I made a $60B corporation blink after they stole $X from me. You can too.

TLDR? GTB/Grok:1 Speadsheet MBA MFers: 0

I can't tell you who, but in 2023 a car company stole $X from me. I complained to the CFPB, I complained to the FTC, I complained to the OR Fraud folks. Crickets. CFPB was the most annoying because basically the companies are allowed to respond and if they say "no, we didn't do that", that's it. I tried calling various consumer law lawyers in town; finally got one that was honest with me who told me "I get they ripped you off, but you're going to spend 10*X$ in legal fees to get $X back, and I'll do it if you want, but I don't like doing it."

I was complaining to @grok about this, and asked it how I could screw with them. Unfortunately, mailing them $6.66 in pennies was nixed, because they didn't have to take change. MFers.

But Grok suggested Small Claims.

So I made a point of paying them $666 every month at first.

I'm down with the woo

Now most people who aren't software engineers don't realize this, but software is about 90% faith. Me and every other web engineer have had the situation where we're reading some code, and it's obviously broken, and we think to ourselves "There's no way this should work" and production breaks.

Satan is the ultimate virus, I'm sure that the corp has no idea why their production code (which was already crap) started breaking.

So eventually, the loan was paid off, though I made a point of paying them $6.66 extra so they had to send me a check for $6.80 back. (14 cents in extra non-interest revenge, Woot!)

Revenge is a Dish Best Served Cold

Don't fuck with forcibly retired guys, we got time...

So I was sitting there waiting for my pink slip back, because I didn't want these cretins to be able to screw with me. Didn't come. Sent a fax, (I stopped waiting for an hour on the phone for their customer service once I got their fax number) no answer. So back to Grok, which wrote a letter for me, which I then sent Registered Mail to their address, and kept the receipt. Got a call back from a person (They don't have last names at that company...) there who confirmed that they weren't sure what my address was. So I confirmed it, (though the letter had my address, idiots, typical).

So grok helped me with the Small Claims paperwork including finding the 5 different laws they'd broken. So off to the courthouse, but I couldn't file because the clerk was confused and thought that I needed a person's name for the company's registered agent. (Nope, don't remember the magic phrase, but you add the magic "whoever" phrase and you're good.) On the way back, the title guy called me, and I told him that the company had overcharged me, and damaged my car necessitating $130 in locksmith fees. He promised to look into it, never called back.

So after a month and putting my wife in memory care, it popped back up to the top of my To-Do list, and I filed the Small Claims. That was in October.

Mediation was scheduled for January, that didn't go well for them. Grok had buoyed me up, and since it was remote, I was able to ask it questions during the mediation, and I blew their CA law thing out of the water. (Later I found out that CA is even stricter on lenders than OR law for mystery fees, idiots.)

They did try to extort me by threatening to make a bad credit report on my paid off loan. But I already knew that violating Federal Law was just a Monday morning for these guys, so I just told them I was forcibly retired, so F off.

Venting about Bean Counters

I have financed 4 cars. 3/4 I paid them every month, moved, no problem. But these clowns? The first few bills were for a different amount each time, generally delivered kind of late, so I never setup auto-payment with my Bank. Then I moved. Then I was in the hospital for 40 days.

I should have known when I was buying the car and they put the wrong interest rate on the form and I had to correct them. Grrrr.

The other 3 were banks or Credit Unions. But this one wasn't. This was a division of a car company. Banks and credit unions see the big picture, yes, we're civilians. Deal with it. Because otherwise, people like me will trash your company to all of our friends, and you'll lose $1,000,000 over $1. I will never buy another car from that company, and I tell all my friends "On the way home, stop by the credit union and see if they'll beat the dealer financing, and really, go by before you even buy the car, because that will force them to give you an even better deal".

Don't let the bean counters run your company.

Beans go both ways

Powerpoint, Excel, and MBAs have killed more people than any war ever. Somewhere in that company there's a presentation that says if they screw customers in this particular way, they'll be liable for $1 more, but they stand to make $1.25 more. Because most people aren't going to go through all the trouble of a small claim.

And if I didn't have an AI helping me, I probably wouldn't have either.

But I did.

Here's the thing cretins: You're used to the old way where all this stuff was so complicated most people wouldn't bother. Eventually, things like CFPB will be an AI where people file complaints, and the CFPB AI will argue with your AI. But now, the math has changed.

So update your spreadsheets, and if you're making what I call the "bad money" tradeoff of charging extra "unitemized fees" vs. "possible litigation" just stop, and fire whatever MBA toting asshole proposed that. Because not only are you tanking future sales for $.25, not only did you have to pay me 3x what you stole from me, plus your legal fees, but you had to pay your legal firm.

Spend more on programmers than lawyers, and you'll have happier customers.

Dear Reader, You can do this too. The cretins have now paid for a few years of Premium+ for me.

To quote (badly) well known AI pioneer Thomas Jefferson: Hundreds for Grok, zero pennies for corporate tribute.

To that end, if you have a Verified account, feel free to DM me for advice if you've been screwed by a big corp. I can't represent you, but grok can...

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