[Rest] markets itself as a way to "unlock a new revenue stream"
with the help of a "robust algorithm" for detecting smoking.
Hotels where these sensors are installed rack up complaints and negative reviews, after Rest sensors register false positives - thereby unlocking that revenue stream for the hotels.
The awesome thing about black-box algorithms is they can't be challenged when they're wrong. And errors reliably favor the institution that manages (and profits from) them.
No, surely this product didn’t just come to market in the last 6 months. Every problem in the world isn’t caused by Trump, though many are. Blaming Trump for hotel smoke detectors delegitimizes the legitimate problems coming from this administration.
I bet it’s also a rev share model. Hotel doesn’t pay for the device but revenue is shared. Like the traffic cameras where they shorten yellow light to durations that a car is incapable of stopping in time.
So aside from Rest being incompetent morons ("temperature changes" from smoking??), they now also have incentive to make it trigger as much as possible.
Primitive contract asset tokenization. What other parts of the hotel-customer contract could become zero-capex financial instruments powered by ambiguous surveillance data, washed in health and safety?
Asset tokenization refers to the process of converting rights to a real-world asset into a digital token on a blockchain or distributed ledger. These tokens represent ownership, rights, or claims on tangible or intangible assets and can be traded or transferred on digital platforms.
> SEC.. considering changes that would promote tokenization, including an innovation exception that would allow for new trading methods and provide targeted relief to support the development of a tokenized securities ecosystem .. Atkins said the movement of assets onchain is inevitable, stating: “If it can be tokenized, it will be tokenized.”
I scoured their website to look for any clues about how it might (allegedly) work and got a fat lot of nothing.
> Rest constantly monitors room air quality, using a proprietary algorithm to pinpoint any tobacco, marijuana, or nicotine presence.
So a smoke detector with an "algorithm" attached. Uh huh. How does that algorithm work?
> By analyzing various factors and patterns[...]
Some cutting edge shit here!
And as for accuracy, they don't even pretend to make promises about "99.99% success rates" or anything. This is the most detailed they get:
> Q: Is it accurate?
> A: Our sophisticated smoking detection algorithm has been tested for accuracy in real-world scenarios, backed by years of development, and tens of thousands of hours of rigorous testing and validation.
It's going to be similar bullshit to what Halo uses in the highschool vape sensors. A bunch of particulate sensors for like PM1, PM2.5, PM10, sniffing out VOCs, and then they consider any tripping of any of that to be a "smoke" sesh.
Edit: Oh. Rest is just NoiseAware. They're just reselling NoiseAware sensors which are just - yes - a bunch of particulate sensors hooked up to an ESP32 hooked to a web dashboard.
> The awesome thing about black-box algorithms is they can't be challenged when they're wrong. And errors reliably favor the institution that manages (and profits from) them.
Doesn't the US have false advertisement rules/scam prevention? Around here one person would have to fight this in court to tumble the whole thing down as there is no way Rest can prove it's claim is airtight (pun intended) due to simple statistics and physics (e.g. hair drying leaves burn particulates as well). I doubt it will even come this far as it's obviously a money making scheme over the customers back and acts in bad faith ("The sensor's don't make mistakes" is a claim to innocence where none is valid as almost everyone can smell). It's probably fine as an early detection agent but you'd have to actually check.
Also the charges are disproportionate to the beach of contract, unless they steam clean the room every time they claim the money. Which they obviously don't according to the "dirty room" comments.
Hotel guests are not buying the sensors. The hotels would probably have a claim due to this, but since they're "unlocking new revenue streams", they are probably not going to bother.
You would need a pretty good sensor to detect a temperature increase from lighting a cigarette. Most likely, the hair dryer has a hair stuck that gets burnt once turned on
Or perhaps formaldehyde release from hair spray and other chemicals partly due to the heat of the hair dryer, but also released because of the agitation and wind.
Technically I think perfume, sweat and trace amounts of smoking residue, including formaldehyde, from personal belongings could probably also raise VOCs as hotels often have very, very poor airflow by design - open windows and balconies have historically encouraged smokers so they were removed, but now you can rarely find any hotels with fresh air in the rooms, and those you find often smell of cigarette smoke for obvious reasons. (Smokers will often stay at hotels with airflow or balconies and take advantage of these features when they can. Also, airing out a room will kill a scent temporarily but only cleaning the room or replacing natural textiles will permanently remove the scent when the window is closed.)
If I got one of these I'd pay it and never, ever, ever stay at any hotel owned by the entity again. Being that I spend $25k-50k a year on hotels, their loss is a small hotel's gain.
In fact, whoever does this will lose my business ahead of time as I will never stay at any hotel that uses this service. A few minutes on Tripadvisor and you'll know.
Such incredible business myopia. Hotels are one of the few businesses that loyalty is not only a boon, but a necessity for survival. Without brand loyalty, hotels suffer.
Often I wonder if some scammers (and this is totally a scam) basically pay a premium to feel like they've outsmarted people, or for the smirking satisfaction that their victims can't do anything about it. Some scams are so much work for so little gain, or so obviously counterproductive in anything but the short term, that it seems like that.
So someone does not smoke in their room but they’re charged for cleaning anyway because a third party (Rest) told the hotel that they smoked in their room. What sort of evidence should one gather during their stay to make the strongest possible (defamation? fraud?) case against Rest? (Not that anyone wants to do that on their trip, just curious about the legal implications.)
Yeah, that’s totally fair. At least they’ll have testimony that the smoking was actually witnessed. Most people aren’t going to even bother fighting that since it actually happened. I just worry about abuse cases and the most obvious one here is false positives being assumed true by everyone who profits from them.
Edit:
Sorry, that’s from the wrong point of view but I don’t think the answer changes. It seems Rest will have to change a lot of their marketing language to really avoid liability but if someone is actually caught smoking then it’s not likely to manifest.
From the thread, it sounds as if they don't even pretend this is about cleaning, they're just saying "we're a smoke-free hotel, so smoking costs $500 as a punitive measure, period".
