Wink Smart Home Users Have One Week To Subscribe Or Be Shut Off (engadget.com) 140
Stephenmg writes: The smart home hub Wink, which was purchased by Will.i.am in 2017, is giving users until May 13th to opt into a subscription for $4.99 per month. If users do not opt-in, the hub becomes a brick. "Long term costs and recent economic events" prompted the move, according to Wink, and the company didn't want to sell user data to offset the costs of running services for free.
Wink? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Want to bet the contract they signed entitles Wink to impose subscription fees in the future on "free tier" customers?
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Want to bet that doesn't even matter because they have mandatory binding arbitration so class action is moot and your suggested clause isn't even needed?
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They probably do, but my suggested clause is still useful as it gives a hook to justify the binding arbitration's decision. Never hurts to ensure all the loose ends are nailed down.
Re: Wink? (Score:2)
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I'd like to believe that to be true, but when they win the first few of many similar arbitration cases, the remaining will be just express settled by the arbitrator because of precedent.
You'd need widely varying claims for each one to be time consuming enough to merit the arbitrator's time, effort and cost.
I also wager that someone's already thought through the idea of "DoSing" arbitration as a strategy, and the arbitration agreements probably include some kind of language which requires the loser to pay or
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Actually, arbitration expressly prohibits using precedent. Each case MUST be fully tried independently. It's also not cheap, but the lack of precedent allows quick and easy settlement with little/no risk.
Thus, typically businesses use that to protect themselves - they know they're guilty but they also know that fully proving a case isn't worth 100s, or usually even a few 1000s of dollars and each individual would (in theory) have to do that themselves against a much larger, richer company. A company whic
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So it will work for now, but they will simply alter the process to eliminate mass arbitration as a technique.
The corporations and employers forcing arbitration are the paymasters of the arbitration industry, and they will be forced to adjust their fee schedule to mitigate this as a technique. Failing to do this will result in new arbitration firms being formed with baked-in price structures and techniques to do this.
And of course as existing agreements expire or are updated, the arbitration agreements with
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"arbitration requires Wink spend time and money they don't have in arbitration on each case"
Could the terms require the party requesting the arbitration to pay all costs? Then Wink could sub legal work to some firm that gets paid from the other side and spend zero effort. If i'm writing an arbitration clause, I'd put something like that in there. Even if its not legal, you'd have to go to court to get that part nullified. And all this is over what, a $50-$100 piece of tech?
Re: Wink? (Score:2)
Re: Wink? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wink has been essentially bankrupt for years. They got bought out by Willwhateverâ(TM)s company but heâ(TM)s apparently not been paying staff and closed his office after a deal in Dubai stalled last year. Turns out having a couple of hit songs doesnâ(TM)t make you a tech visionary and brilliant businessman any more than Bill Gates buying a ukulele makes him a hit musician.
Lawyers are generally only interested in class action suits where they can win something. Taking 100% of the zero assets Wink likely has is still zero.
Re: Wink? (Score:4, Informative)
Exactly. Right now the Reddit crowd is screaming about class action lawsuits against Wink. The company will be gone before the first brief is filed in court.
I got the email from Wink yesterday telling me that my hub would be cut off in one week if I didn't pay. My response was the Hubitat that is scheduled for delivery today. I had been planning to replace my Wink for some time (it has become increasingly unreliable because Wink's cloud servers keep dropping out), and this finally motivated me to dump it for good.
The Wink is going to be put out on the curb for some neighbor who might be willing to pay the subscription fee until the company dies.
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My response was the Hubitat
Thank you. Came here to find a replacement for my soon-to-be-paperweight. I guess I got my $100 out of it, but it still seems like dick move on Wink's part.
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https://hackaday.com/2015/01/0... [hackaday.com]
Just hack your Wink.
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I like the UK law on this. The vendor is responsible, so if you bought it from Amazon you just send it back to them for a refund now it is bricked. If they can convince Wink to offer a free service within 28 days they can avoid giving a refund, and being Amazon they have a better chance of being heard than you do.
