Wink 2 Hub going subscription based with 1wk notice

[Soldierblue211]

Received this email in my junk folder...searched online and found that it was actually true...I think. Tried contacting the company and received back an email in minutes stating I reached the wrong company!

Link for the wink faq page   

https://www.wink.com/help/faq/

One week notice for a company that has been campaigning for years about never having a subscription based service is a bit of a shock. Adding the not responding to emails and not even an attempt to keep the free services...and the timing...

has anyone else received this? With all of the scams out there I'm never sure about emails and websites can be faked as well.
 

Quote

 

Dear _____,

 

Wink’s mission for the past 5+ years has been to provide users with a ‘Simpler, Smarter Home,’ while maintaining privacy for our customers. Our approach to simplicity and security has driven our design from the user experience to the technology behind the scenes.

 

We understand that a smart home is something that needs to be trusted and dependable, and we recognize that recent events have created some uncertainty around the reliability of the system. We apologize for these inconveniences and want to share some background information as well as the path forward.

 

Since 2014, Wink has grown to support more than 4 million connected devices. During this time, Wink has relied solely on the one-time fee derived from hardware sales to cover ongoing cloud costs, development and customer support. Providing users with local and remote access to their devices will always come at a cost for Wink, and over the years we have made great progress toward reducing these costs so that we can maintain that feature.

 

Wink has taken many steps in an effort to keep your Hub’s blue light on, however, long term costs and recent economic events have caused additional strain on our business. Unlike companies that sell user data to offset costs associated with offering free services, we do not. Data privacy is one of Wink’s core values, and we believe that user data should never be sold for marketing or any purpose.

 

We have a lot of great ideas on how to expand on Wink’s capabilities and satisfy the many requests from our user base. In order to provide for development and continued growth, we are transitioning to a $4.99 monthly subscription, starting on May 13, 2020. This fee is designed to be as modest as possible. Your support will enable us to continue providing you with the functionality that you’ve come to rely on, and focus on accelerating new integrations and app features.

 

Should you choose not to sign up for a subscription you will no longer be able to access your Wink devices from the app, with voice control or through the API, and your automations will be disabled on May 13. Your device connections, settings and automations can be reactivated if you decide to subscribe at a later date.

 

Our user community is integral to Wink, and we want to continue to be your trusted smart home provider. Visit subscription.wink.com to subscribe.

 

 

Edited May 7, 2020 by LogicalDrm

[silberdrachi]

Software as a service and hardware as a service. Nothing is surprising about this now days. The definition of "ownership" has been drastically diluted by the tech industry in the past 20 years. But so long as people keep buying and clicking agree to those terms and conditions, thats not going to change. The government has no reason to step in like people believe.

[Soldierblue211]

The app just sent a notification. 3hrs later and when clicked just opens the app... notification disappears. Really disappointing. 

[wanderingfool2]

54 minutes ago, Soldierblue211 said:

Received this email in my junk folder...searched online and found that it was actually true...I think. Tried contacting the company and received back an email in minutes stating I reached the wrong company!

Link for the wink faq page   

https://www.wink.com/help/faq/

One week notice for a company that has been campaigning for years about never having a subscription based service is a bit of a shock. Adding the not responding to emails and not even an attempt to keep the free services...and the timing...

has anyone else received this? With all of the scams out there I'm never sure about emails and websites can be faked as well.

Yes, this is real https://blog.wink.com/wink-blog/2020/5/6/introducing-wink-subscription

From their site.

I suspect they are going to get into legal trouble in regards to this (or at least have to grandfather in the existing users).  Their website still has the "There are no long-term contracts or required monthly fees", which given the product is advertised as a smart device they should have to honor their advertised material (since they implied all services are free on their site).  [Not a lawyer].  Similar to how when Sony removed the "Other OS" feature and got sued about removing an advertised item.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

Being honest, I've never heard of Wink before, so I had to Google what they do.

 

But, regardless: every time you evaluate a company's offerings, whether paid or "free", ignore any claim they make and instead ask yourself: how does this company turn a profit? Sure, startups usually lose money for a while, but in steady state, how will they turn their growth into sustained profits?

