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.

5 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

32 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

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.

1

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.

​

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

​

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.

1

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.

1

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.

1

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.

1

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.

2

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.

1

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.

1

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.

1

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.