That happened with the PS3 when Sony removed Other OS, for example.
It encourages vendors to look for quality manufacturers who support their hardware and put penalty clauses in the supply contracts
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I like the UK law on this. The vendor is responsible, so if you bought it from Amazon you just send it back to them for a refund now it is bricked. If they can convince Wink to offer a free service within 28 days they can avoid giving a refund, and being Amazon they have a better chance of being heard than you do.
I agree with the spirit of this, but it seems like a bad idea overall for two reasons:
(1) a vendor who sold something in good faith a year ago shouldn't be punished because the manufacturer of the product suddenly decided to be a dick or renege on advertising or promises. Sony and Wink would both fall under this.
(2) it gives vastly disproportionate power to massive companies like Amazon who, like you said, can actually go after Sony and either get money or a behavior change. Small shops don't have this kin
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The idea is that the consumer has a direct contract of sale with the vendor, and it is up to the vendor to make sure that the product is suitable and sold fairly. If the vendor made it clear that a cloud service is required and that there is no guarantee it won't be turned off tomorrow they wouldn't be liable, but they don't do that because then no-one would buy it.
The other issue is that often the manufacturer is in another country and impossible to deal with directly anyway.
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Wonder if they'd release the hardware drivers, at which point the OSS crowd could make something of it. Without the drivers it's just a paperweight.
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You can hack it. Without the invasive cloud crap it's kind of a neat little device: a multiway bridge with a few different types of radios in it.
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If they declare bankruptcy, you can be pretty sure that all the user data that they've collected will be scraped and divvied and sold to the highest bidder. That doesn't sound like a super ideal outcome either.
Not saying that it justifies breaking the contract, that depends on a whole host of other things. All I'm saying is that the customer interest is not about upholding the contract at any possible cost no matter what. Especially since a bankrupt company isn't even liable to fulfill contracts at all.
Have a wink somewhere. (Score:5, Informative)
I have a wink lying around somewhere. I switched over to habitat because I wanted local processing capability. The wink hub works really well but was completely Internet sever based automation. If you lost connection to the Internet none of your automation would work correctly. They do have a unbelievable amount of compatibility with devices. But after searching for something similar with local processing I settled on habitat, I have never looked back. Also in larger installations you can have multiple hubs linked. Pretty nifty device.
Re: Have a wink somewhere. (Score:2)
Wink Hub 2 added local processing. It made a lot of things a lot faster with no internet round trip as well as more fault tolerant.
Shame theyâ(TM)re bricking the system if you donâ(TM)t pay monthly for the service they told you you were paying for by buying the hardware.
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I started the smart home thing with a Wink, but after it failing and bricking itself, and having to send it back to the company to be repaired/reflashed, I gave up on it and went with Smart Things. If Samsung decides to become "difficult", I'll just go to Openhab, my son uses that and likes it a lot. The disadvantage of the non-cloud-based solutions is that they require more care and feeding than I have time for these days. Smartthings just WORKS. Mostly.
Re:Have a wink somewhere. (Score:4, Interesting)
Getting tired of saying this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Cloud required = you will get stiffed one day.
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Pornhub probably already knows your wanking schedule . . .
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That's an argument against a cloud connected smart hub, not against all smart hubs. There are huge numbers of smart devices that have no capability to connect to the internet themselves, and only connect to a hub, and there are several hubs that don't need an internet connection to function.
Most all of my smart home stuff is z-wave, what isn't z-wave is stuff I built myself with ESP8266 or ESP32s, it all connects to home assistant which is open source software which runs locally on a raspberry pi (or any ot
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Do not ever but a smart home hub that requires a cloud service.
Really, do not ever buy anything that requires a cloud service.
Renting storage in the cloud? Sure. Subscribing to an antivirus/antispam program? Sure. Using software like Adobe Suite or AutoCAD that are monthly access? If you must. But anything I can think of that you'd buy shouldn't rely on cloud.
