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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: 1) by tftp on Friday April 07 2017, @05:37AM

    by tftp (806) on Friday April 07 2017, @05:37AM (#490095) Homepage

    Personally - I wonder WTF anyone needs a garage door opener at all? I open and close very large overhead doors, manually, all the time.

    I'm glad that you are healthy, but what if someone in your house breaks a bone or has a surgery or is about to have a baby? As people are getting older, those things tend to happen (the first two, at least.) Then the answer will become apparent. A person with limited agility will be denied either the use of his car, or the use of his garage. None of that makes any sense if there is an easy way to avoid the complications. The door opener is also expected in garages, and if you don't have one, the value of the house drops by 10x of the price of the thing.

    I had a house with a garage a while ago. The door opener was old, and eventually it failed. I bought a new one, DirectDrive, from Home Depot [homedepot.com]. Installed in less than one day. Very quiet, no IoT. Just the usual wireless, plus some buttons. Keypad is also one of available options. Rumored to be one of the best openers on the market, if anyone cares to know my opinion.