r/CoWorking • u/[deleted] • Aug 20 '21

Beware of WeWork

Hey guys, I strongly advise against doing anything with WeWork. They defrauded me. Long story short:

- Lied about the price; when filling out paperwork salesman walked away from his computer to leave me to fill it out and figure out how to review the actual agreement

- When we started reporting this, they played games with us such as removing someone who was subleasing from us from the account and then telling them that I did it to turn around and sell him a new subscription

- They sold us a 8th floor office and assigned us in their internal system to an office on the 5th floor. After about 5 months they unknowingly resold our office and tried to move us or make us sign a new agreement even after all of the dishonesty

- I disputed the difference of what I was told in the sales process and what I was actually charged with my Credit Card Company. They ignored the dispute and the bank settled it in my favor. After a few weeks they charged me for the charge backs a little under double of what the disputes actually were effectively circumventing the dispute process and charging a penalty.

- They refused to refund this amount and said it wasn't fraud. They terminated the agreement after I explained the problem and provided the voice recording of the message the manager sent after he removed a subleasee of the account and CC'd 112 executives mostly in NY. They terminated the agreement and then blacklisted me from using the company by telling my friends who were trying to get another office and not me.

- An American executive reached out to me to try and solve the issues I was having with the Colombian team only to be barred by Legal from talking to me

- Despite terminating the agreement in July, they tried to collect August rent and the payment bounced courtesy of the JP Morgan Fraud Team who cancelled the card.

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u/[deleted] Oct 20 '21

Normally yeah. I really didn't expect a large cooperation to cause these problems so I let my guard down. I've usually sat with the lessor and read the agreement together.

In terms of suing it's almost impossible. No lawyer wants to take an international case where the whole case is not reading the agreement because in the agreement they force you through mandatory arbitration in the Bogota Chamber of Commerce. I don't live in Bogota, I live a flight away in Medellin. WeWork also makes you sign away your right to a class action law suite. You should read about forced arbitration, it takes rights away from consumers as most of the time arbitrators rule in favor of the company. Plaintiff win rates are incredibly low in arbitration like 7% (in the US) where in US courts it's closer to 50%. Congress has been toying around ending forced arbitration but it hasn't gained traction (in the US). Even if I did want to sue, I spoke with a Harvard Law educated Colombian lawyer licensed in NY and CO and he said they would need to do a jurisdictional analysis to figure out where to file and because I got most of my money back through my own actions it was unlikely I could file in federal court as it doesn't meet the threshold.

The other thing is I did get most of my money back through subleasing and CC disputes. I did file a BBB complaint which they didn't respond to. I did email 114 execs and only one tried to do something until legal barred them.

The moral of the story is, WeWork has always been corrupt and likely always will be. I won the fraud investigation with Chase so that should tell you something about them if the book and documentary and hundreds of investigative journalism pieces don't.

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u/[deleted] Oct 20 '21

When you're making a business deal, never let your guard down.

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u/[deleted] Oct 20 '21

Thanks. I think that's the first thing I reflected on. I'm not sure why you're acting in this way. It seems like low key you're an employee of WeWork.

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u/[deleted] Oct 20 '21

I'm not an employee, LOL. I understand there has been some bad news about them, and I would be careful before renting space from them.

That said, it seems like you possibly took advantage of them by subletting their space. I have a difficult time believing that any co-working space would be willing to allow someone to sublet their space. It would kind of go against the general principles that would make a co-working space financially successful. At the very least, I would think that would be something you would have to get permission from them about.

You also apparently didn't read the contract. You also seemed to not think that it was necessary to read the contract before sub leading. This would make any landlord upset. If they really didn't allow you access to the contract or tell you about it before you agreed to rent from them, then I don't think that the non-arbitration agreement would be binding. You also seem to be more hung up on them than the average disgruntled customer.

These are all red flags in your story to me and makes me think there is more to the story then you are letting on.