It's bad enough there are products that don't rely on cloud but could be cloud-bricked... such as many modern vehicles.
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It's bad enough there are products that don't rely on cloud but could be cloud-bricked... such as many modern vehicles.
Modern vehicles are a great example considering how they keep on running. The answer is not to abandon cloud services (they provide a service that most users are simply not capable of providing themselves (VLAN? Is that what the kids are doing these days? Going to the skate park and snorting VLAN?), but rather to hold these worthless tech startups to a high standard called "delivering what was promised on the box".
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"Subscribing to an antivirus/antispam program?"
Lol enjoy your snake oil.
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Pretty much anything voice-controlled is going to be cloud-reliant for quite some time (especially if there is multi-language support), there's too much processing to be done locally in most cases.
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Nonsense. Most computers have had voice commands built in since the 90s, and there are lots of libraries for it. The natural language stuff is a bit newer, but there are also local libraries available for that.
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Do not ever but a smart home hub that requires a cloud service.
No do. We need to get away from this stupid notion of folding over and "learning our lesson" every time some corporation decides to do something nefarious and instead hold them to account.
Absolutely buy a cloud based service, and then drag the company through the courts if it doesn't do absolutely everything it says on the box. That's the only way we can stop this absurd cat and mouse game.
I could also comment on the relative complexity of creating a secure home devices yourself, but you already used a bunc
Re:Getting tired of saying this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember when cellphone companies would hold your number hostage so you couldn't go to another provider? And the government said, "this is stupid, implement number portability." And they said, "waaaaah, it's impossible, it would cost billions." And the government said, "too bad. Shut up and do it." And they did, and it's so much better now.
There needs to be interoperability and portability for the market to do its thing, which may require mandates at some point. Somebody other than google servicing your gmail address seems odd at first, but there must be a way.
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lol being attached to "your" phone number is such a fucking boomer desire.
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In the case of hardware 'portability' means that the drivers need to be accessible to others. Currently most hardware drivers are closely held corporate secrets, and reverse-engineering them is prohibitively expensive.
My employer (Amazon) got tired of paying boatloads of money to the access control company and wanted to write their own access control and alarm software. We've got a bazillion programmers hanging around, should be easy to at least get a minimally functional system up in less than a year, ri
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Voting with your dollars in the first place seems to be the practical choice.
If someone promises you "eternally free access to our cloud service" and then stops as they go out of business, there's no amount of 'but it's not fair, they lied' in the world that can get you your promised value. You can sue such a thing, but again see 'bankruptcy', you can't get compensation.
Meanwhile, if everyone buys a standalone product and lets a cloud-connected equivalent fail in the market, that tells them plenty about wha
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Voting with your dollars in the first place seems to be the practical choice.
And vote where? Any cloud provider can go out of business. Any non-cloud providers has devices with such a high complexity that the user's eyes would glaze over.
Going out of business is one thing, but the key is that these companies *aren't* going out of business. They damn well fucking should be and their rotting corpses should be strung up as an example of other companies who think they can just fuck their customer base because a pandemic has caused a minor issue to their bottom line.
If you're rent seekin
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We need some labelling laws. Products that require a cloud server to work need to be clearly marked as such, with a minimum lifetime guarantee and a full refund if it isn't met.
Re:Getting tired of saying this. (Score:5, Interesting)
I did this. And for bonus points I used a GoControl HUSBZB-1 [amazon.com] on my Hass installation on a Pi 4. Easy to set up and works like a champ but gives you a single USB device that'll do Z-Wave and Zigbee both. Built the whole thing into a 7" touchscreen based installation that allows the local console to be used to control devices from a single point.
Since the console itself is all web-based I'm also experimenting with setting up remote Pi's with the same screen but without all the ancillary stuff (the linked USB device and so on) that I can put elsewhere in the house to also exert control and allow monitoring but in a "lighter" platform. It all works really well.
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No, they do not even need to get bankrupt. Just decide to be more greedy.