I wonder if they could legally separate this from any real-world activities completely? During check-in, put a clause in the contract "if our partner company says so, you have to pay $500 extra. By signing, you agree to that" - without any reference to smoking at all.
I hope this wouldn't be legal, but it sounds like it could be.
Religious freedom may come into play here. Incense and candles are a basis for many faiths so assigning a fee on people practicing their faith will cost them in court and in payouts.
Absolutely. Hotels equipped with Rest have seen an 84x increase in smoking fine collection. Plus, our smoking detection technology helps prevent damage to rooms and reduce a number of future violations."
Apparently there are way more people smoking than we thought there are or the sensor just generates a lot of false positives.
The language they are using all over the site is very interesting though, see here an example:
From how it works:
"Automatically charge
If smoking is detected, your staff gets notified, simplifying the process of charging smoking fees."
With a system with false positives, it makes total sense to use real time notifications to staff to go and check what's going on, that would be legit, but then on top saying that you automatically charge?
It almost feels like they are selling a way to fraud to their customers while covering themselves against any litigation by using the right copy in there to support that it's the responsibility of the Hotel staff to go and check in real time that the violation is actually happening.
Is there that much smoking in hotels? Do they charge more for smoking rooms?
A number like 84x suggests that it's basically zero now. That kinda makes sense. The only one who would notice is the cleaning staff, and relying on their word for "it smelled like smoke" sounds like a way to get a chargeback. They'd call you on it only if they were forced to take the room out of rotation to air it out.
So maybe there are a lot of people smoking just a little (perhaps a joint), and getting away with it. That might make a number like 84x work.
It doesn’t imply that. I’m pretty sure it is all false positives, but that number does not imply that. It could simply be that only ~1 in 84 smokers was being fined before
No... it could be false positives, it could also be that almost no one (~1%) of smokers were caught before and this is actually a miracle technology that detects smoking.
Frankly it tracks that almost no one was caught before.
> I asked Erik if the room needed to be cleaned [...] And he said it wasn't needing special cleaning so he offered me $250
Well that sort of says everything we'd want to know. They charged the customer $500, like they'll need to tear up the room and bring in a large team to clean everything. But they never bothered with that because they know it's a scam, and the company selling these knows exactly how their customers will use these.
Unsurprisingly, the customers just love this new technology and can't get enough of it:
> "Rest’s in-room smoking detection service has helped us capture a lucrative ancillary revenue stream while also improving our guest experience." Kirsten Snyder, Asset Manager, Woodbine
It's the consequence of growth capitalism. When it's not enough to make money, you have to make more money this quarter than you did last, then it's really only a matter of time until everything is monetised under the exclusive logic of greed, devoid of any other considerations of a moral or human order. Public goods, water fountains, libraries, beaches, forests. Basic state functions. Your attention, at every moment. On it marches.
I'd refuse to pay the charge on check out. If they charged my card anyways I would demand a refund and inform the consumer protection agency, wait 30 days and issue the chargeback. Luckily these things work well in my nation.
AmEx used to be good about doing chargebacks generally, but they once sided with the merchant during covid when I was sold an impossible itinerary and cost me $2k.
Since then I realized that I won’t always be able to do a chargeback, and I am much more cautious with vendors.
I think there are exceptions about "exigent circumstances" and COVID was considered one. My EU flight was not refunded as well despite the EU having strong protections. The airlines, at the time, were given a life-line.
I think these once in-a-decade or more events can be swallowed. But wouldn't be happy with a regular occurrence.
Yes they should be swallowed, but by the business/card company, not the consumer. They can decide if they want to get insured for that or not. It's ridiculous to subsidize their business risks.
Which is crazy to me. I had purchased international airline tickets 9 months prior to COVID.
Covid happened and everything was cancelled. The airline refused to refund, only give credit. The issue is that it was on an airline that was useless to me because this trip was cancelled and we were going to be rescheduling.
Did a chargeback with Apple even though I was past the date, they still gave me my money back. I was shocked
Chase was really weird about doing a chargeback for me when a restaurant charged me a second time under a different name a month after my visit. It took several phone calls and they eventually credited my account but they would not do a chargeback. Two identical charges a month apart. I could show that I wasn't even in the same state for the second one.
Leases often work this way. In theory it's illegal in the UK (for a home, businesses are assumed to be big boys who can negotiate on equal footing) but it's still pretty common to be charged when you move out. Specifically UK law says "reasonable wear and tear" is just an expected cost of people living in a house you let to them - so e.g. they're going to wear out carpet after some years, but a cigar burn is not OK, the walls won't look pristine but there shouldn't be graffiti, that sort of thing. They should vacuum floors but it's not reasonable to expect dust to magically vanish from every nook.
In practice in many cases you move out leaving the place very habitable, you get told they "had" to clean up your mess, and it's a suspiciously round number like £80 and they have plenty more "necessary" charges like this. In theory in the UK they're required to provide receipts showing their actual expense, but in practice they're looking at this as free revenue and most of their clients can't fight back.
I was buying, freeing me from the obvious revenge if I say "Fuck you" but there were a lot of other things to do for the move and having fought them down from the original outrageous fees they wanted I gave up although I did get as far as reporting them to their regulator and threatening legal action. In hindsight I'm quite sure I could have got to $0 and possibly also got the most senior woman who was straight up lying and clearly had done all this many times removed from the register of people fit to let out properties, but I didn't and I feel bad about that.
They absolutely prey on people not being having the time/resources to fight back.
A friend in the UK had his deposit withheld as "mail charges" by his landlord upon moving out. Turned out the fine print in his lease said that he wasn't allowed to receive mail at the house he was legally renting.
Time for the EU to legislate on this. Car rental companies should be required to provide a detailed report to the customer on the damage allowing the customer to challenge any potential cost estimation (with reason) that the rental car company provides. Then the rental companies should be required to prove to the customer the damage was fixed and provide the invoice.
Careful what you wish for. What you may get in one hand they'll take in another. They're pulling other crap like cleaning fees for a grain or two of sand too. Should the EU our saviour protect us against that?
