Volkswagen representatives demanded a $150 fee before using GPS to locate the vehicle and child.
A family is suing VW after the company refused to help them locate their carjacked vehicle with their toddler son inside unless the parents or police paid a $150 subscription fee.
Everything started if February of this year when Taylor Shepherd, after pulling into her driveway in her 2021 VW Atlas, was carjacked by two masked men. Worse yet, her two-year-old son was in the backseat when it happened. She tried stopping them but they literally ran over her with the Atlas; breaking her pelvis and putting her six month pregnancy at risk. “They ran over the entire left side of my body. There were tire tracks all over the left side of my stomach,” Shepherd told Fox32.
Shepherd called 911 thinking that she would be able to get GPS info through VW’s vehicle control and tracking Car-Net app. The app turned out to be useless though unless you paid, which is a wild thing to ask in an emergency like this. However that’s exactly what VW did when Lake County Sheriff’s contacted the company for the GPS Data.
read more: https://jalopnik.com/parents-of-baby-in-carjacked-vehicle-are-suing-vw-for-r-1851025357
I’m going to play devil’s advocate here: how is the guy on the phone supposed to know it really is the police on the other side and not just some guy trying to scam his way into a freebie?
You could say that companies should err on the side of caution, but then every potential customer could pull the same, and then how do you weed out the real ones from the fake ones?
You could argue the service should be free anyway, but then we’d be arguing a different point.
At the individual level this is actually pretty simple. I work in IT and when I used to do security training the way we’d validate is with a known contact.
In this situation you get the contacting officers name and department, disconnect the call, call the non-emergency listed number for that department and ask for that officer by name.
There’s a lot of other failure point potential in this scenario but validating the person calling is actually law enforcement shouldn’t be one of them.
That is good life advice.
I hammered into my elderly parents that if they ever get a call/text from their “bank”, “tax department”, “insurance”, or literally anything - ask for a case number and hang up. Then call the number listed on the official website.
Now they’re telling everyone they know about it. Good on them.
In a normal business that is not a mega corporation you would just do it. You can just activate it for a limited period if you really feel suspicious, after two or three tries you will quickly spot the people trying to abuse the system.
Even if people could abuse the system for free aubsceiptions, I don’t agree with the fact that preventing people from getting free subscription is a higher priority than helping a mother getting her 2 years old back.
Ask for name and department of calling officer. Disconnect call. Call department’s non-emergency number, ask to be connected to said officer.
Boom, verified. Standard operating procedure for any sane company that might get a request like this.
Meanwhile you’re on the hook personally for what they do with the car in those 3 days.
Do u guys not understand simple liability laws in the USA???
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It’s not like they don’t know who owns the car. They should be able to check afterwards if it was a real emergency, and if it was faked, send the bill and maybe report them for impersonating a police officer.
Lol wut? There’s no way a manufacturer knows who owns the car unless it was registered
I was thinking that if they can remotely unlock features based on a subscription I assume there’s an account involved at some point.
Won’t someone think of the billion-dollar megacorps‽ They may lose a few bucks saving kidnapped children on the off-chance some fakers pretend to be cops! GASP!
You’re acting as if this is some sort of widespread form of criminal activity and that it’s not already a crime to impersonate a cop or to commit wire fraud while committing a kidnapping. Because who gives a shit about any of that when a few bucks could be made?
If only there was some system in place where police could verify their authority somehow.
Cop only number or internal group to transfer to? Fax number to send a warrant with contact info so VW can call back and investigate if need be? Get the police department number, google to confirm they’re legit, and call back? Thats just off the top of my head.
If VW doesn’t have an option like that its poor design. If the guy didn’t know, poor training. One or both are gonna be resolved now that the spotlight is on them.
You don’t have to go that far. The rep could just be soft-blocked to enable the feature unless a card was processed first.
Erring on the side of caution is to say no to the random that calls you asking for GPS coordinates
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