Great example. Steam: The shady greedy company that won't even revoke your titles or ability to install them even when the company that owns it goes bankrupt and a court case removes all sales from online platforms including Steam itself.
But hey I just saw the ignorance of you comparing DRM to what's going on here, and honestly I just assumed it was a BAReFO0t post from the single preview sentence. How right I was.
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Good for you. Steam is the stupidest fucking bullshit ever. They made themselves a middleman in a market that needs no middleman. I will also never use them.
That's why I stay away from cloud products (Score:5, Informative)
Whenever you use any cloud service, free or not, you are completely at the mercy of the service provider. They go under, you lose the service. They can choose to shut it down, or raise prices on you any time (unless you have a contract, which helps unless they go under). They can also lose your data and at most you might get a refund for a month of service. They can also make you buy new products because they don't want to support old one. Basically, you are at their mercy for the product you are buying - you own nothing, as often they can brick your devices you purchased if they don't want to offer a subscription or if you choose not to pay their new rates.
Next time you build anything you depend on around a free service, make sure it's open source and you have the source to run your own servers if you had to, otherwise prepare an exit plan in the event the service disappears or is priced above what you're willing to pay for it.
Re:That's why I stay away from cloud products (Score:5, Informative)
I tried to buy home mesh networking recently -- and discovered that there are no suppliers of home networking gear any more that do not seem to have cloud administration. In the end I just didn't buy anything -- for exactly this reason.
Re:That's why I stay away from cloud products (Score:5, Informative)
I use Ubiquiti Unifi line - tons of AP options, I think all of them support mesh networking. While it supports access it via their cloud if you want to, you can run it completely on your own network and not connect your devices to the cloud at all - managed locally via web browser, their app, or even ssh command line if you really want to.
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Unless your house is made of steel (Score:4, Informative)
The problem you might solve with home mesh networking might well be solved by just moving your router a couple feet so the refrigerator isn't blocking the signal or whatever. It might make sense to look into your router / ap placement.
With the router somewhere near the middle of the house and the antennas pointed up, even a half-decent router covers a big house (mine is 3,500 sq feet, for example). It seems likely that you may have an easily solvable problem. For example if the wireless router is at one end of the house with the antenna pointed sideways and the tip pointed at the rest of the house, that would ruin your signal (antennas broadcast from the side and don't broadcast from the tip).
I assume here that your house doesn't have steel walls.
If your house is more than 3,500 square feet, a single simple, dumb, wireless repeater will do the trick. You can get one for $20-$30 or use openwrt to turn a router into a repeater. Put the repeater within range of the existing router.
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As misnohmer said... Ubiquiti Unifi has all local management if you like. Worth the investment in my opinion and I've been running these AP's for years without issue. You can either buy their "cloud key" product which is a little PoE module that basically runs the Unifi management on a little ARM processor, or you can spin up the Unifi management console on a Raspberry Pi, physical machine or a virtual machine.
Bonus, other than captive portal and stuff like that it all continues to function just fine if the
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Re: That's why I stay away from cloud products (Score:2)
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I'll second the Ubiquiti Unifi line. I've had their stuff in my house for the last 6 months, and it's been a massive improvement over the CIsco crap I was running earlier. Three APs, a gateway, and three PoE switches. All of it managed locally through a CloudKey. I could completely disconnect my internet, and I'd still be able to manage the network. I couldn't be happier.
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I've used TP Link hardware for this. No cloud, all local, works great.
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This company, Wink (or whatever it is), is contemplating selling user data in order to stay afloat.
So 2 questions:
Why is user data so valuable?
Why is everything 'cloud' now?
the answer is obvious.
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For people who no not particularly enjoy such things, or lack the skills to make it a reasonable task, it is, well, pretty unreasonable.
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It's not unreasonable to charge for a service, that way people can decide if they want the hassle of doing it "for free" (their time) or pay someone else to. That's really how the whole economy works. I could grow all my own food, sew all my own clothes, etc, etc, but I choose to pay others to do that for me.
