Frustrations Building ST is So up and Down

Apps & Clients
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Yeah, I should have known better not to take anything that Patrick says seriously :wink:

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This plus known issues list will go a long way. As will sharing a broad roadmap. However, what you have to understand, as soon as we start to put dates on “fixes” and feature additions we lose one of the largest assets we have a startup. And before you say — but you’re not a start up now — you should save it, because you’re wrong. We are small and agile and we can flex this way or bend that way towards where we need to go to continue to be the most innovative platform for the internet of things.

But you’ll “understand if we miss a deadline or two” — will you?

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All I’m trying to do is use the product you sell. Right now it doesn’t do what you advertise it to do. I get mixed messages in this forum and from support about what works or when it will be fixed. I have no where to go to find out what works and what doesn’t. That leaves me not knowing what I can or cannot do with the product each day. Which leads to me wasting time. Which is in direct conflict with what SmartThings is intended to do.

http://status.smartthings.com/ is limited in scope and lacks any of the details about things that are not working and have not been working for several months. A “Known Issues” list on that page alone (including released Labs smartapps and itegrations) would help me to use the product you are selling more efficiently. That kind of transparency would also show that SmartThings is tracking what is broken and mitigate the need for us to raise and discuss issues. It’s not that things are breaking and you have higher priorities. It’s the lack of information about what works or not and setting expectations to minimize the impact to my user experience.

If you sent me the product for free I wouldn’t care if you never fixed anything and called me names. And I have been a strong supporter and very patient for months. Sent useful information to support and helped other users. I’m not your enemy, rather I am a consumer of the product you sold to me and asking for your help to allow me use it more efficiently.

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Your STs setup doesn’t turn off and on lights? Or provide you with feedback on the status of your house? Or alert you of things that happen while you’re gone? Crazy
 That is an issue then. :wink:

The products you are saying don’t work that are “advertised” are also clearly advertised as a beta or “labs” product. STs has not been quiet on the matter that labs products are still in development. You should not EXPECT them to work as a fully integrated product. It should be treated as any other beta would.

Unfortunately the more we complain about beta/labs projects they put out for us that arent “fully” working the less they will feel the need to give us early access to more cool things.

Basically if you can’t handle using beta iterations of an integration
 Don’t


I have a hard time feeing bad for someone that can’t do research on a product before they buy it. poor planning does not constitute an emergency on anyones part.

This is included in every single Labs blog post:

What is SmartThings Labs?

SmartThings Labs gives customers access to a curated group of popular third-party devices and services that can work together with SmartThings while they’re still in development. These new product solutions are created by our in-house team, as well as by our growing community of developers. Together, they make it easier than ever to control all of the connected devices in your home with the SmartThings iOS and Android apps.

As our engineering team works to fine-tune these integrated products and solutions with our platform, they may move from SmartThings Labs into more prominent sections of the SmartThings Dashboard to make way for new integrations and features in Labs. While we work to polish the edges of the different products and solutions in Labs, customers may experience a few performance issues (hence, the name “Labs”).

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Hell yes @Ben. I was just in the middle of typing a brief rant about the absurd expectation of “firm release dates”, but you said it much friendlier. Don’t let these gripe-fest threads get you down. Just keep kicking ass with building the best consumer IoT platform there is.

But seriously, to those that are outraged by the lack of product perfection
 point me at one company/product that even comes close to doing as much as ST already does. Seriously. Name one.

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+1000000000000000000000000000

+1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Give me one company that does this effectively. Either a company will try and fail continually to meet consumer demand or
 in the case of MANY companies they forgo solid release dates and just provide updates when they are ready. One of those companies is quite large (largest cash value company in the world) and it works out rather well for them cough cough :wink:

Also, how about the absurd expectation that “beta” products should be “production” quality.

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No, it didn’t a couple of Sundays ago after I reconfigured some outlets. I had to do a z-wave exclude and start over. It didn’t give accurate status either. That and unusual Mobile app slowness at the time made setting up xmas lights an unnecessarily painful experience. Later I saw a post from someone else saying support told them it was a known issue. If I had known the issue, I would have avoided making those changes at that time.

That’s just one of about a half dozen or so similar experiences I’ve had in the past couple months that could have been avoided or had expectations calibrated through publishing a basic known issue status to check each time before starting a new project on SmartThings. It’s not only about Labs stuff. But really known issues on beta stuff is pretty common not an unreasonable attempt in my experience.

