Maker of smart garage opener responds to negative review by remotely disabling customer’s device

By Nicole DiGiose

Sometimes honesty isn’t the best policy, at least when it comes to publicly bad-mouthing someone’s smart technology creation when you’re not happy with it. Of course, there are drawbacks that come with the Internet-of-Things craze, such as security gaps, and one buyer of a smart garage door opener called Garadget recently experienced the consequences of this.

Image source: Ars Technica.

Garadget is an internet-connected garage door opener that lets you remotely lock and unlock your garage or check to see if it’s open with an app. It’s compatible with most existing garage openers, and installment is simple — an intricate sensor wiring and complex router setup is replaced by attaching a sticker to the door and answering a few questions in the accompanying mobile app. The idea behind this is to not be stuck wondering if you’ve closed your garage door while you’re miles away.

Such a device seems like it could come in handy and sounds quite simple, right? But simple doesn’t always mean good, and earlier this month, one of Garadget’s customers faced technical difficulties using the iOS app of his internet-connected garage door opener. Like many modern-day frustrated consumers, he took to leaving a negative comment on the company’s message board and on Amazon.

After leaving a one-star rating on Amazon, R. Martin, the username of the customer experiencing issues with the app wrote, “Junk — DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY — iPhone app is a piece of junk, crashes constantly, a start-up company that obviously has not performed proper quality assurance tests on their products.”

Of course, this isn’t good for business, but the company was not a fan of the review, and instead of solving the matter, it remotely bricked the device by killing the app’s connection to the company’s server. Before doing so, the company responded with the following:

“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 a refund. Your unit ID 2f0036 … will be denied server connection.”

This entire incident is an eye-opener and brings up a very important question. Are customers in charge of their devices when those devices run on vendors’ servers? To many, this could serve as a warning sign that reliance on the IoT industry is not much of a good thing. With the IoT boom in full force, it wouldn’t be surprising to see these kinds of events happening in the future.

What are your thoughts? Leave a comment below.

We first heard about this news via Ars Technica.