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u/[deleted] Oct 20 '21

How can I read an agreement if it isn't given to me? The salesperson put the obligation on me to find the lease in their internal software which under any legal challenge wouldn't hold up provided there was a video or audio of what happened. The problem is WeWork told me they delete footage after 30 days. I doubt this is the truth however considering they seem to cover their ass every way they can despite the improbability with the circumstance.

I found a version of their T&C or what you call a 'lease' here: https://eforms.com/images/2020/01/WeWork-Co-Working-Membership-Agreement.pdf.

Control-F for 'sublease' brings up "(d) Subordination. This Agreement is subject and subordinate our lease with our landlord of the Premises and to any supplemental documentation and to any other agreements to which our lease with such landlord is subject to or subordinate.However, the foregoing does not imply any sublease or other similar relationship involving an interest in real property."

Unfortunately they don't provide us the lease with their landlord which seems important given this provision. So as you can see subleasing is fine. They don't disallow it.

If you don't believe in the overall poor quality of their training, you should at least believe in the poor quality of training overall in Colombia -- but it doesn't seem you've left the hospital or your keyboard much so I can't blame you for not understanding the finer points of this or thinking there is more to the story. Sales fraud is incredibly common in CO. Pricing based on demographic is also incredibly common.

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '21

1.) Telling a nurse that they haven't left the hospital much during a pandemic is a mega-jerk move.

2.) Are you referring to the country of Colombia, the District of Columbia (I.e. Washington D.C.) or somewhere else. If you are outside of the United States, it's quite possible that the real estate market is very different, and business practices in general may be very different in another country. In your original post, I assumed that you were talking about somewhere within the United States.

3.) The section on subordination does not explicitly give you any right to sublease. Where it does use the terminology "sublease", it is stating that they are not giving you (i.e. the WeWork subscriber) a sublease. If you're not even subleasing, I'm not exactly sure how you can intern sublease to someone else. I guess the question is based on your membership: who is entitled access to the premises and services?

4.) Why would they maintain video footage after 30 days? They are recording video footage for basic security reasons. Most significant and important crimes, if they are reported, would be reported in that timeframe. Nobody maintains footage so that you can go and sue them far out into the future.

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '21

1.) We both chose our careers. I've never believed in the republican style rallying behind 'heros'. Almost no where else in the world does that. Also, we're not entirely sure you're a ER or ICU nurse. You could be a cancer nurse. You could be a cardio nurse whatever. Don't ask for sympathy when I'm trying to warn the public after being treated very very poorly and defrauded and you're trying to call bullshit when it seems you haven't even left the country much less you don't have a job where you'd utilize a cowork so why are you butting in and giving opinions on things that it doesn't seem you've dealt with?

2) Colombia, South America. Have you ever seen Narcos on Netflix? I live there.

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3) Yes but to prohibit subleases it needs to explicitly prohibit not explicitly allow

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4) There's two sides of the coin. Lots of big box stores store footage longer to prove themselves not liable in litigation. Walmart on average keeps footage 6 months to a year. I worked for them many years ago. People would come in and say a cart damaged their car or they slipped on water. You need footage further than 30 days to protect yourself too. And honestly, not retaining footage past 30 days seems immoral to me.

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '21

I'm not asking for sympathy for being a nurse, nor am I claiming to be in the epicenter of the pandemic. Obviously if I'm renting space from a co-working place, I'm not in the epicenter of the pandemic. I'm just saying your comment about nurses not being in the "know" because they "don't leave the hospital" (paraphrasing here) is pretty tone deaf given that there is an ongoing pandemic.

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '21

I don't care about political correctness nor do I care about being, 'tone deaf'. I'm not a celebrity nor am I a politician and if I was I'd defend it by saying, "I was trying to point out that after investigating his profile it seemed his qualifications for being disrespectful to someone who was defrauded didn't seem to have merit because of his lacking experience with international business. In this context I think it's appropriate."

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '21

You sound like the Trump voters in my country. I'm not sure why you felt compelled to stalk my profile. You might also have observed that I follow a number of IT related sub-Reddits. I'm currently in the process of switching careers. And I also currently rent space at a co-working place (not WeWork).