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Why wouldn’t you just reach out to support first before taking such drastic measures?

Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the bosom of fools.

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Tim, I am not angry, upset, or outraged. I am simply expressing experiences of frustrations I had recently along with suggestions to improve. I have been a hard core and very patient and often helpful user of SmartThings since last June or so. I am very busy so not a lot of time to contribute here, but I try. I am making observations on the increasing lack of much of anything coming from SmartThings for existing users recently and highlighting conflicting or erroneous information I get sometimes from SmartThings people which causes additional frustration or missed expectations. I am also suggesting some very basic things to improve the experience going forward.

I make suggestions to improve and raise the conflicting and sometimes erroneous guidance I am receiving between support and community posts because I think it can help. Disagreement and debate are great IMHO. You and others have made some good points. And I think I have too. I think we have a common goal, just different experiences thus far.

I do not open support tickets for every issue I have. I can often work around or find info in this community to resolve or understand. In that case I mentioned, I had to do a bunch of xmas lighting stuff quickly before going out to a big dinner followed by a couple very busy days. I didn’t get my new and reconfigured outlets fully sorted for a couple days after attempting to do it all that night. I did spend about 45 minutes staring at spinning circles in the mobile app and tile icons going crazy, but I ran out of time. I had to go. If I had known about the issues at the time I would simply not have started that very simple project at that time. Or at least I would have ignored certain things that consumed my limited time. Just an example of value of known issues.

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Just happened to see this post.

Regarding your GE Link bulb state issue – try this community-written device type for the Link bulbs + the Pollster app. So far, it has been working well for me.

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I know the Ceo and I went back and forth after he announced purchase by Samsung, and what I claimed would happen seems to be happening
slower support, slower iterations, muddled priorities and users holding the bag.

I have been supportive, quiet for the most part, but performance has gotten so poor it is maddening. And now, every week, one hard wired zwave switch stops responding via smart things. Need to exclude/include. Never had to before. The external zzwave GE appliance plugins, suddenly the same way. It’s taken a stark nose dive this fall and they haven’t pulled out of it yet and no real guidance for when this will actually be fixed.

I’ve got 65 devices now, and I technically am not done in my house, but I sure have stopped buying stuff. Maybe people with lots of devices tend to be the ones with performance issues and the normal consumer doesn’t. I don’t know.

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I have 117 devices. The only ones that give me trouble are the GE link bulbs but that seems to be the bulbs themselves and not STs. (There are reports of them sucking all over the net) All other Zwave/zigbee stuff works without any fussing.

Cool thing about Zwave and Zigbee is its transferable. It’s not like STs is using something proprietary. If you end up not liking what they offer then use another system.

To put it simply STs will either win your support or they won’t
 So far I have seen them do nothing that every other company in the tech world isn’t already doing
 Yes- status quo blah blah
 I’m going to guess that none of us are CEO of a medium to large tech comany that services over 100,000 customers. If one exists here please correct me if I’m wrong, but im guessing things are done this way for a reason.

Walk by faith and not by sight. What will come will come and what won’t come won’t.

I’m a big believer in being “hung by your tongue”. The more we speak these things into the world the more they will come true. If we start speaking positive into the STs world then the things you want will become reality.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.

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Wow! I didn’t know IT problems can be solved by singing kumbayah. :smile:

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IT problems can often be solved by strange things. I wouldn’t usually bet on positive thinking and song (rage and swearing is more usually the successful tool for me), but I don’t know that I’ve ever tried singing to electronics.

:wink:

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An EE professor taught me once that all electrical problems are caused by one of two things - either there is no contact, or there is one were it’s not supposed to be. For that matter shaking things or punching works better for me. Singing? Not so much. :smile:

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My spiritual beliefs go way beyond “kumbayah”. I’d appreciate your not degrading them to such nonsense.

My point is, positive produces positive results. Negative produces negative results.

Your choice.

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I admit, @pstuart’s “ST haters” joke was lost on me, but I’m glad I’m not the only one humor-challenged around here. :smile:

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If one has to explain a joke, then the joke is lost. Needless to say, with a ten year old and 13 year daughters running around my house, a lot of Taylor Swift songs running through the house
 “Haters gonna hate, hate hate
”

Now you will have that stuck in your head for the rest of the day. Curse you Taylor Swift, curse you!!!

Your welcome.

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Darn
 Now you have Taylor Swift stuck in my mind
while I try to work
! :wink:

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