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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: 1) by Scrutinizer on Thursday April 06 2017, @08:52PM
Agreed. What seems to be lacking is an effective way to communicate the risks and dangers involved with Internet-connected widgets. I'd have thought that sharing news of Amazon's remote deletion of paid-for electronic copies of books from customers' Kindle devices [arstechnica.com] would have given pause for thought, particularly when George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 were among the erased books.
Perhaps being locked out of doors (via a Garadget-like device), or a flooded and ruined home (via Internet-enabled thermostat during a deep freeze) will be the event that can finally catch the attention of the average person. (At that point, of course, I'd find myself sounding eerily similar to the wild fear-mongering of old-timey news: "DEATH from the INTERNET! Tonight at 6...")