This poor user experience of forcing me to migrate from “Classic” app to a Samsung account is badly thought through.
First of all, the process has failed on me twice, so I am completely unable to use the SmartThings Classic app on iPhone. The app blocks me from doing anything useful until I create a new Samsung account, catch-22.
There are absolutely NO consumer or user benefits for me to have to go through this failing hassle of creating a new Samsung account. What do I as a consumer get from a Samsung account that I don’t already have with ST?
With Zero consumer benefits and a failed migration process, I keep asking “Why?” As of now this long-time user of SmartThings is frustrated, has a bunch of unusable “smart” things that are now dumb, and I’m really thinking about whether HomeKit would be a better ecosystem.
The root symptom is, after creating a new Samsung account in Classic app, it waits for verification but a verification email never comes…24 hours later.
3 Likes
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
2
“Why?” … because it benefits Samsung in some form, obviously. Integrating their various services (web, their own app store, Bixby, developers) all under their own federated login system will eventually result in various revenue-positive initiatives.
Corporations exist to make profit for their shareholders, not necessarily to benefit consumers … at least not in the short term. This is certainly costing them a lot of effort. I wish it would be smoother for existing ST Customers.
Why in god’s earth would they make you create a new ACCOUNT JUST for Samsung? It is absolutely absurd. I won’t do it and I quit this Smartthings hub. Thing can be a POS anyways.
I am am having a similar experience but luckily I didn’t go through the whole process so still can access the classic app.
I opened my app today (iphone) and it told me “Important Account Notice” - a new app, Update Now.
So I clicked on Update Now and it told me all about the exciting things that I will get and asked me to verify.
So I put in my userid and password and clicked verify. It immediately opened up a web page on us.account.samsung.com with empty fields for email/phone number and password. No acknowledgement that I had just entered my userid and password into the app.
I then attempted to enter my userid and password into this screen and it fails every time - with a userid and password that I know is correct.
So stupidly assumed that I had changed it somewhere along the way and not recorded it so I started a reset.
It then started the process of showing me pictures and asking me to find the road signs, cars, etc. No matter how diligently I look at the pictures and attempt to pick the right ones it keeps going, and going, and going, and…you get the picture (pun intended).
So I gave up and went back to the classic app that mercifully still works.
Last week I got the update message and was FORCED to create a new Samsung account. This went smoothly enough and I continued using the classic app and see my devices etc.
Today I logged in and now everything has gone.
Well ST you have now forced my hand.
Everything is now being migrated to my Hubitat hub.
I will now have local processing for everything using their apps and also run webCoRE locally.
I really cannot be bothered with forced updates when I’m away, everything not working when my Internet is down, and a bunch of other things that stop working or run slowly.
It was sort of great while it lasted. Goodbye.
An important reminder: The migration you were attempting was only to convert your SmartThings account/sign on to a Samsung account/sign on. Even if it had been successful, you should continue to use the classic app until told to do otherwise. In other words, the account conversion step has nothing to do with changing apps.
I log into the IDE with my new account details and can see all my devices, DH’s, apps etc. Everything is as it should be.
Log into the ST app with the same logonin details and ironically all I can see is my Samsung TV.
PITA.
No joy I’m afraid.
Now the IDE is saying I have no devices.
This migration has been an absolute nightmare for other users as well as me now.
That’s it.
I will be spending the evening getting everything on Hubitat.
I’ve had enough.
Look on ebay in the next few weeks. There will be a V2 hub for sale.
EDIT: Both IDE logons show nothing. Both apps now show nothing.
This migration really is a crock of shxt.
First, like so many others I have a love hate relationship with SmartThings. Mostly love though. The switch to Samsung is part of their master smart home strategy. For this to work they will have to make customers have more love than hate for the ecosystem so I think migrating is a good thing. It cements the commitment of a monsterously big company to the SmartThings ecosystem to make it better and to offer new experiences. With the switch I already saw one early win which is my Samsung TV is now included in my set of smart things. The ST startup could not have made that happen easily.
There are many more smart devices coming from Samsung that will work with SmartThings out of the box due to this migration. I recently bought a Samsung robovac and it is now included. During the transition things are super funky. For example, I couldn’t add the robovac to the classic app and I had to use the new app to get it on the Internet. Now I have to use the new app to control the vac and my TV and the legacy app for everything else. These will come together soon enough but for now it is weird and not user friendly. And as Terry @tgauchat noted the sale of these smart devices is part of their make money plan.
Third, I think all of us have to remember that ST is a do it yourself smarthome solution. As such it will require an elevated level of technical skill AND patience. If you have neither you will be frustrated and won’t enjoy the ride. Those in this camp should just get out their wallet and call Control-4 or some other pro service. If anyone thinks that switching to Hubitat or Vera or some other DIY solution will provide a pain free path will be sadly disappointed. I have ST and Hubitat and both have their quirks and headaches. Local processing isn’t a panacea or magic wand to cure all DIY woes. I have struggled with device pairing, non-existent documentation, no phone app, and more with Hubitat. With that said I do like it and it has huge promise. My point is nobody will switch to it and feel no DIY pain. Once they grow and implement their make money model something similar to an account migration will likely happen there too.
Finally, the scale of community contributed apps available for ST is hard to argue with and worth any Samsung transition growing pains in my opinion. Thanks to the Other Hub pusher app I can have both now and watch to see who gains the most traction.
I would encourage anyone struggling with the Samsung account migration to take a big patience pill and then seek help before bailing completely. If someone can’t get this working it is unlikely they will get everything working smoothly on Hubitat, including such things like the complex local hack of WebCore, without similar or more effort.
