very
| good.
| nancyminusone wrote:
| Things like this are pretty much why I don't answer my front door
| anymore unless I'm expecting someone. Too many ads.
| ndileas wrote:
| Is it really that hard to say "Selling something? Not
| interested, have a nice day!"? I'm fairly anxious and
| introverted and don't love having to do this, but once a month
| or something is very manageable. Gotta be brave and interact
| with the world sometimes.
| skyyler wrote:
| >Is it really that hard to say "Selling something? Not
| interested, have a nice day!"?
|
| I shouldn't have to, so I don't, and they eventually do
| leave.
|
| >Gotta be brave and interact with the world sometimes. reply
|
| Telling a salesperson "fuck off" doesn't take more bravery
| than I have, it takes more effort than I am willing to expend
| on advertising.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I feel like _not_ answering the door is actually the harder
| thing for some people to do as it can feel like you 're being
| rude or otherwise not doing this thing you feel wired to be
| doing. I think it's actually a great exercise to do that and
| experience that there's no consequences to having respect for
| your own time.
|
| I have a no soliciting sign and those who ignore it
| (basically all of them according to camera events) are 100%
| in the wrong, are being rude, and do not deserve a wave-off.
| ziddoap wrote:
| This has nothing to do with bravery.
| Diti wrote:
| For people who have debilitating social anxiety, yes, it
| does.
| ziddoap wrote:
| You're right. In that context, it can definitely be
| bravery.
|
| However, in general, the decision to answer or not answer
| a salesperson at your door is not about bravery. It is
| primarily about effort and annoyance.
|
| The combination of _" Is it really that hard to say
| "Selling something? Not interested, have a nice day!"?"_
| and a condescending _" Gotta be brave and interact with
| the world sometimes."_ rubbed me the wrong way.
| skyyler wrote:
| >rubbed me the wrong way
|
| It did me, as well. It smelled of someone projecting
| their insecurity onto the general public.
| ndileas wrote:
| For me it does require bravery. I wasn't intended to be
| condescending. I really do have to remind myself of that.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Fair enough! The downside of text conversation is that it
| loses most of the nuance, and I obviously read something
| into it that you didn't intend. Thanks for the
| clarification.
| 827a wrote:
| If my heater goes out, while its below freezing outside, and a
| salesman offering to fix it shows up at my door two hours later,
| whether or not its sleezy/ethically wrong is entirely dependent
| on how much they're charging for their services. I understand the
| angle that it could be interpreted as exploiting someone in a
| tough spot, but that's a no-more-valid interpretation than
| helping someone out of a dire, potentially life-threatening
| situation; it just comes down to how much they're charging.
|
| The angle that they're finding clients by ambulance chasing
| public 911 records is interesting, but ethically neutral.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| he wasn't offering to repair the HVAC.
| perpil wrote:
| Servpro doesn't fix heaters, they mitigate fire damage. They
| came expecting to fix fire damage, not a heater.
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| How do you feel about roofers knocking on your door claiming
| your roof needs to be replaced? That's a fairly common scenario
| and one where even legitimate roofers who aren't lying do it.
| But most people I know hate it.
| amendegree wrote:
| This sorta thing could happen without the API integration, police
| radio calls happen on the public radio waves, anyone can listen
| and go to the address too. If the police encrypt their radio,
| they usually rebroadcast with a delay, in the interest of
| transparency, so it's still possible.
| segmondy wrote:
| "Through this incident I've learned people should instead contact
| their home insurance company and get an approved list of vendors
| to choose from."
|
| I don't agree with this. Never contact your insurance company
| unless you plan on filing a claim, just asking for this list is
| equivalent to a claim.
|
| If you have a valid claim, your insurance can't force you to use
| a list of vendors. You can choose any vendor you want to. The
| vendors work/cost must be appropriate.
| larrik wrote:
| I dunno, if you need one of these companies, it's often better
| to just let the insurance company send who they want.
|
| I wouldn't call pre-emptively though, no.
| bluGill wrote:
| These companies often have bad customer service, so that
| isn't always the answer either.
| bluGill wrote:
| See your policy - there may be limits on what vendors you are
| allowed to use. There is typically a large choice, but it isn't
| everyone.
|
| I agree though, don't call unless you are sure you will file a
| claim. If the item is regular maintenance don't file a claim if
| you can. That is if you need to replace your roof and discover
| hail damage you could then claim and get a replacement roof,
| but your insurance will go up. Insurance is for major issues
| where you wouldn't expect to pay that price but it might happen
| (fire..), hail is borderline - a roof that is almost new that
| needs to be replaced makes the costs (a second time in 5
| years...) unreasonable, but if the roof is already 20 years old
| it should be normal to pay to replace it even if without the
| hail you might have got 10 more years.
