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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. [Ed's Comment: As of Apr 5, Garadget have apologised for this action and have restored connectivity]
The exchange then went viral, being picked up by the Twitter account @internetofshit and rising to the top of Hacker News.
Source: ArsTechnica
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday April 06 2017, @06:28PM (1 child)
Yes, it rather reminds me of that Sci-Fi movie that came out a couple years back where companies would reposess artificial hearts and other organs that the recipients had stopped making payments on.
IoT is a path to ceding total control of your life to faceless corporations. Corporations love that scenario, and therefore government (in the US) loves that scenario.
What is to be done?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @08:07PM
Yes, it rather reminds me of that Sci-Fi movie that came out a couple years back where companies would reposess artificial hearts and other organs that the recipients had stopped making payments on.
It's Repo Man where the movie was about prepossessing property that the current holders stopped making payment for. You know, like a car or a house since the organs were bought on credit. The payments in the movie were not for continual functionality.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1053424/ [imdb.com]