I saw this first on /r/homeautomation, then /r/StallmanWasRight and then Hacker News. so I thought I'd post it here. Honestly, I would say I couldn't believe it but after that similar incident with the HAM radio software last year, I'm not exactly shocked. This does seem like a surefire way to torpedo your business, though.
The long short of this: gadget opens your garage door. To do so, it apparently has to call home to a server, because god knows why. Person bought gadget, gadget didn't work (Internet of shit?) and so he left a bad review on Amazon. Maybe even a rude review. Rather than respond with the typical "we are sorry you are experiencing issues with our product", gadget creator throws temper tantrum and blacklists this person's device, so that it can't access the server, rendering the garage door opener useless.
There's two big issues I have with this:
1) Why on earth is this company behaving so terribly?
and perhaps more important:
2) Why on earth did we feel the need to take a signal that previously had to travel 3 feet, and make it travel 3,000 miles? How is that innovation?
Note to @wendell and co. You guys are great. Please consider making some videos on how to get into this home automation with local, secured software and hardware, such as a Raspberry Pi running Home Assistant with Z-Wave devices, or something. I would love to see that at some point, and because it's my opinion, I naturally suspect I'm in the majority.
You're not looking at the bigger picture. You never know when you'll need to open up your garage door from singapore so those hired guys can go and off your spouse. You have the perfect alibi.
#!/usr/bin/GOALKEEPERthoughts
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"
Is the creator named Ikey Doherty? Sounds like something he would do.
Or is the guy the founder of Architect Linux? ( A little back story if you don't
know about this:
"
This sounds like a combination of EULA abuse in conjunction with the Internet of Shit. Honestly, it wouldn't be hard for this company to find out which one of their customers gave out the bad review.
I think the dev was justified in what he did (to a degree).
Let me explain why.
<explanation>
The dev said in his reply that instead of trouble shooting the customer released a bad review on amazon dissing the product and calling it shit. Then went to the forums for help. I think the customer had that coming for being an ass. (Oh your product won't work on my iphone it must be your fault!) kind of layer eight bullshit. The customer was offered a full refund despite being a prick. So now he just has to go back to using his old garage door opener.
Now what the dev did may not have been the best thing to do (from a legal standpoint), the arrogant customer sure deserved it. There may be something in the EULA that allows the dev to do stuff like that with his product. We'll just have to wait and see.
</explanation>
What I would like to know is if the device phones home each and every time the gadget is used, or just during the first time setup to validate if its an authorized device, because from the looks of the post the customer was not able to get past the initial setup phase. If the device is going to be bricked, it may only be possible during this time between phases.
There's multiple issues with this line of thinking:
1) You're not distinguishing between support, and warranty. The vendor is not required to provide support by law, unless it was pre-negotiated. He could have simply banned him from the support forum.
2) By selling the product on Amazon, he must comply with Amazon's terms of service, which prohibit this kind of behavior in retribution for bad reviews.
3) He can't force the user to return the product. If he refunded the money, and bricked the product, OK I guess, but by bricking it before it was refunded, he essentially sold a product not as advertised.
However, never underestimate how aggressive amazon sellers get in coaxing you to remove your bad review. Bad reviews on amazon mean your product will not sell...
<story time> I bought a soldering iron a while back. It came busted... the heating core inside the iron was snapped in half. I sent it back and got a free replacement. They sent back the exact same one. So, I got a refund through amazon, left a scathing (but accurate) review with pictures and everything.
To this day I still get regular emails from the seller begging me to remove the bad review if they send me 2x free irons. The latest one tried to gilt trip me by talking about "my livelihood, family, etc". IMO, they should've though about that before sending me back the same darn broken iron. lol.
I'm not going to be bribed into removing an honest review that will help customers. I have soooome principles. </story time>
All that to say... Sellers will do back flips to get you to remove your bad review. If the seller in this case couldn't convince a particularly noisy customer to stop making a scene, they prolly just wanted to nip it in the bud...
Amazon should really setup a system whereby providing good support and resolving bad reviews satisfactorily is rewarded better than just getting good reviews in terms of boosting a product in search rankings and other parameters. I mean good support is a feature that I really look for in a good product because It tells me about the company & how they think as well as that they care about their products and customers.
Since they had a discourse forum dedicated to the product, I assume they were in the business of providing support as well (out of the kindness of their heart).
One could say that the retribution was because of the rowdiness of the customer, and not just due a bad review. Did you happen to find an archive of the amazon review as well? If it was just a slew of curses blaming the product as 'faulty' without actually understanding how it works and then blaming the product for the their stupidity then I can at least understand why the outcome happened the way it did.
Of course I could totally be in the wrong about the dev's true actions. But I try to put myself in his shoes to understand the 'why' instead of jumping the the 'Internet of Shit' bandwagon.
I have worked in phone support and when a customer would call in and be an ass, I would not go out of my way to help them. So if that guy was just having a bad day and an asshole customer decided to try and ruin your image I could understand the decisions that were made. "Bricked your device, go get your refund and GTFO'.
This seems to be touted as bad review = bricked device, but the way I saw it the retaliation didn't happen until he went to the support forum and just acted absurd instead of explaining the problem and asking for help. The awesome part of this is that the buyer was clearly unable to make the device work in the first place, so cutting off his access to their system was a completely wasted effort. Then he said what he did in the forum! I think everybody had a big bowl of stupid before this went down.
He should have quietly bricked the device to make certain the abusive person couldn't get someone else to make it work and result in a refund. It may not be 'right', but neither party was noble in this matter. If i was a one man operation in the same position I might have done the same thing.
People deserve what they get when they buy pointless shit like that. FFS you would expect a garage door to last 10 years plus, the moment you start hooking stuff to the internet it will need components replaced in less than 5.
I have contempt for IoS victims, my own employer being one of them
Customer was rude and stupid, and he can't complain now: he didn't like the product - he got a refund, fair's fair. But the developer totally deserves the customer. You advertise stupid IoS product as "easy to install and maintain" - you get yourself stupid customers complaining about your shit not working out of the box. It's a match made in heaven.
He didn't get a refund. He was told his product had been deactivated and that he should contact Amazon to try and get a refund. That is entirely different.
Then ban him from the support forum. That's not an excuse to deactivate his product, essentially breaking it, that he paid valid money for, without issuing a refund. He was told he could return it if he liked. There was no guarantee that Amazon would let him return it. The sale happened: Goods in exchange for services. Support was not sold, therefore, fine, you don't have to offer support, so ban him from the forums. I'm more than OK with that.
However, the product was sold, and for them to break it afterwords is almost certainly illegal, because the transaction had already been finalized. I'm sure the FTC would have something to say about this. You can't just retroactively go bricking people's stuff because they annoy you. Again, the transaction has been finalized and this seems awfully shady, and a breach of consumer protection laws. That'd be like if you had an Intel CPU that they bricked via the management engine because you swore up a storm in their support forum. Or if you bought a BMW and they bricked the ECU because you left the dealer a bad review.
I truthfully can't comprehend how anyone is OK with this. To me, there is a distinction between providing support, and selling a product. The seller is under no obligation to allow the person access to the support forum, because they did not sell support. So fine, ban him. That is OK with me. But to then destroy his device without any negotiation or reimbursement (and no, telling him to return it to Amazon is not a reimbursement), is a massive property rights violation.