Plenty alternatives to renting a car in Europe. Hit them where it hertz. Take a punt on smaller companies that are competing with eg total all inclusive insurance. Yup they're a bit more expensive sometimes but can result in an better overall experience (there are lots of scammy local companies too)
This could all be covered under legislation. If the EU can finally get airlines to agree on hand luggage standardisation I’m fairly sure they could agree that any additional cleaning or repairs must come with receipts. This makes it a lot easier for CC disputes at that point.
Exactly my thinking. If I get this smoking charge but haven't smoked, I should be able to go to my credit card provider and tell them to get me my 500$ back
I don't understand why so many commentators are acting surprised at this morally dubious company. Many if not most companies coming out of YCombinator are just as bad. Just one case is uBiome. In fact, I would argue that YCombinator and the startup culture they create directly enabled companies to do exactly this.
Having played with an SGP41 (a current-gen VOC sensor), you cannot correctly do anything involving a threshold. The sensor has a couple of nasty properties, all well documented in the datasheet:
- It has a lot of low frequency noise (timescale of hours to days), so you need to do some sort of high pass filter.
- The responses to different VOC compounds don’t even necessarily have the same sign.
So the sensor gives you a “raw” reading that you are supposed to post-process with a specific algorithm to produce a “VOC index” that, under steady state conditions, is a constant irrespective of the actual VOC level. And then you look at it over time and it will go to a higher value to indicate something like “it’s probably stinkier now than it was half an hour ago”.
This, of course, cannot distinguish smoking from perfume or from anything else, nor is it even particularly reliable at indicating anything at all.
Modern PM2.5 meters are actually pretty good, although they struggle in high humidity conditions. But they still can’t distinguish smoking from other sources on fine particles.
if you think a 'cheap sensor' is doing much of anything without the involvement of an algorithm somewhere then might I suggest you try to use (any) cheap sensor.
algorithms are one of the only things that make cheap equipment usable. That cheap voc sensor is going to be a noisy mess on the line.
Yep. And these things trigger from things including hairspray, nail polish remover, nail polish, microwaved food, and more. I'm constantly watching "VOCs" on a cheapo Amazon AQM change whenever I cook.
Yeah, stovetop cooking makes your VOC and particulate numbers look like a bad day on an LA freeway.
The other thing that's surprisingly nasty for air quality is incense. You might live in the woods with excellent air quality, but burn some incense and suddenly all the VOC and particulate numbers look like downtown Manhattan. It's ironic that incense is a massive air pollutant, but not really surprising.
Remember when hotels charged outrageous fees to make a phone call from your room? That scam no longer works because everybody has a cell phone. Then they tried charging high fees for watching movies on the room's TV, and high fees for wifi. Those no longer work because everybody expects hotel wifi to be free and unlimited LTE is a thing now and nobody uses the TV in a hotel room any more.
Obviously this is just the latest such scam. Accuse people of smoking, refuse to show them the evidence, and charge them $500 to be split between the hotel and the sensor company.
Reminds me of the UK post office scandal where hundreds of innocent people went to prison because of software errors when the powers that be insisted the software was perfect and no auditing was possible.
Yet again we have normies believing marketing bullshit that says "our proprietary algorithms are foolproof." We need laws that say any algorithm that can accuse a person of wrongdoing must be auditable and if it harms innocent people, the CEO of the company is both civilly and criminally liable.
They also cover vaping. While smoking harms are clear and its impact on room smell is evident, the connection is pretty weak for vaping. Unless it’s a crowded bar with lots of vaping people, I can’t tell if somebody has previously used an e-cigarette or vaporized anything in a room, and generally speaking I don’t find such vapor disturbing (altough the smell can be not great).
I found that people vaping around me causes minor irritation in my eyes, and I also find the smell rather annoying, despite my sense of smell being rather weak.
I haven't noticed any long-term effects on rooms with frequent vaping though
Between this and Hertz's new AI damage detection models, we're seeing the enshitification of business travel reaching a new level, and also doing a great job of really ticking off a group of customers (business travelers) who are already irritated enough.
Rest markets itself as a way to "unlock a new revenue stream"
Leave it to the bean counters to see this as an opportunity to generate new revenue streams from customers while simultaneously pissing them off.
Here's a "vape detector" with more explaination.[1]
It contains an air particulates detector and a CO2 detector, plus humidity, temperature, and noise and light sensors. They're probably looking for particulates and CO2 ramp up, hence the "algorithm". It's not clear how accurate this is, but it's not mysterious.
There's a version sold to schools that adds "bullying detector" capability. This adds detection of "keyword calls for help, loud sounds, and gunshots."
It sounds ludicrous to say out loud, but if you're staying in a Hyatt hotel, it's best not to take a hot shower until this issue is resolved. The steam from the showers tend to make these types of particle sensors go wild.
Even outdoors, humidity is a problem. Humidity turns little particles into bigger, soggier particles that give higher readings on optical sensors, which can rather inflate readings on cheap sensors in humid or foggy conditions. There’s a reason that the actual EPA particle counting standards involve drying the particles before measurement.
A person outputs about 1kg of CO2 per day, which is less than 1 gram per minute. A cigarette weighs roughly a gram, which means it probably emits roughly 3 grams of CO2... or less... (The O2 comes from the environment, and weighs 32 to carbons 12, but the cigarette isn't actually pure carbon).
I don't know... that's maybe detectable? You'd need a pretty sensitive CO2 sensor and to be tying it to other signs to avoid "someone else walked into and out of the room"... but in principle...
Not about smoking but I recently stayed at a W hotel and was woken in the middle of the night by the room lights turning on. They used electronic push buttons and I turned them off. Seconds later they turned on again. This repeated several times until I was fully awake and called the front desk.
"We can come put tape on the sensors."
"What sensors?"
"There are sensors under the bed."
"Oh, so you already know about this problem but haven't fixed it. Thanks, please don't send anyone."
I then looked under the bed and sure enough there was a motion detector on each side. I removed these from their brackets and let them dangle facing the floor instead of outward. This blinded them and solved the problem. I guess they were malfunctioning or they were able to detect motion above the bed via reflections.
