So Joe seems to be fairly well off in that he has two cars and the time in his day to get either one of the washed. How would Joe feel if he owned the car wash and someone was caught doing this to him. I suspect Joe would take them to court for damages since they signed a contract saying the deal was for a single vehicle and that there were provisions for transferring the deal over to another vehicle of which he didn’t avail himself to use (even though he has free time).
Yes, Joe is a privileged twit. Doesn’t make him any less of a friend, but I sure would needle him about it to the point of shame. How much water did you steal today Joe? Can I come over and wash my car at your house for free?
It is clearly unethical and a breach of the contractual assumptions.
Of course, unethical choices fall on a continuum of possible severity. This falls on the side of checking to see if the grapes are good this week and sharing your Netflix password, i.e. not severe. In fact, this type of gaming can be thought of as one of those possible choices that businesses assume customers will occasionally make, and they accept that as part of doing business. As long as most customers don’t feel the need to do this, these system gamers actually benefit the business.
Joe’s personal utility curve does not allow for $24/mo to be a price he will accept for keeping one car clean, but $24/mo for keeping 2 cars clean does work for him. The car wash gets a customer, and nearly $300/yr in revenue, in exchange for washing cars no more often than the contract stipulates.
No, he paid for the right to wash his (one) car as often as he wants, up to and including once per day.
You could desrcibe this as either “One wash per day (but limited to one vehicle)” or as “The right to wash one vehicle (but limited to once per day).” The effect is the same, but the latter makes it more obvious that what he’s doing goes beyond what he’s entitled to.
Apart from the ethics (which I agree are dodgy) there’s a practical problem: The car wash probably has video cameras, and thus the ability to check which vehicle(s) are being washed under any particular RFID tag.
I don’t think it is - but only because it doesn’t make any difference to Netflix if it’s my son who lives with me who has the password or if he moved out yesterday and still has the password.
I will say that at some point the car wash will stop it - maybe right now , he’s the only person doing it so they let it go. But let word get out and that will change. I was on a cruise once and some people were surprised that my husband could get two drinks at once with the drink package ( one for me and one for him). They had previously sailed with another line which required a 15 minute wait between drinks for those who had the package. The difference is was that on my line , all the adults in the same cabin had to have the same package so my husband and I couldn’t be in the same cabin and buy just one drink package. On the other line, just one person in the cabin could buy the package so they made it undesirable to have one person get the package and take an hour for four people to get drinks.
That’s what he says - and he’s not exactly lying but how can he possibly know that? He might think that now, but maybe when he’s in that situation he decides the car doesn’t get dirty quickly enough to spend his time getting it washed every day.
It’s unethical. He’s gaming the system. He’s a fucking dick. If the wording of the contract specifies that it’s for one car only, which it almost certainly does, he’s probably a criminal as well.
As an aside, the thought of a daily car wash in my drought stricken area is way more horrifying to me.
BTW, he’s not really gaming the system; he’s cheating the system. Gaming would be doing something that is technically OK by the rules but not following the spirit of the rules. In this case, Joe is clearly violating the rules which states that it’s a per vehicle plan.
It may not be stated in the OP, but it certainly is in the rules of any car wash subscription plan.
Yeah assuming there is a contract or T&C somewhere which says you can only use it on one car then it is unethical (and even if not it’s still a teeny bit unethical, I mean they clearly only expect you to use one car
In the grand scheme of things it’s not up there with genocide or microwaving fish in a shared break room, but it’s definitely unethical.
Personally whether it breaks my personal code of ethics would depend on whether it’s a big multinational megacorp run car wash or small locally owned business.
Either way I probably wouldn’t do it as I wouldn’t want to get caught and face the embarrassment involved.
People readily accept, “emptor caveat” as part of the hazards of doing business. In fact, it is an oft quoted saying and something we are just supposed to resign ourselves to.
I say, “venditor caveat”.
If there is a loophole or weakness, why can’t he exploit it? Corporations maintain legal teams for just that purpose.
Because it’s not ethical to be a fucking scumbag. The question was about ethics.
He peeled the sticker off of his windshield and laminated it on a card so he could transfer it between cars in violation of a contract that he signed. How the blazing blue fuck is this a “loophole”? It’s theft.
No. Only what is written. This (to me) is like the same discussion we are having over in another thread about offending neighbors who see you naked in your backyard. Or every time the “unwritten rules” of baseball come up. Or to an extreme example every time a cop makes up a law and arrests somebody. I only need to follow rules that are written down so I can see them, know them and agree to them. Not following your expectations of what I should be doing according to YOUR opinion (which I might not even know because it is unwritten) is not unethical.
ETA: As others have said, it would be unethical if the deal specified one car per day.
This, to me, is the crux of the matter. And it shows up so often in commercial transactions that I think it’s an ethical law. If you don’t believe in tipping and you think that’s appropriate, just tell your server in advance that you won’t be tipping. That way, the server can act with full information. If you believe you should be able to wash two cars with your laminated sticker, just tell the car wash that you’ll be doing that. That way, they can act accordingly.
If your ability to engage in a particular commercial transaction depends on someone else not knowing or misunderstanding the parameters of the transaction, it’s unethical.