Does Anyone Still Use SmartThings?

Let me start off by saying that recently (well the past 4 months) I’ve been having so many outrageous issues with this stupid pos SmartThings v1 where I’ve literally gone from a customer that tries to sell SmartThings to everyone in the world and thinks it’s the best thing since bread to the opposite end of the spectrum of someone that utterly and incredibly despises the pos for not working and always failing.

Throughout the glory phase of SmartThings (which I’ve had for a couple years now) it was working great with a few very stressful moments of Philips Hue light integration but that was a while ago meaning that sometimes it would attempt to flag the lights on/off but the lights wouldn’t do anything.

Now recently (meaning past 4 months), my doors won’t unlock/lock when we come home or leave (even though the app states we have arrived or left). Some of my lights won’t turn on when motion is detected at all (even though the app states motion is detected). I have MagicHome or whatever it is called nowadays which allows SmartThings to work and perform actions based on if before or after sunset/sunrise and NOT ON sunset/sunrise which the SmartThings developers clearly seem to not understand as a BASIC home automation concept where I want actions to be performed based on if it’s AFTER sunset and I am home, simple phrase. Some of the time the stupid SmartThings WILL actually state that I left but then trigger the wrong mode such as “Bedtime” instead of “Away - Night”. The whole sunrise/sunset crap never even works anymore so I just leave my lights on 24/7 which pisses me off because the system should be working and turning them off.

And worst of all, and the most frustrating experience I have probably ever had in my life with devices such as these is the incredible terrible and disgustingly bad iphone app. I mean this thing is so bad, it makes me sick. Before the app wasn’t great but it was “somewhat” easy to use. In this stupid new(er) version, I have no idea how to freaking go to a door lock I have and set it to alert me when the door is opened. Or even turn a light on when motion is detected. Why do they make this sooooo difficult or hide it behind what feels like 50 selections. No idea with this stupid app and I have tried everything. Do you have to install a 3rd party thing for it, wtf? Before it was as easy as just going into the device. Just simply look at the reviews for the app in the iphone app store, I mean version after version it’s really that bad and they still dont do anything about it. I seriously think it’s the worst app in the store at this point.

Ultimately, while what I wrote above is the nice version of what I truly wanted to say, I am downright disgusted in how they transformed a device that was working for over a year, well “somewhat” but manageable working, into a giant worthless rarely if ever working pos.

I mean, where did they go wrong? Even more frustrating is that they send out emails about new products and new this and that yet with all the people having so many issues (definitely not just myself), that just fuels the fire even more.

I just want this stupid system to work, that is not hard to ask after I have put hundreds and hundreds of dollars into this system with devices (which luckily are compatible with other systems at this point) to work.

Very frustrated but more disappointed, I really don’t know why I even waited this long, I just look at the thing and shake my head side-to-side with disappointment.

I haven’t even submitted a support ticket also because of the several people I have always heard complain about the lack of service which just screams at me…“Don’t waste your time” but whatever.

I hope someone else actually reads to this point and gets the warning to stay away from SmartThings.

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SmartThings isn’t for everyone, but from some one who’s been on board since it kickstarted and has opened a few support tickets i feel over all it works well. Given that you can’t be bothered to even open a support ticket it doesn’t sound like you wanted it to work. Yeah the response maybe slow but would would at least have the shot of getting it fixed. We also have forums to provide help too and i don’t see any threads where you ask for help their either.

I’m not trying to talk you into coming back and i wish you luck on whatever HA solution you try next. I’m just leaving this as a warning. If you do have problems, ask for help either on the forums or through support.
Secondly SmartThings is about Home Automation, Trying to use your cellphone as the one remote to control all the things will always be a frustrating experience, regardless of vender. If this was possible Apple would of already made it happen, but instead they gave us HomeKit and Siri.

Considering ST is a cloud based solution if the sky was actuating it would be falling on all of us the same… and i know i’m doing some weird stuff and it mostly just works.

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Couple things here…

By SmartThings isn’t for everyone, do know that I am a huge supporter of home automation and have always been, I’m not your everyday casual, ohh this looks shiny and nice and pretty let me try it haha!