The next day I reported this to the front desk, who were unsympathetic and unhelpful. They told me it was for my own safety. Apparently at other hotels I have just been incredibly lucky not to have fallen down when getting out of bed.
I will not stay at a W hotel again unless I can confirm in advance that they do not have motion detectors under the bed which spuriously turn the lights on at night. Maybe I'll add Hyatt to the no-go list.
Strange choice, fitting rooms with a novel device to annoy guests. Do you suppose it's because somebody fell out of bed and sued? And then maybe some other people thought that was a good idea, and they fell out of bed too, and now the hotels have to have the annoying thing.
I find it somewhat unlikely, as this particular W hotel was not in a country known for personal injury lawsuits.
More likely it was sold to them by some interior design firm as a luxury feature. Unfortunately it's only helpful if you're alone--even if it worked correctly you wouldn't want the room lights turning on just because your spouse got up.
Can easily see this as another profit centre. If you paid for single occupancy and call down because the lights come on every time your partner gets up, hit ‘em with a big fine.
Oh wow I ran into problems with those too. When I brought my cats to a Hilton, they would get the zoomies and run around at random in the middle of the night, which would make the lights turn on. I think I found some way to block the sensor.
Tire shops do this by siping your tires and then offering you a refund if you complain that you never wanted it. But they do it without asking to everyone and then charge $60 hoping nobody notices.
I saw a little quote about the modern business landscape that seems to apply here:
“Save a few pennies by destroying trust.”
The Hyatt franchise needs to shut this down ASAP. Most hotels are independently operated or operated by franchise groups. Not many hotel brands actually own the hotels and essentially act as marketing firms.
If I were to give this the “never assign malice to that which can be adequately explained by incompetence” benefit of the doubt, I think some bozo hotel manager got sold this innovative “solution” and implemented it without thinking much about it. Then they got their revenue and probably thought to themselves “Wow I knew the smoking problem was bad but I didn’t know it was this bad!!”
Meanwhile they are slow rolling the death of their location by tainting guest reviews, which are the lifeblood by which you justify your room rates.
Delta has never had set prices and this is fake outrage. Airlines have used algorithms since deregulation in the 70s to set prices. The “algorithm” use to be simpler based on “fair classes”. A fair class is not a simple - Main, C+ and FC. Two people sitting in main can have different fair classes.
Of course as computers have gotten more sophisticated, the machine learning/revenue optimization rules have too.
For instance it costs less for me to fly Delta from MCO (Orlando) -> ATL -> SJO (San Jose Costa Rica) than it does our friends to fly from ATL -> SJO when we are both flying the same second leg.
There are other tricks to like booking a Delta flight via AirFrance or Virgin Airlines domestically cheaper.
This is a microcosm for enshittification writ large. If no one cares about your individual complaint you’re fucked. Only in numbers do consumers wield any power. The 48 Laws of Power says, “what is unseen counts for nothing.” So make it seen. Make bullshit like this visible. And vote with your dollars. Better yet sue the smoke detector company. Make them demonstrate their flawless false positive rate in court. Bullshit, grifting companies keep getting away with stuff like this because there are no consequences. Make them feel it where it hurts the most: their bank account.
I have seen tradies attempt to ‘disable’ smoke particle detectors by putting tape or a rubber glove over the sensor. This technique often triggers the alarm almost immediately.
Commercial fire sensors do have plastic caps which block airflow without triggering an alarm. They’re designed to be kept on during construction until each sensor is commissioned.
Duct tape adhesives (including polyterpene resin) might register as VOCs. Now, if you duct taped a piece of absolutely clean aluminum foil to it, then that could be fine.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1945959030851035223.html
Synopsis and excerpt:
Hotels where these sensors are installed rack up complaints and negative reviews, after Rest sensors register false positives - thereby unlocking that revenue stream for the hotels.The awesome thing about black-box algorithms is they can't be challenged when they're wrong. And errors reliably favor the institution that manages (and profits from) them.
"unlocking revenue stream" is wild way to say theft
[flagged]
No, surely this product didn’t just come to market in the last 6 months. Every problem in the world isn’t caused by Trump, though many are. Blaming Trump for hotel smoke detectors delegitimizes the legitimate problems coming from this administration.
I bet it’s also a rev share model. Hotel doesn’t pay for the device but revenue is shared. Like the traffic cameras where they shorten yellow light to durations that a car is incapable of stopping in time.
So aside from Rest being incompetent morons ("temperature changes" from smoking??), they now also have incentive to make it trigger as much as possible.
Primitive contract asset tokenization. What other parts of the hotel-customer contract could become zero-capex financial instruments powered by ambiguous surveillance data, washed in health and safety?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_tokenization
https://cointelegraph.com/news/sec-tokenization-exemption-ge...> SEC.. considering changes that would promote tokenization, including an innovation exception that would allow for new trading methods and provide targeted relief to support the development of a tokenized securities ecosystem .. Atkins said the movement of assets onchain is inevitable, stating: “If it can be tokenized, it will be tokenized.”
I scoured their website to look for any clues about how it might (allegedly) work and got a fat lot of nothing.
> Rest constantly monitors room air quality, using a proprietary algorithm to pinpoint any tobacco, marijuana, or nicotine presence.
So a smoke detector with an "algorithm" attached. Uh huh. How does that algorithm work?
> By analyzing various factors and patterns[...]
Some cutting edge shit here!
And as for accuracy, they don't even pretend to make promises about "99.99% success rates" or anything. This is the most detailed they get:
> Q: Is it accurate?
> A: Our sophisticated smoking detection algorithm has been tested for accuracy in real-world scenarios, backed by years of development, and tens of thousands of hours of rigorous testing and validation.
It's going to be similar bullshit to what Halo uses in the highschool vape sensors. A bunch of particulate sensors for like PM1, PM2.5, PM10, sniffing out VOCs, and then they consider any tripping of any of that to be a "smoke" sesh.
