9 ms·

A coupon code is very generous after 16 years. Also it still works as a dumb thermostat.

ryandrake 2y ago
“Ceasing support” should not mean the product fundamentally changes. If I buy a smart thermostat, I expect it to be and remain a smart thermostat. It should work exactly as the day it was purchased, forever. A bait and switch is still a bait and switch even if the switch happens 16 years later. This should absolutely 100% be illegal. I don’t want to hear boo hoo whiny excuses about how hard it is to keep a server running. If you as a company can’t do it, you have no business selling a connected device that depends on a server.
- pyuser583 2y ago
  A 16 year lifespan is pretty good for “smart” electronics. What do you think an IOT devices guaranteed lifespan should be?
  - Nullabillity 2y ago
    Physical lifetime of the product would be a start. Don't like it? Don't build cloud-bound landfill fodder.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    16 years are a pitty. My termostats have been operating for 39 years. I have changed one that got scewed off by a bed move.
    - wannacboatmovie 2y ago
      These 1980s mechanical thermostats in your apples-to-oranges comparison, do they support remote connectivity? Over dial-up? To the steam-powered cloud? Do you realistically expect such a thing to be supported 40 years later at no cost? Phone companies are literally ripping out landlines or abandoning them in place. The closest thing I can think of that maintains ancient technology are alarm systems and you pay hefty monthly fees to help pay for the maintenance and upkeep of the infra. It also helps that the manufacturers of the hardware are still around and keeping the designs supported.
      - rightbyte 2y ago
        I know consumer IoT using SaaS is a rug pull fraud, but yes, I except any such device to keep its functionality for 40 years at no extra cost.
      - what-the-grump 2y ago
        I have a PC that is that old, still works fine. I have clients with production systems older than that. I have buildings with elevator controls that are from the 50s. We all do tech here right? It’s a simple infra stack to store settings for a device and report on them once in a while. No one is sitting at home and doomscrolling their ecobee thermostat for temperature updates. I expect the cloud infra needed to support the thermostat to be so cheap at this point that it’s completely irrelevant. I expect that ecobee spend more money on coffee than the infra needed. Fact is I bet that a free aws account can service a significant portion of the demand. I can connect up to 100 wyze cams to my account and store footage and remotely access them for the huge sum of 7$/mo. You are telling me thermostat configs are harder to handle? Bullshit.
        wannacboatmovie 2y ago
        What utter nonsense. First example would be these units probably use some ancient depreciated version of TLS or cipher suite that cannot be upgraded due to hardware limitations, forcing the back end to support legacy out of date software. Then the headline would be "ecobee doesn't care about security" with the Hacker News armchair security crowd all over them, claiming without specifics they could do a better job. Please.
- wannacboatmovie 2y ago
  Your comment is so utterly preposterous I honestly can't tell if you're trolling or not. It reads like the complaint box of a volunteer open source developer who isn't providing you free bug fixes and features fast enough. They provided a free service for 16 years and I'm sure it was in the ToS that they are under no obligation to do so. And for people wondering why we need ToS and license agreements for free stuff and lawyers to write them, this is why. This is why we can't have nice things.
  - Larrikin 2y ago
    It's not a free service they ran out of the goodness of their heart. It's a service the consumer paid for when they bought the thermostat.
    - wannacboatmovie 2y ago
      If they priced the thermostat at $10,000 each with guaranteed long term support, you would have a case. A $150 device doesn't pay hosting in perpetuity. Ecobee is a great company that made a better mousetrap with a free app when competitors were still charging monthly fees. Did everyone here throw a shitfit when 2G cellular was retired? The original iPhone is a doorstop. Should the mobile phone companies be forced to still support your Motorola DynaTac from 1987?
      - latentcall 2y ago
        How much can hosting for this model realistically cost? Ecobee can afford to support it they just don’t want to. I’ll commend them for supporting it for 16 years however.
      - swatcoder 2y ago
        These companies marketed to a public not yet experienced with cloud-dependent services and the inevitably finite lifetime they carry, and frankly (I can say from experience) many of the product designers and engineers weren't really thinking ahead about that stuff either. Lots of stuff is engineered as if it will be usable indefinitely (or until it physically wears out), even though it has technical dependencies or financial costs that make that infeasible, and almost almost all that stuff is sold to the public under the pretense that it's just a better version of the same old thing. Very few products, especially among consumer good, openly communicate a window of support or availability and many don't even predict a specific one internally. You're probably right that there'd probably no teeth to a suit, but that's more because the practice of denying that cloud-backed products are ephemeral is just that pervasive. It's an effective excuse, but also a crappy one.
- Zenzero 2y ago
  I would be sympathetic to you if it were 2 years. Expecting "forever" is just entitlement. Smart thermostat features require ongoing support. You aren't entitled to the labor of other people forever just because you bought a piece of plastic. Have some understanding for the people who dedicated their time and work to making it happen.
  - raizer88 2y ago
    I expect it to last forever, unless it's written otherwise in the package. Do you expect your oven to stop working after 5 years if nothing is broken inside?
  - throwaway11460 2y ago
    There is no reason it can't work over local network without any cloud. They just decided not to do that.
  - ClumsyPilot 2y ago
    > Smart thermostat features require ongoing support. You aren't entitled to the labor That’s a complete fabrication! I have a laptop from 1999 and it still runs, and it’s smarter than any thermostat. You / they chose to build it in such a way that it requires ongoing labour. That’s on them. They could build it using open standards and connect it to home assistant, and then it would not require labour. Simply put, they want to have complete control and no responsibility - and they feel entitled to my money.
k4rli 2y ago
"ok we disabled the product that you purchased and which still works, but here's a 30% coupon to buy a new one" Gladly buying a new one...