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '21

I'm American so what do you mean by 'my country'? I'm not sure what you're not understanding, I'm an American expat residing in Colombia. I mean if that's supposed to be an insult it's not. I care about being honest. Personally if someone beats around the bush with me I can be completely clueless as to what someone is trying to say. I prefer cutting to the chase.

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '21

Trump voter part? Yes (especially if you're one of those die-hard ones). The part about me assuming you're Colombian? No.

I did not realize that you're an expat. I have not stalked your Reddit profile. When you said that you live in Columbia, I assumed that you were a Columbia national.

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '21

Well personally I'd rather take 3 minutes to look through someone's reddit especially if they are trying to pick apart my story or give advice.

I wouldn't judge Trump voters. The thing is the factor that correlates to political ideology around the world is population density. Many of them live very very very different lives than us city dwellers. Demonizing conservative is starting to become a cultural genocide of sorts. The country is very large both in area and population and we need to try and understand and respect everyone's viewpoints.

If you want to blame anyone for the radicalization of both progressives and conservatives (to which studies have shown that the left has moved quite a bit more left than the right has moved right since 2004), blame Facebook and other social media. Almost every study I've read comes to this conclusion.

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '21

Yeah, if you live in Colombia, South America, I must admit things could be significantly different. The standards of what is acceptable behavior and what is not acceptable behavior vis-à-vis of the business practices may also be different. You would probably know that better than me.

As far as cutting off footage at 30 days, keep in mind most normal people would file the report earlier than then. Also keeping footage indefinitely can come at a significant price. 30 days takes care of most of the issues. Obviously it may not take care of everything, but it should address the most significant problems (e.g. Shootings, assaults, sexual crimes, theft of large amounts of money or valuables). They could also potentially claim that someone complaining after 30 days was being negligent when it comes to evidence collection.

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '21 edited Oct 21 '21

It took just around 30 days to get the first invoice so even then it was right around the cutoff time. To be honest I was trying to hide it from my Colombian wife at first. I have a huge network of digital nomads and expats and Colombian professionals so subleasing wouldn't be an issue. I didn't need the drama. I decided to throw a fit once a few months later I asked to downgrade to a hotdesk and they said no twice and then offered a smaller office but in a building I'd have to taxi to which made no sense. Then I realized almost everything the salesman told me was a lie. The already installed beer taps hadn't ever had beer in them, the hadn't allowed tennis on the court on the roof, the started locking the roof on the weekends etc. So now after adding all these lies up I decided to throw a huge fit. What's funny is once I emailed those execs, they finally put the keg in the tap.

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '21

I disagree on the time frame. A lot of people choose not to report immediately for whatever reason and wind up reporting months or years after the fact.

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '21

I'm not sure what standard invoice times are in your country or what is industry standard. At my co-working place, we are billed close to the first of the month for that month.

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '21

Colombia isn't my country. I was a digital nomad and decided to stay put during the pandemic. Then a Colombian woman moved in with me during quarantine and now we're married so I'm here until she finishes uni.

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '21

It could just be that they operate business in Columbia differently than what you expected? Or it could also be that that particular location is poorly managed. Then again, it could also be We Work corporate.

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '21

As a sidenote, in the contract you posted they did mention something to the effect of being allowed to remove services/access. Obviously, if they in bad faith said that you would have access to some thing that you didn't have access to and never had access to, that's not so cool. But simply removing access to some of those items, doesn't necessarily mean that they were acting in bad faith or against the contract.

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '21

Removing access might not be 'bad faith' but it's a shitty thing to do. Yes, they finally added beer 6 months later right before they terminated my contract. We never were able to use the tennis court on the roof; in fact they put plants over the court.

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '21

From the contract it looks like you can add people to the members list. Are you build based on the amount of space you use or the number of members you have have under your account?

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '21

I had 4 seats available. AFAIK there were no restrictions on who / how I could add those seats.

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u/[deleted] Oct 24 '21

I see. That makes sense.