Edit: Oh. Rest is just NoiseAware. They're just reselling NoiseAware sensors which are just - yes - a bunch of particulate sensors hooked up to an ESP32 hooked to a web dashboard.
> Our sophisticated smoking detection algorithm has been tested
Okay, but what were the results? https://xkcd.com/1096/
Smokin'!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KONoeHwu2pg&t=50s
[dead]
> The awesome thing about black-box algorithms is they can't be challenged when they're wrong. And errors reliably favor the institution that manages (and profits from) them.
Doesn't the US have false advertisement rules/scam prevention? Around here one person would have to fight this in court to tumble the whole thing down as there is no way Rest can prove it's claim is airtight (pun intended) due to simple statistics and physics (e.g. hair drying leaves burn particulates as well). I doubt it will even come this far as it's obviously a money making scheme over the customers back and acts in bad faith ("The sensor's don't make mistakes" is a claim to innocence where none is valid as almost everyone can smell). It's probably fine as an early detection agent but you'd have to actually check.
Also the charges are disproportionate to the beach of contract, unless they steam clean the room every time they claim the money. Which they obviously don't according to the "dirty room" comments.
Hotel guests are not buying the sensors. The hotels would probably have a claim due to this, but since they're "unlocking new revenue streams", they are probably not going to bother.
I assume if it’s triggering on car exhaust or something from opening room windows
Hair dryers are mentioned several times, so I would assume one of the things these sensors look for is a rise in the air temperature.
You would need a pretty good sensor to detect a temperature increase from lighting a cigarette. Most likely, the hair dryer has a hair stuck that gets burnt once turned on
Or perhaps formaldehyde release from hair spray and other chemicals partly due to the heat of the hair dryer, but also released because of the agitation and wind.
Technically I think perfume, sweat and trace amounts of smoking residue, including formaldehyde, from personal belongings could probably also raise VOCs as hotels often have very, very poor airflow by design - open windows and balconies have historically encouraged smokers so they were removed, but now you can rarely find any hotels with fresh air in the rooms, and those you find often smell of cigarette smoke for obvious reasons. (Smokers will often stay at hotels with airflow or balconies and take advantage of these features when they can. Also, airing out a room will kill a scent temporarily but only cleaning the room or replacing natural textiles will permanently remove the scent when the window is closed.)
Windows at these kinds of hotels usually do not open at all.
If I got one of these I'd pay it and never, ever, ever stay at any hotel owned by the entity again. Being that I spend $25k-50k a year on hotels, their loss is a small hotel's gain.
In fact, whoever does this will lose my business ahead of time as I will never stay at any hotel that uses this service. A few minutes on Tripadvisor and you'll know.
Such incredible business myopia. Hotels are one of the few businesses that loyalty is not only a boon, but a necessity for survival. Without brand loyalty, hotels suffer.
Often I wonder if some scammers (and this is totally a scam) basically pay a premium to feel like they've outsmarted people, or for the smirking satisfaction that their victims can't do anything about it. Some scams are so much work for so little gain, or so obviously counterproductive in anything but the short term, that it seems like that.
So someone does not smoke in their room but they’re charged for cleaning anyway because a third party (Rest) told the hotel that they smoked in their room. What sort of evidence should one gather during their stay to make the strongest possible (defamation? fraud?) case against Rest? (Not that anyone wants to do that on their trip, just curious about the legal implications.)
Would it work if it were real time? You light up, and five minutes later a manager knocks.
Dunno about the legality of refusing to open the door, but it does sound like a way to get banned from a hotel chain.
Yeah, that’s totally fair. At least they’ll have testimony that the smoking was actually witnessed. Most people aren’t going to even bother fighting that since it actually happened. I just worry about abuse cases and the most obvious one here is false positives being assumed true by everyone who profits from them.
Edit:
Sorry, that’s from the wrong point of view but I don’t think the answer changes. It seems Rest will have to change a lot of their marketing language to really avoid liability but if someone is actually caught smoking then it’s not likely to manifest.
From the thread, it sounds as if they don't even pretend this is about cleaning, they're just saying "we're a smoke-free hotel, so smoking costs $500 as a punitive measure, period".
I wonder if they could legally separate this from any real-world activities completely? During check-in, put a clause in the contract "if our partner company says so, you have to pay $500 extra. By signing, you agree to that" - without any reference to smoking at all.
I hope this wouldn't be legal, but it sounds like it could be.
Religious freedom may come into play here. Incense and candles are a basis for many faiths so assigning a fee on people practicing their faith will cost them in court and in payouts.
Not unless the hotel is government owned or fall into a few very specific carveouts.
From their FAQ:
Absolutely. Hotels equipped with Rest have seen an 84x increase in smoking fine collection. Plus, our smoking detection technology helps prevent damage to rooms and reduce a number of future violations."Apparently there are way more people smoking than we thought there are or the sensor just generates a lot of false positives.
The language they are using all over the site is very interesting though, see here an example:
From how it works:
"Automatically charge
If smoking is detected, your staff gets notified, simplifying the process of charging smoking fees."
With a system with false positives, it makes total sense to use real time notifications to staff to go and check what's going on, that would be legit, but then on top saying that you automatically charge?
It almost feels like they are selling a way to fraud to their customers while covering themselves against any litigation by using the right copy in there to support that it's the responsibility of the Hotel staff to go and check in real time that the violation is actually happening.
Is there that much smoking in hotels? Do they charge more for smoking rooms?
A number like 84x suggests that it's basically zero now. That kinda makes sense. The only one who would notice is the cleaning staff, and relying on their word for "it smelled like smoke" sounds like a way to get a chargeback. They'd call you on it only if they were forced to take the room out of rotation to air it out.
So maybe there are a lot of people smoking just a little (perhaps a joint), and getting away with it. That might make a number like 84x work.
The last time I walked into a hotel room that smelled like cigarette smoke was in 1998, so I would think this is very uncommon.
A number like 84x implies that it's almost entirely false positives.
