I had glanced at the headline on this story about a rogue auto-dealership employee disabling people’s cars using a remote black box, but didn’t realize this had occurred in Austin.
The dealership used a system called Webtech Plus as an alternative to repossessing vehicles that haven’t been paid for. Operated by Cleveland-based Pay Technologies, the system lets car dealers install a small black box under vehicle dashboards that responds to commands issued through a central website, and relayed over a wireless pager network. The dealer can disable a car’s ignition system, or trigger the horn to begin honking, as a reminder that a payment is due. The system will not stop a running vehicle.
Not withstanding the fact that: A.) This was a rogue employee, and B.) People should pay their car payments, I for one vow that I will never, EVER do business with Texas Auto Center under any circumstances. I’m not going to let Big Brother monitor my car, and I’m certainly not going to let this dealership’s Little Brother do the same.
If anyone can point to step-by-step instructions on how to disable this device, I’ll post a followup link here.
Tags: Austin, Big Brother, cars, Little Brother, Texas Auto Center
This isn’t a place you would have done business with in the first place.
Yeah, what Joe said. My understanding is that this sort of thing is designed for marginal customers; people who have bad credit, and perhaps already have a repo on their record.
From a strictly liberatarian standpoint, this doesn’t push my buttons; private contractual arrangement between customer and vendor, the customers are probably grateful just to HAVE a car, and the vendor has some additional protection (and is probably charging an absurd rate on the loan).
The rogue employee sabotaging the cars does push my buttons, but that’s probably a contractual violation that can be settled in civil court. I’m willing to bet some local lawyer (Funk and Associates?) is drooling over the chance to represent the affected class in this case…
Turning it into a feature, they could probably do a snappy side-business of selling bait cars to the police.