The thing that surprised me the most about it is that FedEx didn't just pay them the 400k for lost shipment. They had all the proof that it was lost, all that Fedex had was a signature of someone who doesn't even work at their fulfilment centre. Even after their "higher ups" got involved all that FedEx could do was "huh, sucks to be you I guess?" Does freight shipment not have insurance? What's going on here?
michaelt 12 minutes ago [-]
> all that Fedex had was a signature of someone who doesn't even work at their fulfilment centre. [...] What's going on here?
Basically a lot of global logistics runs on trust.
If a driver is delivering a pallet to the FooCorp warehouse, he doesn't get given a copy of the FooCorp org chart, or get an example signature to compare against the signature they're given, or get given a map or a secret password or anything like that.
He just pulls up to the building that says FooCorp on it, says "got a delivery for FooCorp", they let him in and he accepts any name and signature from whoever is near the door.
gambiting 8 minutes ago [-]
>>If a driver is delivering a pallet to the FooCorp warehouse, he doesn't get given a copy of the FooCorp org chart, or get an example signature to compare against the signature they're given, or get given a map or a secret password or anything like that.
Obviously. But if there is 400 grand on the line, you'd think someone would actually check(when the claim is made). The receiver would say "you have a signature from person X. Person X doesn't actually work here". Fedex then says "ok, prove it" - and then the receiver does, in whatever way is legally acceptable.
InsideOutSanta 2 hours ago [-]
This reminds me of the recent story where an Uber courier stole two MacBooks, there was no signature, CCTV showing no delivery, and Apple was just like "our carrier has completed the requested investigation, and no further action will be taken by Apple."
I mean, I'm sure Apple's still the same for their own stuff.
But retail is a whole different beast.
kawsper 45 minutes ago [-]
Wouldn't the right course of action in that case be to issue a chargeback and let Apple and Uber fight it out?
actionfromafar 34 minutes ago [-]
Yes, but it can be quite burdensome if your Apple account has any value to you. (Say, if you are an app developer for instance, or aren't quite sure which services you have registered with an apple email address, etc.)
yard2010 1 hours ago [-]
When you're the one making the rules, enforcing them and judging who breaks them, you can basically do whatever you want as long as you pay taxes :)
actionfromafar 36 minutes ago [-]
As long as you properly plan your taxes to 0.
suprfsat 1 hours ago [-]
And the jury's still out on that last bit.
agos 1 hours ago [-]
I wonder if this tunes changes once lawyers are involved
steve918 2 hours ago [-]
This isn't surprising at all if you have every had an interaction with Fedex.
whazor 30 minutes ago [-]
Shipment insurance is normally an optional add-on. IMO, if the shipper doesn’t get it, it is on them.
It is nicer for the shipper to decide the value and pay the corresponding price for that. Because you need to know the replacement value of that lost item. This is dependent on all kinds of factors.
gambiting 24 minutes ago [-]
Is there any scenario where someone would knowingly decide not to take insurance on a 400k shipment? What would be the reason for doing so?
In this case the shipper is the company behind the Playdate, so it seems weird to me they wouldn't insure their own stock. But maybe there's a good reason why this isn't done?
raybb 1 hours ago [-]
Would playdate be able to sue FedEx or take them to small claims court or do you sign something when you use FedEx that says you can't sue them for XYZ?
pbhjpbhj 6 minutes ago [-]
'you cannot sue us for not doing the only thing you are paying us for (delivering your goods)' sounds like an inconscionable clause. Surely any worthwhile legal system would make such clauses illegal. Otherwise many scams (fake invoicing, for example) would be essentially legal as long the perp buried a clause in a contract.
sweetjuly 1 hours ago [-]
$400k is quite a bit more than they typically let you pursue in small claims court :)
supermatt 2 hours ago [-]
I wanted to buy a playdate when they first came out, but unfortunately they weren't shipping to my country.
Now they do, so I just placed an order 15 mins ago and my partner just received a call from the bank to verify that it wasn't a fraudulent transaction.
She just asked me - what is this "play date" you just sent $300 to? Oh dear. :D
beAbU 17 minutes ago [-]
This comment fells too reddit esque for me, as if it's crafted to solicit upvotes or "facebook up, hit your lawyer and delete the gym" style comments.
- Why is your partner getting the call from the bank when you placed the order?
- If it's a shared account, why would you not forewarn your partner about this transaction? If I'm about to buy pay for something big from our joint account, I sure as hell let my partner know about it ahead of time.