It doesn’t imply that. I’m pretty sure it is all false positives, but that number does not imply that. It could simply be that only ~1 in 84 smokers was being fined before
No... it could be false positives, it could also be that almost no one (~1%) of smokers were caught before and this is actually a miracle technology that detects smoking.
Frankly it tracks that almost no one was caught before.
> I asked Erik if the room needed to be cleaned [...] And he said it wasn't needing special cleaning so he offered me $250
Well that sort of says everything we'd want to know. They charged the customer $500, like they'll need to tear up the room and bring in a large team to clean everything. But they never bothered with that because they know it's a scam, and the company selling these knows exactly how their customers will use these.
Unsurprisingly, the customers just love this new technology and can't get enough of it:
(review from https://www.restsensor.com)
> "Rest’s in-room smoking detection service has helped us capture a lucrative ancillary revenue stream while also improving our guest experience." Kirsten Snyder, Asset Manager, Woodbine
Wait, woodbine? A hotel literally owned by/named after a cigarette brand? You literally couldn’t make this up.
Largely a property development company, named after a geological feature "Woodbine Sand", in Texas
[1] https://woodbinedevelopment.com/woodbinedevelopment.com/our-...
> “unlock a new revenue stream”
Monetizing fire safety. Lovely.
Appears this company rebranded from NoiseAware. More tech to monitor "valued" guests...this time on noise levels
It's the consequence of growth capitalism. When it's not enough to make money, you have to make more money this quarter than you did last, then it's really only a matter of time until everything is monetised under the exclusive logic of greed, devoid of any other considerations of a moral or human order. Public goods, water fountains, libraries, beaches, forests. Basic state functions. Your attention, at every moment. On it marches.
I'd refuse to pay the charge on check out. If they charged my card anyways I would demand a refund and inform the consumer protection agency, wait 30 days and issue the chargeback. Luckily these things work well in my nation.
Well the point is you can’t really refuse it. They won’t rent you the room unless you have a card on file authorized to make charges for incidentals.
the fact they have a card on file is irrelevant
they're not allowed to make up charges wherever they feel like it just because they have your card details
the payment doesn't settle for something like 6 months anyway
AmEx used to be good about doing chargebacks generally, but they once sided with the merchant during covid when I was sold an impossible itinerary and cost me $2k.
Since then I realized that I won’t always be able to do a chargeback, and I am much more cautious with vendors.
I think there are exceptions about "exigent circumstances" and COVID was considered one. My EU flight was not refunded as well despite the EU having strong protections. The airlines, at the time, were given a life-line.
I think these once in-a-decade or more events can be swallowed. But wouldn't be happy with a regular occurrence.
Yes they should be swallowed, but by the business/card company, not the consumer. They can decide if they want to get insured for that or not. It's ridiculous to subsidize their business risks.
Which is crazy to me. I had purchased international airline tickets 9 months prior to COVID.
Covid happened and everything was cancelled. The airline refused to refund, only give credit. The issue is that it was on an airline that was useless to me because this trip was cancelled and we were going to be rescheduling.
Did a chargeback with Apple even though I was past the date, they still gave me my money back. I was shocked
Chase was really weird about doing a chargeback for me when a restaurant charged me a second time under a different name a month after my visit. It took several phone calls and they eventually credited my account but they would not do a chargeback. Two identical charges a month apart. I could show that I wasn't even in the same state for the second one.
This reminds me of Hertz new "AI" camera based damage detection... Although much less effort... This is the end. May progress have mercy on our souls.
Knowing Hertz, the 360 degree camera scan still won't be proof that you didn't steal the vehicle from them
Hertz is a running joke meme on Steve Lehto's channel, an automotive Lemon Law lawyer Youtuber.
This seems like outright fraud - how can they charge a cleaning fee and then perform no cleaning?
Leases often work this way. In theory it's illegal in the UK (for a home, businesses are assumed to be big boys who can negotiate on equal footing) but it's still pretty common to be charged when you move out. Specifically UK law says "reasonable wear and tear" is just an expected cost of people living in a house you let to them - so e.g. they're going to wear out carpet after some years, but a cigar burn is not OK, the walls won't look pristine but there shouldn't be graffiti, that sort of thing. They should vacuum floors but it's not reasonable to expect dust to magically vanish from every nook.
In practice in many cases you move out leaving the place very habitable, you get told they "had" to clean up your mess, and it's a suspiciously round number like £80 and they have plenty more "necessary" charges like this. In theory in the UK they're required to provide receipts showing their actual expense, but in practice they're looking at this as free revenue and most of their clients can't fight back.
I was buying, freeing me from the obvious revenge if I say "Fuck you" but there were a lot of other things to do for the move and having fought them down from the original outrageous fees they wanted I gave up although I did get as far as reporting them to their regulator and threatening legal action. In hindsight I'm quite sure I could have got to $0 and possibly also got the most senior woman who was straight up lying and clearly had done all this many times removed from the register of people fit to let out properties, but I didn't and I feel bad about that.
They absolutely prey on people not being having the time/resources to fight back.
A friend in the UK had his deposit withheld as "mail charges" by his landlord upon moving out. Turned out the fine print in his lease said that he wasn't allowed to receive mail at the house he was legally renting.
Just like how car rental companies can charge damage fees and not repair it (thus charging it multiple times for multiple customers!)
Time for the EU to legislate on this. Car rental companies should be required to provide a detailed report to the customer on the damage allowing the customer to challenge any potential cost estimation (with reason) that the rental car company provides. Then the rental companies should be required to prove to the customer the damage was fixed and provide the invoice.
Careful what you wish for. What you may get in one hand they'll take in another. They're pulling other crap like cleaning fees for a grain or two of sand too. Should the EU our saviour protect us against that?
Plenty alternatives to renting a car in Europe. Hit them where it hertz. Take a punt on smaller companies that are competing with eg total all inclusive insurance. Yup they're a bit more expensive sometimes but can result in an better overall experience (there are lots of scammy local companies too)
This could all be covered under legislation. If the EU can finally get airlines to agree on hand luggage standardisation I’m fairly sure they could agree that any additional cleaning or repairs must come with receipts. This makes it a lot easier for CC disputes at that point.
