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I wonder if the company making the detectors, pitched them on a free install.

They sound networked, so what if they only get cash, every time there is a hit? So the hotel is getting 1/2.

And with contracts like these, come with hefty fines if people back out. Even if the hotel now realises it's too sensitive, lots of false positives, the hotel now has to prove it, or pay big.

If the hotel refunds the guest, the hotel still owes the fee!

Quite the trap for the hotel.



Sounds similar to the red light traffic camera revenue sharing scam. Free or discounted install and then revenue share. Both the supplier and location owner have every incentive to trigger false positives to make more money. In both cases this 'business model' is exploiting asymmetry in power dynamics.

Also, in both cases it's subverting and abusing a cost-effective technology which, if used appropriately, could be beneficial and all-around positive. If it was really about stopping illicit smoking in hotels, preventing annoying other guests with the smell and potential extra cleaning, the front desk would just call the room and say they got an alert on the smoke detector and will have to send someone up if it triggers again. If people are smoking/vaping, they'll very likely stop. Problem solved. Instead they silently stick a charge on the bill received at check out, proving what they really care about.

Because of this scummy money-grabbing misuse of the tech, it will get a terrible reputation and consumer push back like boycotts, lawsuits, regulation or banning will eventually lead to it being restricted even for appropriate, beneficial applications. The same thing happened with red light traffic cameras. My city banned them without ever adopting them because of the abusive scams happening in other cities. It's sad because when someone blows through a red light at high speed long after the light changed to red, it can kill people. Fortunately, that's quite rare but it does happen. Since the potentially life-saving use was too rare to be a big revenue opportunity, those cameras became all about catching someone trying to slide through a yellow light a quarter second after it turned to red, which happens more frequently (especially when the company shortened the yellow light time) but is also almost never a serious risk of injuring anyone since cross traffic is still stopped or not in the intersection yet. And now we lost the potentially life-saving beneficial application due to some assholes trying to scam people.




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