I do agree however that I really should put in a support ticket as at this point I really am getting nowhere with this pos besides throwing it in the trash so something is better than nothing. However what you might have missed as a “hidden” message in my post is that I have been disappointed time after time after time after time that I’ve been pushed so far away that I can’t even get myself to waste my time and create a support ticket even though it would be in my benefit, I just ultimately feal it would, simply put, not solve anything due to the horrible support help I’ve read over the years on the forums so can’t really blame me there 100%, even though you have had good luck in the past.

I think you also might have been slightly confused by using my cellphone as one remote as that’s completely not what I want to do and heck that defeats the whole purpose of home automation and quoting “automation”. If I have to constantly checkup on an automated process due to it severely breaking over and over then the product is not working as intended I don’t care if it’s cloud based or not. A couple mis-steps here and there, sure no problem, I EXPECT that and that’s what I mentioned in my post above (as it used to work great with a few minor inconveniences) but when the majority of your devices don’t work anymore or not as intended, that is a serious defective flaw and that flaw was only introduced which seemed to be when the v2 of the hub came out and that new phone app version came out as well.

I’m also hoping when you state, “mostly just works” your referring to about 85% chance the system works as intended and not 10% chance like mine is as just a few of my lights work.

Also, you walk an extremely thin line when you state “mostly just works” when the company publicly advertises they can prevent leaks in your home and help with security (as this device is no longer in beta or a kickstarter anymore) as what you possibly really mean in that case is that…“when you have leaks in your house or someone opens your door that’s not suppose to, SmartThings will let you know most of the time but not all”.

Time to put in a support ticket and most likely get absolutely nowhere haha!

I’d agree that ST seriously over sell’s the current abilities of their product. I also think they need to get back on track to making improvements and bug fixes rather than adding features. They’ve in my opinion had serious growing pains in the last few months and while the fault is theirs for releasing V2 too soon, if they hadn’t they’d of had to continue to disappoint people with pushing the release back.

Their recent beta tester request has me excited that they will better test releases more throughly too.

In any case I love ST just as much I did when I joined, more so in fact. Sure it ticks me off sometimes, but not enough to make me want to quit. To be fair I have hardly any of the issues that some have reported.

Good luck in your HA endeavors wherever they may be.

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Well just to make it clear, im not trying to quit nor even want to, because years ago when I first got it, the freaking thing worked mostly perfect, I was very happy, told everyone about it, even bought my brother one for Christmas but ever since the last 4 months, mostly everything with the automation part just stopped working except for one motion sensor that turns a light on and that’s about it. So my post was the last final string/attempt to get this pos working.

This was also incredibly disastrous with my wife as I had finally gotten her on board with the whole home automation and what she calls “fancy junk” and then bam whatever.

I put a ticket in so will probably be waiting forever. I just want my SmartThings the way it used to be, that’s all I ask, all I want! Why is that so hard!

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Having support of your SO in HA is a key factor in survivability, without that you’re pushing water uphill, and might as well find another hobby.
Even at the ST level, it’s expensive and time consuming. Having said that, I’ve done a whole house for the cost of doing one room with one of the big boys.
@mxrugg, your current experience is not the norm, sure there’s issues, but even with my paltry 180 device count, I’m not seeing anything like what you’re venting about.
I’d also suggest that for every unsatisfied and vocal ticket submitter, there’s probably thousands that were closed to everyone satisfaction.

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Maybe, but not sure that’s a meaningful statistic. No way to know how many people just quietly move on to something else, either.

I posted more when things were going really well, FWIW. Back in August and September I was really happy with SmartThings. Everything was working well, I was getting a lot of value out of it, I was looking forward to the V2 hub which I thought would bring both local processing and Bluetooth connectivity.

By mid October a series of platform updates had made things unstable to the point where they were unsafe and we started removing devices from the system. More updates meant more things broken in November. (I opened support tickets on everything.) I was paying at least $50 a week in aide time just trying to diagnose things that were broken. All things, by the way, that had worked very well in September.

