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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 gidds on Friday April 07 2017, @12:45PM
One of the interesting things about all these comments is that many seem to be implicitly marking one side as being ‘in the right’ and hence the other as ‘in the wrong’, and then complaining only about the latter. That's a very natural human reaction, and I think it goes right back to deep tribal ‘them-and-us’ instincts — but it's not always appropriate.
In this case, both sides have done things that most of us disapprove of, but neither is unforgivably evil.
Yes, it would have been much better for the company to have made a better-quality product, which didn't need access to the Internet let alone company servers, and to have treated a customer complaint more graciously. But it would also have been much better if the customer hadn't behaved so abusively, and then given the company no chance to reply, let alone fix the problem, before posting an unfair review.
I'm not condoning any of their actions; but neither do I feel the need to compare them so I can identify with one side and get angry with the other.
This story, with its relatively small-scale and minor issue, is almost a case study in how easy it is to do that without thinking!
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