“Ceasing support” should not mean the product fundamentally changes. If I buy a smart thermostat, I expect it to be and remain a smart thermostat. It should work exactly as the day it was purchased, forever. A bait and switch is still a bait and switch even if the switch happens 16 years later. This should absolutely 100% be illegal. I don’t want to hear boo hoo whiny excuses about how hard it is to keep a server running. If you as a company can’t do it, you have no business selling a connected device that depends on a server.

pyuser583 2y ago
A 16 year lifespan is pretty good for “smart” electronics. What do you think an IOT devices guaranteed lifespan should be?
- Nullabillity 2y ago
  Physical lifetime of the product would be a start. Don't like it? Don't build cloud-bound landfill fodder.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  16 years are a pitty. My termostats have been operating for 39 years. I have changed one that got scewed off by a bed move.
  - wannacboatmovie 2y ago
    These 1980s mechanical thermostats in your apples-to-oranges comparison, do they support remote connectivity? Over dial-up? To the steam-powered cloud? Do you realistically expect such a thing to be supported 40 years later at no cost? Phone companies are literally ripping out landlines or abandoning them in place. The closest thing I can think of that maintains ancient technology are alarm systems and you pay hefty monthly fees to help pay for the maintenance and upkeep of the infra. It also helps that the manufacturers of the hardware are still around and keeping the designs supported.
    - rightbyte 2y ago
      I know consumer IoT using SaaS is a rug pull fraud, but yes, I except any such device to keep its functionality for 40 years at no extra cost.
    - what-the-grump 2y ago
      I have a PC that is that old, still works fine. I have clients with production systems older than that. I have buildings with elevator controls that are from the 50s. We all do tech here right? It’s a simple infra stack to store settings for a device and report on them once in a while. No one is sitting at home and doomscrolling their ecobee thermostat for temperature updates. I expect the cloud infra needed to support the thermostat to be so cheap at this point that it’s completely irrelevant. I expect that ecobee spend more money on coffee than the infra needed. Fact is I bet that a free aws account can service a significant portion of the demand. I can connect up to 100 wyze cams to my account and store footage and remotely access them for the huge sum of 7$/mo. You are telling me thermostat configs are harder to handle? Bullshit.
      - wannacboatmovie 2y ago
        What utter nonsense. First example would be these units probably use some ancient depreciated version of TLS or cipher suite that cannot be upgraded due to hardware limitations, forcing the back end to support legacy out of date software. Then the headline would be "ecobee doesn't care about security" with the Hacker News armchair security crowd all over them, claiming without specifics they could do a better job. Please.
wannacboatmovie 2y ago
Your comment is so utterly preposterous I honestly can't tell if you're trolling or not. It reads like the complaint box of a volunteer open source developer who isn't providing you free bug fixes and features fast enough. They provided a free service for 16 years and I'm sure it was in the ToS that they are under no obligation to do so. And for people wondering why we need ToS and license agreements for free stuff and lawyers to write them, this is why. This is why we can't have nice things.
- Larrikin 2y ago
  It's not a free service they ran out of the goodness of their heart. It's a service the consumer paid for when they bought the thermostat.
  - wannacboatmovie 2y ago
    If they priced the thermostat at $10,000 each with guaranteed long term support, you would have a case. A $150 device doesn't pay hosting in perpetuity. Ecobee is a great company that made a better mousetrap with a free app when competitors were still charging monthly fees. Did everyone here throw a shitfit when 2G cellular was retired? The original iPhone is a doorstop. Should the mobile phone companies be forced to still support your Motorola DynaTac from 1987?
    - latentcall 2y ago
      How much can hosting for this model realistically cost? Ecobee can afford to support it they just don’t want to. I’ll commend them for supporting it for 16 years however.
    - swatcoder 2y ago
      These companies marketed to a public not yet experienced with cloud-dependent services and the inevitably finite lifetime they carry, and frankly (I can say from experience) many of the product designers and engineers weren't really thinking ahead about that stuff either. Lots of stuff is engineered as if it will be usable indefinitely (or until it physically wears out), even though it has technical dependencies or financial costs that make that infeasible, and almost almost all that stuff is sold to the public under the pretense that it's just a better version of the same old thing. Very few products, especially among consumer good, openly communicate a window of support or availability and many don't even predict a specific one internally. You're probably right that there'd probably no teeth to a suit, but that's more because the practice of denying that cloud-backed products are ephemeral is just that pervasive. It's an effective excuse, but also a crappy one.
Zenzero 2y ago
I would be sympathetic to you if it were 2 years. Expecting "forever" is just entitlement. Smart thermostat features require ongoing support. You aren't entitled to the labor of other people forever just because you bought a piece of plastic. Have some understanding for the people who dedicated their time and work to making it happen.
- raizer88 2y ago
  I expect it to last forever, unless it's written otherwise in the package. Do you expect your oven to stop working after 5 years if nothing is broken inside?
- throwaway11460 2y ago
  There is no reason it can't work over local network without any cloud. They just decided not to do that.
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago
  > Smart thermostat features require ongoing support. You aren't entitled to the labor That’s a complete fabrication! I have a laptop from 1999 and it still runs, and it’s smarter than any thermostat. You / they chose to build it in such a way that it requires ongoing labour. That’s on them. They could build it using open standards and connect it to home assistant, and then it would not require labour. Simply put, they want to have complete control and no responsibility - and they feel entitled to my money.

k4rli 2y ago

"ok we disabled the product that you purchased and which still works, but here's a 30% coupon to buy a new one" Gladly buying a new one...