Two days before my one year anniversary on this forum we had moved everything off of SmartThings except some sensors and night lights.

I didn’t feel angry, because I had intended all along to replace my first phase investment eventually as the market was changing so quickly. and harmony, echo, the Phillips Hue bridge, and my smart watch continued to work very well.

I continue to have hopes that SmartThings will be one of the candidates for my phase 2 project in the summer of 2016. But regardless of what it had done for me in the past, and what it might do for me in the future, in the present it just didn’t meet my needs. It happens.

I didn’t fully replace the functionality that I had in September because I would’ve been investing in a different phase 1 hub and while I was willing to replace everything once, I wasn’t willing to do it twice. And I didn’t jump ahead and commit to any of the current probable phase 2 candidates, like HomeKit, because to be honest there’s just not enough pieces there yet to fully evaluate them.

So the mixed platform setup I have today does less than the SmartThings-centric setup I had in September, but it’s reliable and should get me through the next year (knock wood).

That’s a long time in this market space, so I expect the choices to be quite different once I get around to screening serious candidates. Including, hopefully, a stable SmartThings offering. :sunglasses:

Just my experience…

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Wow! You should really send a bill to SmarThings

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Really too bad you’ve had such a terrible experience. It certainly sounds like you had some major integration and operation issues…which certainly makes it difficult to keep moving forward.

An honest question: how many of your devices are the ones specifically sold by ST? Not marked as ‘works with ST’ like the Iris products or the like, but actually purchasable in the ST store?

I only ask because I’ve found that the most consistent devices I have are the ones specifically from ST. When I have faults or false positives, they are almost 100% of the time NOT the devices purchased through ST.

Certainly if SmartThings says a device should work with the hub, I would expect it too. My theory is that the devices they sell are the ones with the most stable interface, native, if you will, one way or the other. The other devices are kind of ‘forced’ to work with the system. If I’m relying on these ‘forced’ devices to for the backbone of my most used devices, it seems reasonable that the experience may be less than totally ideal.

To each their own, but I’ve always been of the opinion that if I’m buying parts to go with a whole, buying those parts from the folks who make the core of my system generally results in a more stable system. Again, just my observations, and I’m nowhere near as talented or experienced as many of the folks on here…

This just illustrates how different people have different experiemces. During my poltergeist weeks, the bigest problems I had, were with various Smartsense devices, using Smart Lighting app. None of my z-wave things have given me any troubles.

In my case, I chose SmartThings in the first place specifically because they were certified to two common open standards: Z wave and zigbee home automation 1.2

Both should mean that certified devices work with the controller regardless of the brand.

Again, in my case, I use almost no custom device types or custom code. And among the devices that stopped working recently is a SmartThings-branded presence sensor, which now shows as always present.

I have one routine that literally does nothing except change the mode in the house at a fixed time. There are no devices in the routine. It had run without error for more than six months through September. Since October, it has failed at least nine times.

So it’s not just a matter of device selection.

Submitted with respect.

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Interesting how different it is for different users…

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This is the greatest fear that any company should have when people get so frustrated they just silently move on and don’t seek help because, well frankly, they know help will just be a complete waste of time and that frustrated person ends up discouraging many many others from even trying out the device based on their experiences which ends up spreading like wildfire. Being 100% honest, I was actually coming very close to considering moving on as you can already tell from the first post and the only thing keeping me still here really is (1) the amount of money I’ve already put into devices and (2) the amount of work it would probably take to switch most if not all the devices over to another compatible home automation device (if there is even any great alternatives right now).

Yea at this point I definitely sent them an email but immediately got an email back saying “We are backed up with all the emails/tickets/whatevers” and that’s funny because I remember people complaining about that same issue a year ago. What a fantastic business when their support staff is always backed up for over a year now as it really instills confidence in that one.

Not many, in fact probably just the ones that came with the starter kit when I first got the system which includes the motion sensor, and door sensor. The reason being is that there are better devices for cheaper than the crap that SmartThings offers. Just look at the motion sensor in itself, even the Aeon Labs motion sensor is 5000 steps above the SmartThings ones. Isn’t that the whole point of SmartThings that it works as the central hub integrator for most if not all your devices (whether zwave, zigbee, etc)? But anyways, unfortunately it seems like people are also having issues with just the SmartThings devices so yea. Any other devices do get officially recognized by SmartThings however when I do add them to the system and none displayed “Generic” device or whatever.

