What if you had a license, but no car and wanted to get in on the game of driving people around for money? Well thank goodness, the casual driver can now be a Lyft driver thanks to the partnership between Lyft and Hertz.

Lyft has been trying all sorts of things to keep and expand their driver fleet. They announced a new bunch of perks for their drivers including instant deposits and fuel rewards, but this one seems a bit crazy. Lyft drivers will now be able to rent cars from Hertz for discounted rates. The rates shake out to be $25 per day, $150 per week, or $540 per month for an SUV.

All in all, that’s a pretty good rate, but it’s strange that Lyft would want to enlist people who presumably have not been driving long or have not been driving much to represent their brand. If only there was accident data being reported! I understand that Lyft is trying to expand their service and get the kind of recognition that uber does, but this move might come back to bite them in the butt.

Instead, they should probably just find a target group of say, college kids, and market their career opportunities to them. Stay-at-home moms might be another good demographic, but these are people you would likely have to educate about how the service works from a driver perspective.

It is nice to see that Lyft doesn’t parade around with all of Uber’s negative press, but that’s another avenue they certainly could go down. I have already seen multiple reports of Uber drivers who sexually assaulted their passengers yet nothing from Lyft saying how they have better screening measures for their drivers (if it’s true or not is another point.)

Lastly, I wonder if there is any checks and balances kind of system in place to keep people from registering as Lyft drivers just to rent cars. It seems like even at those rates you would have to take in a lot of fares to make a living. I could see this discount being better to scam your way to a cheap vacation vehicle, but maybe that’s just me.

I have been a LinkedIn member since the mid to late 2000’s. Over time it hasn’t evolved as much as say Myspace or Facebook, but the guts of the site have undergone a number of changes. One of these was and is the way in which LinkedIn gets you to connect with other people on their site.

When joining the professional social network you have to provide at least one email address. The site then prompts you to sync your contacts with their system and finds all of your friends in their network. Of course, this isn’t really that much different than any other social network. The idea behind this being that if you know more people at the party you’re more likely to stay.

The problem comes in next from how LinkedIn was using this data. When you first create the account you have the option to pick out any contacts that you want to send an invite to. If someone you select doesn’t have a LinkedIn account they would receive an email that looks like a personal request from you to join. Not ideal, but totally within your control. The next part is where it get’s dicy. See, LinkedIn then started to decide that members weren’t inviting enough of their friends to join. They took it upon themselves to automatically send emails that appear to be from you to your contacts asking them to sign up for the social network.

You may not think this is an issue, but then think back to how many emails you’ve sent from your email account. Maybe buried somewhere is a previous boss, maybe an old flame, or maybe even someone you interviewed for a job once. Any email address that you sent or received mail from would be fair game. You can see how this might be upsetting to the people who received the requests as well as those who found out they were being sent.

Enter the class action lawsuit!

So there is a handy site that explains all of this in detail. The short story is, if you’ve had a LinkedIn account between September 17, 2011 to October 31, 2014 you can submit a claim to any settlement money that will be paid out. Now, there is no guarantee that any money will be paid out, nor is there an estimated amount that will be paid out since the money is to be divided up by the number of claims submitted. If you do want to file, it just takes a few minutes and you can do so here.

Okay, so I already did a post where I talked all about how much I love Loyal3. I felt it was time to reiterate my love for this investing platform after a few different experiences I have had with them.

Let’s start with some good events. Good stuff is always easier to talk about right? So shortly after making my last post Loyal3 updated their platform. I can now see the actual % or $ amount I have made or lost with a particular company. It’s great. It made it a lot easier to make sure I was making a profit with my sales. In fact, so far everything I have sold has been at a gain even with the delay on the transactions going through.

Another great thing I’ve noticed is the addition of investing options. I have already bought 2 IPO’s though Loyal3 and it was incredibly easy. And it’s not just small companies that have released their IPO with Loyal3. Virgin America launched their IPO with Loyal3 back in 2014. It’s pretty fantastic.

Alright, now for the rough part. I did say I hadn’t lost money on a sale, but part of that is because you just don’t sell stock at a loss right? Well, I had bought a handful of Quicksliver stock back when I was testing the waters with Loyal3. When they started to look a bit rocky I sold half of my stock for a profit, but decided to gamble with the other half. Well, as luck would have it they went bankrupt. (They can’t all be winners!) I wasn’t too worried about the monetary loss, but being still pretty new to investing I wasn’t exactly sure how bankruptcy would play out for me and my shit stock.

Loyal3 was incredibly good at communicating everything I needed to know. The first bit of information came before the bankruptcy. It was a notice that I could participate in a class action lawsuit against the company for misrepresenting their company value to stock holders. Good to know, right?

I received probably about 3 communications from Loyal3 after that. The first was an email telling me that the company had been delisted for dropping below $2 per share. Fine, I could see that was going to happen. The email went on to explain what that meant for me as well as what my options were.

After that, came the bankruptcy notifications. Just as they had done with the stock being delisted, Loyal3 went on to explain exactly what was happening, what it meant for me, and what my options were. I couldn’t have asked for more. Ultimately, even after losing some money, I’m a completely happy customer of Loyal3. How many people can say that?!