| Temporary_31337 wrote:
| " 911 calls are mostly public information since they involve
| public services who all need to communicate with one another."
| Umm not in Europe. First of all Tetra/Dimetra calls are E2E
| encrypted (with some famous vulnerabilities) then there's privacy
| laws etc. It's surprising that in the US where you have the right
| to protect your home and privacy even with lethal means, the same
| measures don't extend cybernetically.
| yapyap wrote:
| that's because those lethal means have been written into the
| amendments and people have been brainwashed by the NRA to care
| about those amendments, especially the one to bear arms.
|
| This lethal defense thing has been all about pushing more and
| more guns on people for financial profit, if there was a way to
| sell internet guns you have to use to shield your privacy, they
| would, their number 1. focus is money, everything else is
| number 2.
| wyager wrote:
| > This lethal defense thing has been all about pushing more
| and more guns on people for financial profit
|
| The American firearms/ammo/accessories market is only about
| 1/3rd the size of the American cosmetics market.
|
| Americans just really like guns - there's no shadowy profit
| motive here. There's simply not enough profit on the table
| for that.
| unclad5968 wrote:
| Should we stop caring about all the amendments or just the
| ones you don't like?
| wyager wrote:
| > It's surprising that in the US where you have the right to
| protect your home and privacy even with lethal means, the same
| measures don't extend cybernetically.
|
| Americans do have a constitutionally protected right to use
| cryptography. You don't have the right to force _someone else_
| to use it.
| chungy wrote:
| It's about having transparency. If the public can't monitor
| what 911 centers and police are doing, how can the public trust
| them?
| SergeAx wrote:
| That should have some corner cases. If criminals can monitor
| what police are doing - how the police can fight crime?
| bdcravens wrote:
| You can listen in to police/emergency radio chatter, and
| there's any multiple phone apps that let you pick a
| location to listen to.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| > It's surprising that in the US where you have the right to
| protect your home and privacy even with lethal means
|
| What do you mean by protect your privacy (with lethal means)?
| You certainly do not have a right to lethally protect your
| privacy from a neighbor pointing a camera at your house, or
| similar, for example. You do have a right to protect yourself
| and your property using lethal means in my state (Texas). But
| they most certainly had better be both clearly on/in your
| property and an _active_ threat to your personhood
| /possessions(property)--extra points for it being nighttime
| and/or you are female. I am not sure how protecting your
| physical things or self from an imminent threat is suppose to
| translate to a space where boundaries and jurisdiction are not
| as clear cut as your physical self/home.
|
| *Had to take a class (for a concealed carry permit) that laid
| out in no uncertain terms when the use of lethal force is
| protected. And it is not as wanton & broad as people like to
| make it out to be.
| psmacleod wrote:
| I'd guess most municipalities in the US still use unencrypted
| analog radio, so all you need is a guy with a scanner. You
| don't even need a scanner where I live, they have a live feed
| available on the county website. When we had a house fire about
| 20 years ago, guys showed up to sell "board up" and restoration
| services before the fire trucks had left. It's a sleazy
| business. We went with the restoration company our insurance
| co. recommended, they were clear we could go with whoever we
| wanted but their preferred one guaranteed the insurance payout
| would fully cover the work. They were fine to work with and did
| a good job. There are also companies (at least in California
| where we lived at the time) that offer to take a cut of your
| payout to catalog your stuff and negotiate a claim with your
| insurance company. They make grand promises and seemed super
| sketchy.
| plagiarist wrote:
| It is repugnant that this is able to happen at all. To the extent
| that the government contracts with a third party, the legal
| requirements should be none of the data is shared without a
| warrant.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| It seems like it would be very, very easy to make these Servpro
| salespeople unreasonably busy undertaking sales calls that do not
| have a worthwhile rate of return.
| dmurray wrote:
| What, by burning down your neighborhood?
|
| Making a bunch of emergency calls to attract these guys would
| be much worse than having slightly predatory sales practices.
| thecosas wrote:
| It's illegal to make false calls to 911; I know in California
| it's a misdemeanor at least along with a multi-thousand dollar
| fine.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| A class 1 misd here. Also: dangerous, stupid, and anti-
| social.
|
| But it happens all day long; sometimes people actually get
| killed; and misuse of public safety emergency responders is a
| serious vulnerability that very few seem to take seriously.