It's "everything free"? Then it has to be your data and some form of advertisement. I remember Whatsapp's "$1 after one year" which of course they couldn't possibly enforce and survive, so they went 100% free and no ads, except they experimented with ads and it backfired, and eventually sold to Facebook, and ad company. Because no matter your market dominance, users per se don't bring money to you. I mean, not to start with all Google gave us "for free" 

And then we have Copy, Sugarsync, and basically every online storage service that either shut down or dropped their free tier completely.

 

This looks different on the surface because they are selling products; however, as with many other companies, it's not a product, but a "product+service" combination. So they ask for your money once, but commit to offer a service forever...? One possibility is that new device sales pay for services' maintenance, but that's just the exact promise of every pyramid scheme, which are scams for a reason: you quickly run out of people on Earth for that to have any sustainability at all. In reality, once your market matures, at most you are going to sell updated or replacement devices to a fraction of your existing customer base. If you have large enough margins on the devices (hi, Sonos!), maybe that's all you need... and even then, corporate management isn't under pressure just to survive, but to deliver competitive (as in competition in the market for CEOs and the market for investment money) levels of profits.

So, "pay me once, I'll face running costs forever"? Unlikely, as any dead-game user will tell you.

 

That is not to say that a product sold under the "no ongoing fees" premise shouldn't legally honor it. Or that such a change could have no exception and a 1-week notice (I mean, come on, they're not even trying here). I'm just saying that, sadly, in this "Fyre-festival economy" we live in we apparently have no choice but to double-guess any claim companies make and, when in doubt, base your decisions only on what you get today and no one can take away later.

[mromutt]

31 minutes ago, Soldierblue211 said:

The app just sent a notification. 3hrs later and when clicked just opens the app... notification disappears. Really disappointing. 

I literally just got the notification on my phone, first thought was "what the hell am I looking at?!?". Also, no way in hell im paying them a dime to to turn my lights on and off. lol A $5 subscription for your light switch! Atleast my tv and amazon devices can control all my smart stuff on their own. 

[mromutt]

9 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

Being honest, I've never heard of Wink before, so I had to Google what they do.

 

But, regardless: every time you evaluate a company's offerings, whether paid or "free", ignore any claim they make and instead ask yourself: how does this company turn a profit? Sure, startups usually lose money for a while, but in steady state, how will they turn their growth into sustained profits?

It's "everything free"? Then it has to be your data and some form of advertisement. I remember Whatsapp's "$1 after one year" which of course they couldn't possibly enforce and survive, so they went 100% free and no ads, except they experimented with ads and it backfired, and eventually sold to Facebook, and ad company. Because no matter your market dominance, users per se don't bring money to you. I mean, not to start with all Google gave us "for free" 

And then we have Copy, Sugarsync, and basically every online storage service that either shut down or dropped their free tier completely.

 

This looks different on the surface because they are selling products; however, as with many other companies, it's not a product, but a "product+service" combination. So they ask for your money once, but commit to offer a service forever...? One possibility is that new device sales pay for services' maintenance, but that's just the exact promise of every pyramid scheme, which are scams for a reason: you quickly run out of people on Earth for that to have any sustainability at all. In reality, once your market matures, at most you are going to sell updated or replacement devices to a fraction of your existing customer base. If you have large enough margins on the devices (hi, Sonos!), maybe that's all you need... and even then, corporate management isn't under pressure just to survive, but to deliver competitive (as in competition in the market for CEOs and the market for investment money) levels of profits.

So, "pay me once, I'll face running costs forever"? Unlikely, as any dead-game user will tell you.

 

That is not to say that a product sold under the "no ongoing fees" premise shouldn't legally honor it. Or that such a change could have no exception and a 1-week notice (I mean, come on, they're not even trying here). I'm just saying that, sadly, in this "Fyre-festival economy" we live in we apparently have no choice but to double-guess any claim companies make and, when in doubt, base your decisions only on what you get today and no one can take away later.

Part of the problem is they dont update or work on their "service" but we all let it slide because it worked ok enough even if still terrible. The other part being they charge quite a bit for the hardware that if you looked inside would realize is almost all profit! But yes, at the end of the day most will be most upset about them promising from the beginning no fees ever. I feel like this may have just killed their company if they reverse it or not, blood is already in the water. 

