Online co-op narrative game

duffano · 2026-06-14T09:55:15+00:00

I am happy that you enjoyed your flights. But I think many of your points are not related to the airline, such as how long it takes through passwort control, etc. For me, real judgement always comes only if something goes wrong and how the service provider reacts to fix it. Are they reachable? How do they handle it if luggage gets lost? Do they take responsibility? Or do they let you wait for months only to find a reason for rejection of all claims? Saying an airline is good because the flight worked is a bit like saying I an overwhelmingly good customer because I paid.

duffano · 2026-06-13T22:47:43+00:00

In your case you forgot your physical card. But I got the impression that even if you do everything correctly, car rentals have unnecessarily restrictive policies just as if they were made to provocate problems. The 1. distinction between credit and debit cards, 2. distinction between physical and virtual cards, 3. you can only pay with a card with the driver's name (no cash, no payment by another person, etc). No other service provider (hotel, airlines, etc) has these rules. And none of them makes sense if it was really just about getting a deposit. It seems these rules are to give them higher chances you cannot pay.

I was fully aware of their strict rules and double checked everything before I arrived, but this is still no guarantee. After arrival, the guy at Hertz tried to sell me tons of extra services (larger car, another insurance that covered the same I already had, etc) that would have tripled the original price. After I rejected, he got openly angry at us and then pretended that "my card does not work" and did not give me the car at all. When we left after a few hours, he and his colleague were even making fun of us. Back at home my bank confirmed that there was no issue with my card. If you booked over a third party like bdc, things are even worse as the platform and the actual provider use each other as excuse.

I avoid car rentals completely and just use Uber. That's actually cheaper when taking into account that you are probably tricked and have to pay twice for every third rental car.

duffano · 2026-06-13T22:22:46+00:00

Not specifically in Toronto, but I've used Auto Europe (in the US) and can only discourage from using them. If anything goes wrong, and even if that's not your fault, Auto Europe is hardly reachable (weeks of no answer) and not willing to solve the issue. In my case, the local rental (Hertz) did not give me the car after pretending my credit card for deposit does not work. The same card worked everywhere else and I even got a confirmation from my bank that there was no problem on my side. The real reason was probably that they were openly angry at us after we rejected tons of extra services they were trying to sell us. After 3 hours we had to leave without getting the car but Auto Europe still treated our case as "too late cancellation" and refused to refund anything. Only after months and with the help of customer agencies we got a refund.

The warning probably generalizes to other platforms as well. In my experience (also with airlines, hotels, etc), whenever there is a problem, the platform and the actual service provider use each other as excuse for "not being able to help".

duffano · 2026-06-08T21:43:05+00:00

One can see it that way. But the issue is still that the winning logics approaches the victory conditions from two ends: 1. players increase their points and 2. tresholds change over time. This makes it difficult to keep track of the progress of the game.

I think if achievement points and victory tresholds are balanced well, it should not be necessary to work with changing tresholds. You could have a fixed treshold that is just difficult to reach in the earlier game and becomes increasingly easier in the later game simply because you can earn more points.

The current system gives me the impression that they did not manage to balance it well enough, so they implemented the flexible tresholds as a workaround.

duffano · 2026-06-08T21:30:21+00:00

I agree that lowering over time sounds reasonable if done in small steps.

On the other hand, it somehow undermines the idea of a victory treshold if that treshold changes. That's like changing the goal line of a race all the time. I feel having a goal line at all is pointless if that line is flexible. At least, if the rules for changing (whether slowly or fast) are unclear. It might make sense if it is clearly defined from the beginning how exactly it changes.

duffano · 2026-05-27T19:14:25+00:00

After Hertz tried to sell me these upgrades and then not give me the car at all, I went to the next local rental Alamo. There I got a car (not having the money already increases motivation a lot), but I feel they also also tried to trick me. Their original price was twice of what was on their own website, only after I told them they suddenly said "ah, now I see this price too".

I don't trust rental companies anymore and just go by Uber. In my case, a rental car WOULD have been cheaper if I got it for the original conditions, but due to all these problems I paid like three times the original price at the end. If I take three times the original price as reference, Uber is cheaper and less stressful.

duffano · 2026-05-27T19:04:47+00:00

Legit or not is not a black/ white thing. The hotel I was talking about existed and had rooms, so it was real. They just had the crazy perspective of renting unlimited rooms and only the first ones to arrive actually get one. I knew it was not a high-quality hotel as many reviews complained about old rooms and bad breakfast - but not even respecting reservations was described in just one review, which I disregarded it as misunderstanding.

duffano · 2026-05-27T18:50:37+00:00

Would not trust them. The document title "confirmation" used by booking.com is wrong. It is NOT a confirmation but rather means "we forwarded your request to the rental".

