IoT Garage Door Opener Maker Bricks Customer's Product After Bad Review (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Denis Grisak, the man behind the Internet-connected garage opener Garadget, is having a very bad week. Grisak and his Colorado-based company SoftComplex launched Garadget, a device built using Wi-Fi-based cloud connectivity from Particle, on Indiegogo earlier this year, hitting 209 percent of his launch goal in February. But this week, his response to an unhappy customer has gotten Garadget a totally different sort of attention. On April 1, a customer who purchased Garadget on Amazon using the name R. Martin reported problems with the iPhone application that controls Garadget. He left an angry comment on the Garadget community board: "Just installed and attempting to register a door when the app started doing this. Have uninstalled and reinstalled iPhone app, powered phone off/on - wondering what kind of piece of shit I just purchased here..." Shortly afterward, not having gotten a response, Martin left a 1-star review of Garadget on Amazon: "Junk - DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY - iPhone app is a piece of junk, crashes constantly, start-up company that obviously has not performed proper quality assurance tests on their products." Grisak then responded by bricking Martin's product remotely, posting on the support forum: "Martin, The abusive language here and in your negative Amazon review, submitted minutes after experiencing a technical difficulty, only demonstrates your poor impulse control. I'm happy to provide the technical support to the customers on my Saturday night but I'm not going to tolerate any tantrums. At this time your only option is return Garadget to Amazon for refund. Your unit ID 2f0036... will be denied server connection."

Comments

Musk did this too

[Anonymous Coward]

When someone posted details about upcoming firmware online.

Re: Musk did this too

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a lot different situation than someone having a non functioning product and permanently bricking it.

Elon Musk has never bricked a customers car (intentionally) for a bad review. He did refuse to sell some future products but he never removed functionality.

A point of clarification...

[evolutionary]

First, people are misusing the term "bricking" in this context but I understand why. One COULD say they EFFECTIVELY bricked the device because the idiot (pardon my French) blocked the IoT Mac Address/ID of the device but technically the device wasn't actually bricked. It was effectively bricked by in fact being blocked from the required server for to have a chance of working (not that it was from the report).

Now that constitutes removing the primary function advertised/sold to the customer which legally he doesn't have the right to do unless: 1. The customer has been fully refunded + any damage caused in using his product. 2. The customer is committing acts that harm the functionality of the devices for others. 3. The customer has been proven a public threat through use of the services (basically a superset of 2). This business is probably sunk and will harm (and this is perhaps a good thing) the IoT business sector in general because people are finally becoming aware what installing IoT (I like to pronounce "idiot") devices for security in their homes; The provider of the 3rd party server could lock them out, let others in, all sorts of stuff. But I digress.

The customer can sue the manufacturer/service provider because he withdrew the core component before refunding him. That is a classic breach of contract. This business is probably finished because the owner has not only shown poor judgement, lack of legal knowledge and a serious emotional impulse control problem, but in addition to all this, a lawsuit could well bankrupt him. And the evidence is on the Internet for all to see. (and he even admitted it on the Internet...)