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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 Grishnakh on Friday April 07 2017, @12:46AM (1 child)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday April 07 2017, @12:46AM (#489972)

    I do have to agree about the horror stories scaring people away from this crap.

    However, I disagree about the Crapsman tools, if you're talking about anything made in the last decade or so. Their hand tools are all junk now. The place to buy inexpensive hand tools is Harbor Freight.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @08:39AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @08:39AM (#490135)

    Harbor Freight: Cheap, low quality tools with the distinctive aroma of Chinese cancer-causing chemicals.