What people really have a hard time with is the bait and switch tactics. "free for life" when later they change their mind and start charging. Or worse by far, and the case here, is "you paid fo
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Whenever you use any cloud service, free or not, you are completely at the mercy of the service provider.
Whenever you offer a cloud service free or not you are also completely at the mercy of the legal requirements to provide what was promised on the box. Don't pretend this is one sided.
Americans like to sue each other over all sorts of frivolous shit, but this is one case where users should sue companies into the ground for failing to deliver on what was advertised on the box.
make sure it's open source and you have the source to run your own servers
What is this sauce and server thing? Is it BBQ sauce? Why would my Cloud device come with some kind of sauce and someone to serve it? M
Good! (Score:2, Insightful)
The more people get burned by renting shiny stuff instead of buying it, the less often it will happen.
I want people to be burned, and burned badly, by supporting the "We Own You Wholesale" businesses; it means that when I look for products in that category I don't find it cartelised by a small group of big players who all tacitly agree to only provide products on rent (i.e. indefinitely tethered to their company).
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The more people get burned by renting shiny stuff instead of buying it, the less often it will happen.
NO. That's stupid pro corporation view of the relationship. The users shouldn't get burnt. The companies should. Users shouldn't have to be burnt or learn a lesson, they should receive what was promised. If the result causes a company to go bankrupt, fucking tough.
Why do you insist on punishing the wrong people while letting aggressors get away with slap on the wrist? Most other countries protect users not companies.
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The more people get burned by renting shiny stuff instead of buying it, the less often it will happen.
NO. That's stupid pro corporation view of the relationship.
Are you having a stroke? I propose that those companies shouldn't exist and you feel it's pro-corporation?
The users shouldn't get burnt. The companies should. Users shouldn't have to be burnt or learn a lesson, they should receive what was promised. If the result causes a company to go bankrupt, fucking tough.
Why do you insist on punishing the wrong people while letting aggressors get away with slap on the wrist? Most other countries protect users not companies.
Point out where I said the corporations should be protected.
If the users get burnt, and burnt badly, those corporations won't exist anymore, because the lie they are selling won't be believed and they'll go out of business, you stupid fucking cockroach.
I am shocked (Score:3)
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I'm here to serve you (Score:2)
Beware "lifetime subscriptions", or the equivalent with buy a product and online needed service is "free, forever!"
Where do they get the money from to continue it as an ongoing concern years down the road? The 1980s were lousy with fraudulent gyms with "lifetime subscriptions". Same for video dating services. The money is spent immediately, or pocketed, then when new suckers dry up, they just shut the doors.
The problem here wasn't necessarily fraud, but it was consumers presuming, wrongly, that it could
Beware of Free Tech (Score:4)
Free technology has a flip side.
1. They collect and sell your data. (Facebook/Google Free)
2. They run like crap until you pay for the full version (The Shareware model/in app purchases)
3. It will only run with an expensive device (Apple/Tesla Free)
4. A poor business model. Often from startups who failed to realize that not making profit cannot allow long term growth.
We do have Open Source Software Companies that offer a lot of free products and they can make a lot of money. However their business model relies on the following. ...
1. The product is sufficiently complex that you will need consulting/support services to sell (Red Hat)
2. Grants from government and education to solve a problem but don't want to manage IP
3. If popular enough you can get donations.
4. The product is small enough to be managed as hobby
5. Needed for a companies operation, but not a product in their customer base.
Free software isn't free. You are going to end up paying for it directly or indirectly.
Re: Beware of Free Tech (Score:2)
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Unless that itch is something that people don't want to scratch.
There is a ton of money being made making boring old CRUD applications. Each one is so configured to that one person, that even if it was open source it would be useless to anyone else, and there will be no community effort in keeping it running. For anyone who needs a similar CRUD application they are normally better off making it from scratch.
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Free software is free - the updates to it are the only issue
Free physical products are not free
Free services are definitely not free
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Free software to be developed isn't free. Either you need to pay for developers, or people are using their time to help create the product, and their personal time isn't free either.
