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posted by martyb on Thursday April 06 2017, @03:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the device-went-doormant dept.

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


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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday April 06 2017, @07:26PM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday April 06 2017, @07:26PM (#489813) Journal

    Ugh, I can't upvote your comment to +6.

    Guess I'll hit it with the Troll mod instead!

    Is the problem really impulse control? It takes more than a hot moment to find out the customer's IP or "unit ID" and block them. No, the real problem is flawed reasoning/morality. And it will probably lead to this company to destruction, since people don't like their garage doors being bricked by a "trusted" actor.

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  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday April 06 2017, @10:34PM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday April 06 2017, @10:34PM (#489893) Journal

    Of course the fundamental problem already is that the device needs a connection to the internet to work. You might at some time want to open your garage when the internet is unreachable. Especially in an emergency situation.

    Actually I don't see an advantage for a garage opener to have an internet connection at all, but it's definitely stupid to require it for just opening the door.

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