Upshot: Never, Ever EVER Buy Cars From Texas Auto Center

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.

By Lawrence Person

Lawrence Person is a science fiction writer living in Austin, Texas. His short fiction has appeared in Asimov's, Analog, Postscripts, Jim Baen's Universe, Fear, and several anthologies. He also edits the Hugo-nominated SF critical magazine Nova Express, and runs the Turkey City Writer's Workshop. His non-fiction has appeared in National Review, Reason, Whole Earth Review, The Freeman, The World & I, Science Fiction Eye, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and Slashdot.org. He owns such a large library (mostly science fiction first editions) he had to buy a two-story house to put it in, and then adopted a golden retriever to drag him out of his house on a regular basis. He also makes a mean batch of salsa.

3 comments

  2. 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…

  3. Turning it into a feature, they could probably do a snappy side-business of selling bait cars to the police.

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