| bluGill wrote:
| If you realize you called 911 by mistake just stay on the
| line and explain. Operators are understanding of mistakes,
| they will do some checks to make sure it really was a mistake
| as opposed to a real thing but you know the attacker is
| listening and then tell you bye. Don't make mistakes often,
| if it happens often they will look up the laws and throw
| fines at your for wasting their time, but for a rare thing it
| isn't a big deal.
|
| If things are borderline and so you are not sure if this is
| 911 or maybe you can lookup some non-emergency number: just
| call 911 and explain. They will figure it out - better to
| call 911 when you didn't need to than call the non-emergency
| number and not get the help you need.
|
| If you don't live in the US you may have some other emergency
| number. Know what it is. Generally the same rules as above
| apply.
| yelling_cat wrote:
| I've called 911 twice for borderline issues and it played
| out both times just like you said - I said what I was
| seeing and to let me know if I should call a different
| line, they confirmed the issues were emergencies, and the
| rest played out like any other 911 call. Let the dispatcher
| decide.
|
| On a related note, the valid reasons to call 911 are:
|
| 1. A danger to life, property or the environment
|
| 2. A crime in progress
|
| 3. Someone having a medical emergency who needs immediate
| assistance
|
| 4. A fire
| gosub100 wrote:
| This reminds me of the recent "service" that somehow front-runs
| police reports and tries to sell them to car accident victims who
| are motivated to get their insurance claim going.
|
| That said, I don't think the API is to blame here. You could
| accomplish the same thing by listening to the FD on a scanner and
| converting the voice to text.
| lol768 wrote:
| > That's a sleazy business model but it's not illegal
|
| I feel bad for folks who live in countries without a GDPR
| equivalent.
|
| The ICO's guidance says "You can rely on legitimate interests for
| marketing activities if you can show that how you use people's
| data is proportionate, has a minimal privacy impact, and _people
| would not be surprised or likely to object_ "
|
| I refuse to believe people would not be surprised or likely to
| object to this sort of marketing. It's creepy and invasive, and
| preying on people who may have lost their possessions or the
| house they've lived in for decades. I would be completely
| outraged if I received a visit of this nature after making a call
| to the _emergency services_. That's completely insane!
|
| Without being able to rely on legitimate interests, there would
| not be an opportunity for data to be legally shared and processed
| in this way. None of the other lawful bases would apply, in my
| view.
| hbrav wrote:
| So if I understand this correctly, this company gets certain
| information about 911 calls, and then sells it to third parties?
|
| I wonder how much information they get, because this could get a
| lot darker. Imagine if calls to the police reporting domestic
| violence resulted in advertising material from divorce lawyers.
| (A domestic violence victim might well want a divorce lawyer, but
| unsolicited material showing up in their mailbox may put them at
| risk by enraging their already-violent spouse.)
| lemonberry wrote:
| "Imagine if calls to the police reporting domestic violence
| resulted in advertising material from divorce lawyers."
|
| While not nearly as cryptic, Target had to adjust their
| advertising a few years ago because they were accurately
| predicting women's pregnancies through their analytics. Women
| received targeted mailings. In many cases probably not
| problematic, but there's potential for that data to be horribly
| misused.
| asalahli wrote:
| IIRC one of these women was a teenager who hadn't told her
| parents about her pregnancy
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I happened to be seated behind some people on an aircraft who
| were in the business of doing these sales pitches and discussing
| it without shame. But in their case, they were targeting people
| who called the police regarding property crime, and then trying
| to sell them alarm systems.
|
| Nothing they said was illegal, but it felt immoral and like they
| were taking advantage of people in vulnerable situations.
| Although I feel like we aren't meant to discuss morality when
| there is money to be made, if it is capitalism and business, then
| anything and everything is fair game -- even this.
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| I highly doubt Matt Haughey is correct about pulsepoint being the
| source of this information. The source was almost certainly
| services that scan the public radio broadcast of emergency
| communications. As a first correction, pulsepoint isn't a
| company. It is a nonprofit. Obviously nonprofits can sell data,
| but it is clear Haughey didn't go very deep in his research to
| get such a basic item wrong.
| endre wrote:
| the European mind can not comprehend this high level of
| capitalism
| Wojtkie wrote:
| I recently got my car totaled by a distracted driver. Somehow,
| within the week, I had 4 different law firms cold-call me and ask
| if I needed representation. Some were more unscrupulous than
| others, but I got pretty livid that something or someone shared
| my information with them.
|
| Even worse, after I bought a new vehicle I've received 4+
| "extended warranty" junk mail letters that look very official. It
| comes off as very predatory and leaves a generally bad taste in
| my mouth with how bad data protections are.
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