[Taf the Ghost]

17 minutes ago, mromutt said:

Part of the problem is they dont update or work on their "service" but we all let it slide because it worked ok enough even if still terrible. The other part being they charge quite a bit for the hardware that if you looked inside would realize is almost all profit! But yes, at the end of the day most will be most upset about them promising from the beginning no fees ever. I feel like this may have just killed their company if they reverse it or not, blood is already in the water. 

They're probably dead without the subscription service. That's normally what would cause the change, as they likely weren't charging enough to cover the development costs. This is classically why Apple makes basically all of the profit in Mobile, as the premium they charge covers the long-term support costs and future development.

 

Though it sounds like the company didn't quite understand they were selling an integrated software package with some hardware attached, which is actually quite expensive to do. More expensive then just producing hardware.

[mromutt]

15 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

They're probably dead without the subscription service. That's normally what would cause the change, as they likely weren't charging enough to cover the development costs. This is classically why Apple makes basically all of the profit in Mobile, as the premium they charge covers the long-term support costs and future development.

 

Though it sounds like the company didn't quite understand they were selling an integrated software package with some hardware attached, which is actually quite expensive to do. More expensive then just producing hardware.

I dont remember when it happened but they were bought, and since it has been downhill. But yeah they were already slowly dying with all their financial issues. 

[Soldierblue211]

Yeah I vaguely remember it being will. I.am.

To be honest, if they would've come out with something along the lines of "hey folks were experiencing financial difficulty due to the hard times we're all going through we'd like to ask our community to support us by making some donations. We wouldn't normally... blah blah blah otherwise we may have to institute a tiered paid service plan"  or something to that effect. I probably would've voluntarily gave money. Seriously. Now...I may have to concede and purchase a hub from our evil advertising conglomerate overlords. 

[TrigrH]

9 hours ago, Soldierblue211 said:

Should you choose not to sign up for a subscription you will no longer be able to access your Wink devices from the app, with voice control or through the API, and your automations will be disabled on May 13. Your device connections, settings and automations can be reactivated if you decide to subscribe at a later date.

WTF? So you lose functionality cos they want money? Like I can understand software updates but this? Pretty sure its illegal no?

[Sauron]

9 hours ago, silberdrachi said:

But so long as people keep buying and clicking agree to those terms and conditions, thats not going to change.

As opposed to not clicking "agree" and being unable to do their jobs. So long as copyright law exists the way it does all the power is in the tech companies' hands. They can do whatever they want because they know that their customers don't have a choice. Ideally the solution would be to abolish copyright or at least heavily modify it but in the meanwhile intervention is not only warranted but necessary.

10 minutes ago, TrigrH said:

WTF? So you lose functionality cos they want money? Like I can understand software updates but this? Pretty sure its illegal no?

Nope, not illegal. It should be though.

[TrigrH]

8 minutes ago, Sauron said:

As opposed to not clicking "agree" and being unable to do their jobs. So long as copyright law exists the way it does all the power is in the tech companies' hands. They can do whatever they want because they know that their customers don't have a choice. Ideally the solution would be to abolish copyright or at least heavily modify it but in the meanwhile intervention is not only warranted but necessary.

Nope, not illegal. It should be though.

It breaks Australian consumer law and I believe these devices were sold in Australia. 

Quote

Products must:

match descriptions made by the salesperson, on packaging and labels, and in promotions or advertising

match any demonstration model or sample you asked for

be fit for the purpose the business told you it would be fit for and for any purpose that you made known to the business before purchasing

come with full title and ownership

not carry any hidden debts or extra charges

come with undisturbed possession, so no one has a right to take the goods away or prevent you from using them

meet any extra promises made about performance, condition and quality, such as life time guarantees and money back offers

have spare parts and repair facilities available for a reasonable time after purchase unless you were told otherwise.

 

[Sauron]

3 minutes ago, TrigrH said:

It breaks Australian consumer law and I believe these devices were sold in Australia. 

 

Fair enough, in that case it may be illegal there. Then again you'd have to argue in court that the subscription service is part of the original hardware purchase.

[SansVarnic]

-= Topic moved to General Discussion =-

 

@Soldierblue211 your topic does not meet the guidelines for Tech News. Please update appropriately.

When corrected, please quote me or notify any mod to have this moved back.

 

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