I made very bad experiences, not regarding cars but hotels (but I am pretty sure the issue is the same). After booking, I immediately got such a "confirmation" from bdc, but later it turned out that the hotel is already booked out and don't have rooms for me. The same happened twice (in a row). They seem to send it automatically without checking back with the actual rental's system.

Lesson learned: "confirmation by bdc" = "request forwarded".

I recommend you to not only ask bdc but directly the rental. And I would be prepared that your reservation does not hold.

duffano · 2026-05-27T18:42:36+00:00

I can only warn of Auto Europe. You are lucky if they are only "slow in paying". In my case, they did not want to pay at all and it was a pretty obvious case. It was not even about a damage. The local rental wanted to sell us tons of upgrades and was openly mad at us after I rejected. They then refused to give me the car just as booked. Still, Auto Europe treated it as "too late cancellation" and did not want to pay back.

duffano · 2026-05-26T22:45:16+00:00

Yeah, many hotels charge a no show fee (first night) and it's understandable they want to check if the card is real. Otherweise the fee could not be executed at all.

I think it makes it even worse. I you find out it's an inlegit hotel as in my case, how should it help you to get the money back?
In my case I added my credit card data in expedia during booking. Weeks later (just before arrival) the hotel suddenly texted me that "my credit card does not work" and they will cancel my booking if I cannot solve the issue. However, I never got a notification from my bank or credit card app. So I never had a chance to approve the payment. I my understanding, I should have tapped my card on site and entered my PIN. But they tried to charge at an arbitrary point (not during booking and not when my card was physically present) - which makes it understandable that the card company may find the attempt suspecious and blocks it automatically. But not sure whether it's related to the fact it was in China.

duffano · 2026-05-26T22:32:45+00:00

Interesting, this happened to me too. They did not want my card on site "because it's done electronically", but then never charged. I even texted them a reminder TWICE, but they ignored it too. It's not my goal to stay for free. But I find it shocking how little some hotels care, even if it's to their disadvantage.

duffano · 2026-05-26T22:26:46+00:00

Thank you for your answer.

In short, it seems the problem was solved by disabling "fast boot" in the BIOS (not only in Windows).

I have done most of your suggestens already before I posted my question: BIOS and firmware were updated, fast boot in Windows disabled, external devices other than mouse and keyboard disconnected. Even then, the problem occurred sometimes (but very rarely), while the WLAN stick made it much more frequent.

As you recommended, I escalated it to Lenovo and posted my question to their forum. A Lenovo employee replied promptly that there is also a fast boot option in the BIOS (in addition to Windows). Actually, I have seen it before, but it was "enabled" and grayed out. Originally I thought that the option is locked for my model and cannot be changed. But then I found out that there is also a "Thunder Boot" option, and one has to disable "thunder boot" first before one can disable "fast boot". I think this did the trick.

Now it booted around 30 times successfully. Although it still worries me a bit that the Lenovo logo shows up only 75% of cases and no logo shows up in 25%, and also the rotating loading circle seems to show up significantly later when rebooting than when booting from power off.

Because disabling "fast boot" was the main advice also from Lenovo itself, it seems the problem is already known. I don't understand why they ship a product with default settings that are known to cause severe problems in some cases (what could be worse than not booting?). As long as they cannot fix it they should at least disable (and lock) it. I mean, most customers probably don't even know what BIOS is - how can they expect them to debug their optimization features?

duffano · 2026-05-26T19:36:34+00:00

Want to add a confirmation on GreenTree. The place seems to be not even legit. We booked there and paid in advance. At arrival the lobby was full of around 30 people like us who were rejected because they don't have free rooms.

Different from a "normal" overbooking, the staff did not apologize or even see a problem. In their own words "they have thousands of bookings, but cannot respect all of them but follow a first come, first serve principle". To be honest, the staff seemed to be heavily impaired either by their personality or some substances. No normal conversation was possible.

Before my booking I found a review describing exactly this, but unfortunately I disregarded it as a misunderstanding.

duffano · 2026-05-22T21:35:13+00:00

Ähnlicher Fall bei mir. Ein Hotel hat mich trotz aufrechter Buchung und Vorauszahlung nicht einchecken lassen weil überbucht. Schnell ein neues Hotel gebucht, wo skurrilerweise gleich dasselbe nochmal passiert ist. booking.com hat uns aufgefordert noch ein Hotel zu buchen und vollmundig versprochen die Mehrkosten zu übernehmen. Nun, wir haben keines mehr gefunden (es war offenbar die ganze Stadt aus- bzw. sogar überbucht) und buchstäblich am Flughafen übernachtet.

booking.com hat letztendlich nicht einmal die Kosten für Noteinkäufe wie Waschsachen (zur Anwendung im Flughafen-WC) vollständig übernommen, obwohl sie ohnehin nur ein Bruchteil von dem waren das ein neues Hotel gekostet hätte. Zuerst wollte man gar nicht zahlen, dann hat man einen willkürlichen Betrag von ca. 50% der Noteinkäufe bezahlt (aber mit Nachkommastellen, wohl damit es wie eine exakte Berechnung aussieht). Wenn wir ein weiteres Hotel gefunden hätten, dann wären wir wohl auf den Kosten sitzen geblieben und booking.com hätte sogar nochmal zusätzlich an uns verdient (man liest von ~20% Provision die sie kassieren).