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@mxrugg, Firstly let me say, sorry you are having this many problems. I’d like to address some of the things mentioned in your post.

We are listening to our userbase and community about the Mobile App. In fact we have a few user feedback sessions scheduled over the next couple of weeks to get some feedback on the mobile app so we can make some positive meaningful improvements here. If you are in Minneapolis or The Bay Area you can take part in these sessions.

This is a know issue, although saying we “know” about it doesn’t relieve any of your pain points, there is active work going on to resolve these types of problems. Keep a lookout on this thread for updates on routines not firing completely, or at all, I will be updating it every time I have more information to share.

This is just downright weird. I have never seen this before and you should definitely work with support to see whats going on.


For your other problems please work with support. They are awesome and can get most, if not all, of those sunrise/sunset, shcedule, etc, issues resolved for you.

Definitely send me a PM if you want, I’ll be willing to help you anyway I can. :smile:


P.S.

It’s cool that you use my app! :smile:

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Nah, it was my choice. They don’t charge me for tech support, and it’s certainly not their fault that i can’t unplug the hub on my own. It was definitely a factor in my decisions, but not something ST owes me.

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Wow hey there @slagle, yea I remember you from a year ago when I tried to help you out with a guide (not much hehe) for that MagicHome awesome app that you made, I mean you are awesome! What you just reminded me of, unfortunately, as sad as it is to say, the glory days of SmartThings for me! I used your MagicHome, everything was freaking perfect just about, flawless! I mean I loved it so much I bought my brother one that Christmas after I tested it out for a while! However, here I am now, with a pos that barely works haha!

In case you forgot that awesome link, here it is…

Thanks for responding though I greatly appreciate it, and it’s good that at least the issues are known issues. I’m most concerned with the sunrise/sunset not working correctly which is ultra frustrating and important to me but I already sent them an email so waiting on feedback unfortunately at this point.

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I remember that!!! lol

Don’t hesitate to let me know how I can help.

Ok thanks! To not waste your time, I’ll go through support at least first to see where I get with that one haha. :smile:

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Wow, I’m either lucky or I have another device inside the SmartThings V2 Hub because all my devices me smartapps work perfectly fine. I have vents triggered by humidity sensors that are not even officially supported by SmartThings. My Amazon Echo handles all my commands flawlessly and when I needed help with migrating to the V2 tech support helped me in less than 15 minutes and stayed with me until everything was working again. Sorry to read that your experience has been so different from mine.

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Wow nice! I was actually planning on going to the v2 hub when they had a preorder or whatever sale on it I think awhile back (I think it was for the v2 hub) but due to the issues I’ve been having with the v1 I stayed away haha.

I would like to mention to everyone that despite what I originally thought of “terrible” customer support based on reading other user posts from a while ago, so far that is definitely not true and I only wish I didn’t wait this long. This morning I already recieved a response from customer support on my several issues so, well I may however have an extreme case for my hub which might have accelerated the response who knows, the guy was very friendly and polite and already gave some small guides for the challenging iphone app based on some of my issues I originally mentioned.

Now awesome and polite customer service is great and I love it, but what truly matters however is getting my hub obviously back to how it was before which is the end goal I will never forget about no matter how polite anyone can be haha.

That’s awesome, currently I only use my Echo with SmartThings to turn on my living room lights as that is unfortunately one of the only parts that has consistently kept working which wow, if that always failed, I mean we use that all the time. But anyways, have you or rather anyone else used the Echo to trigger routines in SmartThings? Maybe that is now possible but last time I checked it could just control some of your devices but couldn’t actually trigger a routine such as “Alexa run bedtime routine” or whatever similar. I’m sure there are plenty of other ways to go about it maybe but just wondering if there was an extremely quick/easy direct method such as “Alexa turn on the living room lights”.

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