Slashdot Mirror
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."
Did the guy agree that his device can be disabled at any time and the server side service is not a given?
Sometimes the customer is wrong
Sometimes a company should hire a blond Customer Service Lady that is unfailingly polite.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
My girlfriend had this opinion when running a coffee stand in a shopping centre. If a customer complained there would be one chance to remake the coffee. If they complained again they got there few dollars back along with a "We can't make a coffee to suit you. Go find someone who can and don't come back. We won't do any better tomorrow and we have other customers to serve".
Difference is, a good quality high volume low cost product that people line up for and sells in the thousands per day allows you to tell a few customers to go screw themselves. An expensive low-volume emerging product still heavily reliant on word of mouth does not.
This kind of retaliation is no different from a cellphone service provider jamming your RF signal. The FCC (if we still had one) should step in and either fine the manufacturer for retaliatory misbehavior, or punitively shut down their internet access for a nominal period (at least a week) for abusing the privilege of being online.
Doing this periodically would send a really constructive message to many others who routinely abuse others on the net, be they bad businesses or just trolls. Access to the net is a privilege, not a right.
Heh. When I replaced the old, malfunctioning opener on my shop I went with a unit that's capable of being connected to the Internet (Liftmaster "MyQ" technology) but I didn't even use the components of the system designed for this purpose. Instead I continued to use a Genie trigger and doorbell button to activate the door from inside the shop.
We had a garage door problem on a different door and needed to call a service tech in to resolve it quickly. When he saw how I'd rigged my Liftmaster he literally said, "you can do that?!" Apparently Liftmaster has been in the habit of not disclosing that the doors can be operated without the MyQ stuff.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.