- If none of the above applies, then a simple "it's a portable gaming console that I've been yearning after for ages that I finally ordered earlier today", and 9/10 times that should settle the matter.
Toorkit 41 minutes ago [-]
Then you say "it's a handheld gaming device" and the matter is settled.
aa-jv 24 minutes ago [-]
Then you spend days on end winding the crank, endlessly ..
Not sure if it helps anyone else, but for me it made the story a lot easier to grasp.
I used an LLM to generate bullet points, manually cleaned those up, then used an LLM to create a rough draft of a newspaper article, which I again manually cleaned up, double-checked, formatted, and added images and links.
romanhn 24 minutes ago [-]
Interesting choice to go with a PI who's focused on recovery rather than criminal convinctions. Given the lack of sophistication in this operation, I suspect recovery would have happened either way, and the thieves might have faced some actual consequences. As is, they didn't lose anything other than the stolen items and will likely continue to capitalize on similar opportunities in the future.
Terr_ 3 hours ago [-]
Huh, so a half-baked crime of opportunity, as opposed to a sophisticated operation.
Still unclear on how the delivery managed to get put (or taken) to the wrong side of the road at a construction site. Fedex mistake? Trickery by thief? Misdirection by thief that took them from loading-dock?
josephg 2 hours ago [-]
Almost certainly just a fedex mistake taking them to the wrong lot. Happens all the time. And, Hanlon's razor - never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.
Its pretty easy to imagine construction workers just signing for everything that arrives, and only afterwards figuring out that the address is wrong.
Shank 1 hours ago [-]
I suppose the key insight is that mandatory device registration really saved them. Everyone loves the concept of an entirely open device that doesn’t require this, but if Panic didn’t have registration, it would’ve been impossible to locate the devices, and end up being a $400k write off.
Hackbraten 2 hours ago [-]
Love this quote in particular:
> Thanks so much for listening, and please don’t steal our Playdates. Because we will find you.
LeonidasXIV 2 hours ago [-]
Allegedly.
Cthulhu_ 56 minutes ago [-]
I wonder where to put it though.
> Thanks so much for alledgedly listening
> please don’t alledgedly steal our Playdates.
> please don’t steal our alledged Playdates.
> Because we will alledgedly find you.
actionfromafar 33 minutes ago [-]
Allegedly because we will find you.
jatins 1 hours ago [-]
wait FedEx just delivers 400k worth of stuff without any KYC or OTP verification??
Spooky23 27 minutes ago [-]
UPS pays their drivers very well. FedEx… does not.
I’ve had them “deliver” a bunch of PCs to a dumpster. Or drop off a laptop to a garbage can in a Manhattan office. How do I know? The courier took a picture to document the delivery.
Cthulhu_ 55 minutes ago [-]
I get the impression business-to-business shipping is a lot more informal... somehow.
57 minutes ago [-]
RantyDave 2 hours ago [-]
Strange things are afoot at the circle k.
markovs_gun 1 hours ago [-]
Imagine being the thief in this case and getting stuck with an entire pallet of these weird indie handhelds that you can't fence because nobody knows what they are just hanging out on your garage.
actionfromafar 32 minutes ago [-]
It seemed it was a planned thing, so probably not a big surprise.
markovs_gun 17 minutes ago [-]
That's not the vibe I got. For me it seemed like FedEx showed up, said they had a pallet of electronics, and the guy signed for it as a crime of opportunity. Then someone else stole some later.
piqufoh 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
jna_sh 2 hours ago [-]
Source for the arrest? I listened to this the other day and I don’t recall an arrest being mentioned. The podcast in fact covers that the police weren’t very much interested, which is why they got a PI involved, who got the thieves to “return” (dump in an adjacent car park) the devices simply by asking questions.
saagarjha 2 hours ago [-]
I’m guessing the AI hallucinated it.
gambiting 2 hours ago [-]
You know what, until your comment I haven't even considered that someone just copy pasted the entire transcript into ChatGPT and asked for a summary. It sucks - and I see that happening everywhere actually, especially in facebook groups, people are trying to be "helpful" by just copying output from ChatGPT or Gemini, but more often than not it's just completely wrong.
saagarjha 2 hours ago [-]
I can’t say for sure but the thing I thought was suspicious was someone saying “The episode provides an in-depth look at the challenges Panic faced during this ordeal and the measures taken to resolve the situation”. People who actually read the content and offer TL;DRs typically wouldn’t include statements like these that are basically just fluff.
piqufoh 17 minutes ago [-]
Yeah - I don't have an hour to listen to the podcast or read the transcript. I got an AI to summarise the article and it saved me the time, I thought someone else might appreciate the summary (and it appears they did).