Exactly my thinking. If I get this smoking charge but haven't smoked, I should be able to go to my credit card provider and tell them to get me my 500$ back
Or apartment managers charge a "cleaning fee" when it was already proven clean.
I don't understand why so many commentators are acting surprised at this morally dubious company. Many if not most companies coming out of YCombinator are just as bad. Just one case is uBiome. In fact, I would argue that YCombinator and the startup culture they create directly enabled companies to do exactly this.
I bet Rest just uses a cheap voc sensor and triggers when a set threshold is hit. I doubt there's any algorithm involved.
Having played with an SGP41 (a current-gen VOC sensor), you cannot correctly do anything involving a threshold. The sensor has a couple of nasty properties, all well documented in the datasheet:
- It has a lot of low frequency noise (timescale of hours to days), so you need to do some sort of high pass filter.
- The responses to different VOC compounds don’t even necessarily have the same sign.
So the sensor gives you a “raw” reading that you are supposed to post-process with a specific algorithm to produce a “VOC index” that, under steady state conditions, is a constant irrespective of the actual VOC level. And then you look at it over time and it will go to a higher value to indicate something like “it’s probably stinkier now than it was half an hour ago”.
This, of course, cannot distinguish smoking from perfume or from anything else, nor is it even particularly reliable at indicating anything at all.
Modern PM2.5 meters are actually pretty good, although they struggle in high humidity conditions. But they still can’t distinguish smoking from other sources on fine particles.
>some sort of high pass filter
Quite some algorithm you got there!
if you think a 'cheap sensor' is doing much of anything without the involvement of an algorithm somewhere then might I suggest you try to use (any) cheap sensor.
algorithms are one of the only things that make cheap equipment usable. That cheap voc sensor is going to be a noisy mess on the line.
Yep. And these things trigger from things including hairspray, nail polish remover, nail polish, microwaved food, and more. I'm constantly watching "VOCs" on a cheapo Amazon AQM change whenever I cook.
Yeah, stovetop cooking makes your VOC and particulate numbers look like a bad day on an LA freeway.
The other thing that's surprisingly nasty for air quality is incense. You might live in the woods with excellent air quality, but burn some incense and suddenly all the VOC and particulate numbers look like downtown Manhattan. It's ironic that incense is a massive air pollutant, but not really surprising.
Yeah, since 2023 or thereabouts all of these chips claim AI anyway.
Remember when hotels charged outrageous fees to make a phone call from your room? That scam no longer works because everybody has a cell phone. Then they tried charging high fees for watching movies on the room's TV, and high fees for wifi. Those no longer work because everybody expects hotel wifi to be free and unlimited LTE is a thing now and nobody uses the TV in a hotel room any more.
Obviously this is just the latest such scam. Accuse people of smoking, refuse to show them the evidence, and charge them $500 to be split between the hotel and the sensor company.
Reminds me of the UK post office scandal where hundreds of innocent people went to prison because of software errors when the powers that be insisted the software was perfect and no auditing was possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
Yet again we have normies believing marketing bullshit that says "our proprietary algorithms are foolproof." We need laws that say any algorithm that can accuse a person of wrongdoing must be auditable and if it harms innocent people, the CEO of the company is both civilly and criminally liable.
https://www.restsensor.com/
Ironic they have plenty of "hotel bad because smoke smell" and none of the "hotel bad because of fake smoke detection fine" testemonials on the site.
They also cover vaping. While smoking harms are clear and its impact on room smell is evident, the connection is pretty weak for vaping. Unless it’s a crowded bar with lots of vaping people, I can’t tell if somebody has previously used an e-cigarette or vaporized anything in a room, and generally speaking I don’t find such vapor disturbing (altough the smell can be not great).
I found that people vaping around me causes minor irritation in my eyes, and I also find the smell rather annoying, despite my sense of smell being rather weak.
I haven't noticed any long-term effects on rooms with frequent vaping though
I'm curious how various court systems would handle a person suing nearby vape users for (documented) minor irritation of eyes and airways.
If such suits were successful, would the newly tested liability set larger changes in motion?
I'm similarly curious about being around Amazon Alexa, etc. devices in circumstances that require two-party consent for recording audio.
Between this and Hertz's new AI damage detection models, we're seeing the enshitification of business travel reaching a new level, and also doing a great job of really ticking off a group of customers (business travelers) who are already irritated enough.
Rest markets itself as a way to "unlock a new revenue stream"
Leave it to the bean counters to see this as an opportunity to generate new revenue streams from customers while simultaneously pissing them off.
Here's a "vape detector" with more explaination.[1]
It contains an air particulates detector and a CO2 detector, plus humidity, temperature, and noise and light sensors. They're probably looking for particulates and CO2 ramp up, hence the "algorithm". It's not clear how accurate this is, but it's not mysterious.
There's a version sold to schools that adds "bullying detector" capability. This adds detection of "keyword calls for help, loud sounds, and gunshots."
[1] https://fobsin.com/products/mountable-air-quality-vape-detec...
It sounds ludicrous to say out loud, but if you're staying in a Hyatt hotel, it's best not to take a hot shower until this issue is resolved. The steam from the showers tend to make these types of particle sensors go wild.
Even outdoors, humidity is a problem. Humidity turns little particles into bigger, soggier particles that give higher readings on optical sensors, which can rather inflate readings on cheap sensors in humid or foggy conditions. There’s a reason that the actual EPA particle counting standards involve drying the particles before measurement.
(RIP, EPA.)
Why would CO2 be caused by vaping? And surely the amount of CO2 caused by a cigarette is dwarfed by the amount exhaled by a person?
A person outputs about 1kg of CO2 per day, which is less than 1 gram per minute. A cigarette weighs roughly a gram, which means it probably emits roughly 3 grams of CO2... or less... (The O2 comes from the environment, and weighs 32 to carbons 12, but the cigarette isn't actually pure carbon).
I don't know... that's maybe detectable? You'd need a pretty sensitive CO2 sensor and to be tying it to other signs to avoid "someone else walked into and out of the room"... but in principle...