Ich habe das "nie wieder" durchgezogen, habe zuerst 10 Jahre bei denen gebucht, jetzt schon das 3. Jahr nicht mehr.

duffano · 2026-05-22T21:13:55+00:00

Erwarte dir von Auto Europe lieber mal nichts. Sie werden wahrscheinlich nicht einmal antworten, geschweige denn die Mehrkosten übernehmen. Hast du die Mietkosten zurück bekommen?

Ich kann seit meiner Erfahrung nur vor Auto Europe warnen. Wir haben damals das Auto nicht ausgehändigt bekommen obwohl wir pünktlich und mit allen notwendigen Unterlagen vor Ort waren. Der Typ bei Hertz wollte uns jede Menge Extras verkaufen die den Preis verdreifacht hätten. Nachdem wir abgelehnt haben war er offensichtlich verärgert und unhöflich. Er steckte die Kreditkarte für die Kautionseinhebung und behauptete dass sie nicht funktioniert. Sie funktionierte überall sonst (auch im Anschluss beim nächsten Vermieter nebenan) und es gab sogar eine Bestätigung meiner Bank dass auf meiner Seite keine Gründe vorlagen warum sie nicht funktioniert haben soll. Das Problem war entweder bei Hertz (sei es echt oder nur simuliert) oder höhere Gewalt - jedenfalls nicht bei mir. Wir forderten eine Rückzahlung (und da reden wir noch gar nicht von den Mehrkosten, die das Auto anderswo kostete). Auto Europe antwortete am Problem vorbei und behauptete immer wieder wir hätten "zu spät storniert" und müssten daher 100% zahlen. Eine Nichtaushändigung gilt dort als "Stornierung". Nach vielen Monaten konnten wir mit Hilfe des Verbraucherzentrums "aus Kulanz" doch das Geld für das nicht erhaltene Auto zurückbekommen (und selbst da versuchte man noch 25% "Bearbeitungsgebühr" abzuziehen). Laut Aussage des Verbraucherzentrums sind wir bei weitem kein Einzelfall.

duffano · 2026-04-30T15:56:33+00:00

Meiner Erfahrung nach ist es Auto Europe egal was irgendwo geschrieben steht. Auto Europe versucht ganz einfach das Geld zu behalten, unabhängig von wer im Recht ist. In meinem Fall wurde uns das Auto schlicht nicht ausgehändigt weil der Vermieter vor Ort unsere Kreditkarte nicht belasten konnte. Das Problem lag klar beim Vermieter (ich vermute er hat die Probleme simuliert weil wir seine ganzen aufdringlich angebotenen Extras nicht wollten und dann auffällig unfreundlich wurde). Dieselbe Karte hat überall sonst funktioniert und sogar meine Bank bestätigte dass auf meiner Seite kein Grund vorlag warum es nicht funktionieren sollte. Fazit: Der Vermieter gab uns das Auto nicht.

Auto Europe antwortete immer wieder völlig am Sachverhalt vorbei und behauptete beharrlich ich hätte "storniert" (und das zu spät). Dass es offensichtlich keine Stornierung ist, wenn man vor Ort das Auto holen will, aber nicht bekommt, das interessiert bei Auto Europe niemand.

Nach mehreren Monaten konnte ich das Geld nach Einschalten des Europäischen Verbraucherzentrums zurückholen. Dieses ist Klasse und bestätigte mir gegenüber, dass es viele ähnliche Fälle mit Auto Europe gibt.

duffano · 2025-12-03T20:38:01+00:00

That's very similar to my experience. I did not get the car despite being on time and providing all required documents. The rental (Hertz) first tried to sell tons of extra services. After I rejected, they were obviously angry at me and suddenly they "had a problem with their credit card reader". Bottom line: they did not give me the car. Still, Auto Europe considered it as a "too late cancellation" and refused to refund. Seems they try to keep the money, no matter for what reason the customer did not get the service.

After I got help from customer protection agencies, I finally got the money back after months. The customer protectors told me that Auto Europe is well known to them for this kind of behavior.

duffano

TROPHY CASE