Perhaps next time I'll add TL;got-an-llm-to-do-it or something
Thanks. I don’t have time to listen and reading a transcript of casual conversation is awful.
54 minutes ago [-]
forrestthewoods 1 hours ago [-]
This is getting downvoted but I actually quite appreciated it. Story is interesting enough I'll listen to the whole podcast! I can't do that for every single podcast link that I come across. There's not enough time in the year much less the day.
Wowfunhappy 49 minutes ago [-]
It's AI generated, how do I know if it's accurate? It could be making up the whole thing.
nkrisc 16 minutes ago [-]
If that concerns you, read the actual transcript. I honestly don’t care how accurate this is because beyond casual interest right now, I’m likely never going to think about this again.
traverseda 54 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, hn will just downvote anything with the word ai-generated in it blindly.
2 hours ago [-]
bmalum 3 hours ago [-]
Surprised by HN again. 1st Place „Story“, wanted to read because no headphones with me, ending up reading a podcast transcript, and TL,DR out.
voidUpdate 2 hours ago [-]
I read it all just now, I quite enjoyed it. Its not my preferred format to read but it wasn't bad
cr3ative 3 hours ago [-]
The transcript was a good read, I also don’t prefer audio.
Admittedly I can skim read quite well though.
nkrisc 58 minutes ago [-]
I found it a miserable read. It’s a pain to get through all the tic words and aborted sentences, I gave up very soon after starting.
saagarjha 2 hours ago [-]
I read it for lunch yesterday. It wasn’t that bad.
Rendered at 11:43:32 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Basically a lot of global logistics runs on trust.
If a driver is delivering a pallet to the FooCorp warehouse, he doesn't get given a copy of the FooCorp org chart, or get an example signature to compare against the signature they're given, or get given a map or a secret password or anything like that.
He just pulls up to the building that says FooCorp on it, says "got a delivery for FooCorp", they let him in and he accepts any name and signature from whoever is near the door.
Obviously. But if there is 400 grand on the line, you'd think someone would actually check(when the claim is made). The receiver would say "you have a signature from person X. Person X doesn't actually work here". Fedex then says "ok, prove it" - and then the receiver does, in whatever way is legally acceptable.
These days you have to beg them to take their proprietary prototype hardware back https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgeEHdAmJDg
But retail is a whole different beast.
It is nicer for the shipper to decide the value and pay the corresponding price for that. Because you need to know the replacement value of that lost item. This is dependent on all kinds of factors.
In this case the shipper is the company behind the Playdate, so it seems weird to me they wouldn't insure their own stock. But maybe there's a good reason why this isn't done?
Now they do, so I just placed an order 15 mins ago and my partner just received a call from the bank to verify that it wasn't a fraudulent transaction.
She just asked me - what is this "play date" you just sent $300 to? Oh dear. :D
- Why is your partner getting the call from the bank when you placed the order? - If it's a shared account, why would you not forewarn your partner about this transaction? If I'm about to buy pay for something big from our joint account, I sure as hell let my partner know about it ahead of time. - If none of the above applies, then a simple "it's a portable gaming console that I've been yearning after for ages that I finally ordered earlier today", and 9/10 times that should settle the matter.
Not sure if it helps anyone else, but for me it made the story a lot easier to grasp.
I used an LLM to generate bullet points, manually cleaned those up, then used an LLM to create a rough draft of a newspaper article, which I again manually cleaned up, double-checked, formatted, and added images and links.
Still unclear on how the delivery managed to get put (or taken) to the wrong side of the road at a construction site. Fedex mistake? Trickery by thief? Misdirection by thief that took them from loading-dock?
Its pretty easy to imagine construction workers just signing for everything that arrives, and only afterwards figuring out that the address is wrong.
> Thanks so much for listening, and please don’t steal our Playdates. Because we will find you.
> Thanks so much for alledgedly listening
> please don’t alledgedly steal our Playdates.
> please don’t steal our alledged Playdates.
> Because we will alledgedly find you.
I’ve had them “deliver” a bunch of PCs to a dumpster. Or drop off a laptop to a garbage can in a Manhattan office. How do I know? The courier took a picture to document the delivery.
Perhaps next time I'll add TL;got-an-llm-to-do-it or something
Admittedly I can skim read quite well though.