Not about smoking but I recently stayed at a W hotel and was woken in the middle of the night by the room lights turning on. They used electronic push buttons and I turned them off. Seconds later they turned on again. This repeated several times until I was fully awake and called the front desk.
"We can come put tape on the sensors."
"What sensors?"
"There are sensors under the bed."
"Oh, so you already know about this problem but haven't fixed it. Thanks, please don't send anyone."
I then looked under the bed and sure enough there was a motion detector on each side. I removed these from their brackets and let them dangle facing the floor instead of outward. This blinded them and solved the problem. I guess they were malfunctioning or they were able to detect motion above the bed via reflections.
The next day I reported this to the front desk, who were unsympathetic and unhelpful. They told me it was for my own safety. Apparently at other hotels I have just been incredibly lucky not to have fallen down when getting out of bed.
I will not stay at a W hotel again unless I can confirm in advance that they do not have motion detectors under the bed which spuriously turn the lights on at night. Maybe I'll add Hyatt to the no-go list.
Strange choice, fitting rooms with a novel device to annoy guests. Do you suppose it's because somebody fell out of bed and sued? And then maybe some other people thought that was a good idea, and they fell out of bed too, and now the hotels have to have the annoying thing.
I find it somewhat unlikely, as this particular W hotel was not in a country known for personal injury lawsuits.
More likely it was sold to them by some interior design firm as a luxury feature. Unfortunately it's only helpful if you're alone--even if it worked correctly you wouldn't want the room lights turning on just because your spouse got up.
Can easily see this as another profit centre. If you paid for single occupancy and call down because the lights come on every time your partner gets up, hit ‘em with a big fine.
Stayed at a Hilton owned property recently and the fan / light used a wireless controller and someone else’s room was controlling mine!
All these gadgetry.. seems like we'll need to bring an EMP blaster to hotels to "sanitize" the room..
there was a monster under your bed...
Oh wow I ran into problems with those too. When I brought my cats to a Hilton, they would get the zoomies and run around at random in the middle of the night, which would make the lights turn on. I think I found some way to block the sensor.
Tire shops do this by siping your tires and then offering you a refund if you complain that you never wanted it. But they do it without asking to everyone and then charge $60 hoping nobody notices.
Unbelievably brazen to not bother trying to push an upsell, and just charge it without authorisation. Crazy
Siping?
Cutting into a tire to improve traction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siping_(rubber)
Just from the description, that sounds like a case could be made for willful property damage if they did it without authorisation.
I saw a little quote about the modern business landscape that seems to apply here:
“Save a few pennies by destroying trust.”
The Hyatt franchise needs to shut this down ASAP. Most hotels are independently operated or operated by franchise groups. Not many hotel brands actually own the hotels and essentially act as marketing firms.
If I were to give this the “never assign malice to that which can be adequately explained by incompetence” benefit of the doubt, I think some bozo hotel manager got sold this innovative “solution” and implemented it without thinking much about it. Then they got their revenue and probably thought to themselves “Wow I knew the smoking problem was bad but I didn’t know it was this bad!!”
Meanwhile they are slow rolling the death of their location by tainting guest reviews, which are the lifeblood by which you justify your room rates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651
Looks like hotels looked at the car rental industry and took a lot of inspiration.
Airlines: "Hold my beer!"
"Delta moves to eliminate set prices, use AI to set your personal ticket price", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44596355
Delta has never had set prices and this is fake outrage. Airlines have used algorithms since deregulation in the 70s to set prices. The “algorithm” use to be simpler based on “fair classes”. A fair class is not a simple - Main, C+ and FC. Two people sitting in main can have different fair classes.
https://www.alternativeairlines.com/fare-basis-codes-explain...
Of course as computers have gotten more sophisticated, the machine learning/revenue optimization rules have too.
For instance it costs less for me to fly Delta from MCO (Orlando) -> ATL -> SJO (San Jose Costa Rica) than it does our friends to fly from ATL -> SJO when we are both flying the same second leg.
There are other tricks to like booking a Delta flight via AirFrance or Virgin Airlines domestically cheaper.
This is a microcosm for enshittification writ large. If no one cares about your individual complaint you’re fucked. Only in numbers do consumers wield any power. The 48 Laws of Power says, “what is unseen counts for nothing.” So make it seen. Make bullshit like this visible. And vote with your dollars. Better yet sue the smoke detector company. Make them demonstrate their flawless false positive rate in court. Bullshit, grifting companies keep getting away with stuff like this because there are no consequences. Make them feel it where it hurts the most: their bank account.
I have a startup idea for you my friend…
"enshittification writ large."
Good grief! We are actually going to have a shit list now:
Hertz, Hyatt are the first two entries in this historic development..
Paging DoNotPay.com bots..
Next step: Hertz installs these in their cars.
Hanlon's razor doesn't cut it anymore.
A colleague experienced this but I don't recall where. But they were furious about it and it was a challenge to get resolved.
The MBA way to earn money of AI and automation.
"Computer says pay me $$$"
"Why"
"AI demands it!"
This is Fraud as a Service.
(Smoking) computer says no.
Looks like nothing a little duct tape couldn't handle.
I have seen tradies attempt to ‘disable’ smoke particle detectors by putting tape or a rubber glove over the sensor. This technique often triggers the alarm almost immediately.
Commercial fire sensors do have plastic caps which block airflow without triggering an alarm. They’re designed to be kept on during construction until each sensor is commissioned.
Why should I have to waste my time and duct tape on their shitty scam? :) Easier to just never stay at a Hyatt.
Duct tape adhesives (including polyterpene resin) might register as VOCs. Now, if you duct taped a piece of absolutely clean aluminum foil to it, then that could be fine.
"Fire Safety Device Interference Fee: $1,000"
IANAL - but might doing that sift the burden of proof, and force Hyatt to show that the Rest device met regulatory standards as a fire detector?
I bet there are standards about this, and I’d also bet Rest has optimized their product for stealing money, not safety.
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