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As we used to say about Hotmail, "If the service is free you're not the customer, you're the product."
I don't understand how people don't get it (Score:2)
Now if you look at some of these things a disposable toys fine. I guess its no different if it quits working because $external_service is discontinued after X years than it is if some capacitor gets a little bit to pregnant or a wearing part fails.
On the other hand its really frustrating to having things you come to depend on just go away one day. You'd think consumers would be a bit smarter about integrating technology with dependencies on outside services to work properly into big expensive assets like th
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I got the e-mail from Wink. I guess they haven't noticed that the only thing I ever used their cloud stuff for was registering an account, because at the time you needed one to root the thing (I don't think you do any more).
HomeAssistant (Score:4, Insightful)
One word: HomeAssistant
Open Source, self hosted, better than commercial stuff, compatible with almost everything.
Runs perfect on a $40 TV box with Armbian
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For the non /. users there is Crestron and paying out a large sum for the hardware, integration, and updates. Personally, I’ll use the $5k that I save on something that I will enjoy more and go with Hass.
Solid Product + Limited Market = Limited Revenue (Score:2)
I have a Wink system. I've run it in my house for a long time. I abhor subscriptions for these things.
That said, this is not at all surprising. The Wink hubs/system were ahead of their time and they're a solid product. But that results in diminishing returns when everyone that buys one doesn't need one and there's not path to the hardware upgrade. So their knee-jerk reaction is to charge everyone for core functionality.
What they should have done, IMNSHO, is to lay out a plan for improved add-on functionalit
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I've never understood the desire for 'home automation', but perhaps that's because I live in a country where the ambient temperature is usually quite pleasant, and only in the height of summer or the depths of winter do I need cooling or heating.
Lights? The switch is on the wall, it's not hard to reach it, and you turn it on and that's it. Or you turn it off and it's sorted.
Please, I'm genuinely curious, what is the reason people buy these things in the first place? I'll include stuff like those Google/Ama
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I never run air conditioning or heat in my home. We (sadly) still have most of our lighting done with christmas lights scattered throughout the home, so plugging them in at night is a stupid task. My living room has 9 things that need to be turned on each night. One of those is a color changing bulb, which I adjust color temperature and intensity to match the sunset. We also usually change the music on our Sonos playing throughout the home for dinner. We really should have the music turn down or off wh
fuck Wink (Score:2)
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Changing to the Tony Soprano Business Model (Score:2)
Nice smart home hub youse got there. Shame if it stopped working ...
This is why (Score:2)
This is why users need to reject this "smart home" crap until the law protects customers from this kind of crap
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Depending on the law is not wise, when regulatory capture is so frequent. The first part of your suggestion is better.
Mostly "smart home crap" isn't needed. Those who need it are various disabled people, and their needs are different depending on their disability. So a cloud-based "one size fits all" solution isn't good. There are lots of approaches based around local control, but they tend to be highly technical, and require that the installer have technical knowledge.
The best solution seems to be an a
Who thinks subscription is good? (Score:2)
I mean really - its the equivalent of renting a phone. It's a bad idea - bad for the consumer, bad for the company.
Yes, if somehow you get people to do it, the math says it will make you wealthy. So will somehow getting people to pay you $50 for a banana.
Thinking you can make that business plan work proves you are not smart enough to do it.
So Wink became a bunch of Dinks? (Score:2)
Gee, holding you hostage unless you pay the monthly rental tax for devices you "own" turning it into yet another "subscription service". What do you mean customers are upset? No one saw that coming at all! /s
The not-so-smart-after-all house (Score:2)
Better yet why do you need any of it in the first place? Is turning
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There is also cost/efficiency. The more work you make a consumer electronic device do, the more expensive it has to be and the more complex to main
Yeah, it is. (Score:2)
It is the model of any profitable business. Get the smart customer pay for a shitty black box with many promises, have them mwin a shitty subscription model down the road.
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