I’m so fed up with the slowness of support and lack of working features that I am going to have to return my hub and starter kit.
Too many features that should be working from the start are just not available yet - IFTTT (and other oauth2 services) and multiple users are the most obvious ones.
On top of that I was sent a faulty motion sensor and it has taken from 30th Sep (when I reported the faulty sensor) to 6th Oct for Samsung to finally issue a return label. The return label is second class, so by the time Samsung receives the sensor, sits on it doing nothing for another 3 or four days, and then sends another one to me by second class post again I will be way past the cooling off period for my online order.
How can I properly evaluate a product that has been released to the market without being ready, and without promptly responsive support.
I really wanted this to work, but my patience has run out
First off… I am super sorry you are having this experience. This is definitely not our intention and something we are working extremely hard to rectify.
The account sharing and OAuth features are both separate and related features. They are tied to our new global server architecture which allows Hubs in the UK to connect to servers closer to homes. Data moves so fast that this generally shouldn’t be noticeable… until you turn on a light and fractions of a second make a difference in perception.
The previous version of account sharing limited Hub Owners and Administrators (and was truly not as glamorous and people expected). We were working on a better account sharing features and not prioritizing an in-between (a la our previous version of account sharing) created a bit of an uproar than I think was expected. Keep in mind, this is affecting both UK and US customers and we are prioritizing (yes - I’m American) features to come out soon.
OAuth is only affecting UK, but after account sharing, it is pretty much the other most important developer priority right now. I do not have a hard timeline for the OAuth release because our goal is to get it right and make sure it is appropriately QA’d - what I have been hearing is that a few weeks out.
Lastly the motion sensor… and some good news. We had some issues with the supply chain and replacement process. We are now getting these handled in a more timely (and smooth) manner. I flagged the shipping label question for the supply chain team to see if we can get these out faster (or see if we can swap the inbound/outbound order of operations).
SmartThings hammers the best customer experience into our support team when addressing questions, and are leading every other aspect of the team and Samsung. The team has been getting a ton of requests and is a bit jammed at the moment, but if you are not getting adequate service, send me a 1:1 and I will do everything I can to help improve your experience (and bonk the offending agent over the head).
I appreciate the efforts of the support team - it is unfortunate that they are the only “face” for issues that were caused by others in your company.
I think a lot of frustration is with the product team. It is ridiculous to remove product capabilities with the intention to replace them in the future “to make it better”. The net effect is things are broken (or cannot be updated) that were working for your paying customers.
Backwards compatibility - at least for a year MUST be maintained. Things can progress, but do we really need to take two steps backward for every two steps forward? I understand this is harder - that is life with a customer base.
The biggest concern I have is not the immediate growing pains, but what is in store a year from now, or two years from now with such a cavalier attitude for peoples homes and time.
What I would like to hear from someone on the product side is:
“We screwed up, we learned our lesson, we won’t be making the same planning / execution mistakes again”
The lack of this leaves many with the impression - you will continue break working automation/control anytime it is most convenient (for the product team).
If i weren’t past the cool off period, I’d be returning mine i think. But i decided to persist earlier and i hope that was right.
Information is key. Clear information on bugs and issues and roadmaps. Otherwise we’re in the dark. With the current ST there are just too many issues for it to be anything other than an expensive toy.
Fwiw i do have some things working but not as desired due to ide, multiuser, oauth etc.
I have ideas but I’m loathe to spend anything more at the moment. Please make my faith worth it.
Gotta go. Smart alarm just gone off as kids have arrived home but no multi user to disable it…
@Aaron is doing his best to placate us early adopters - I applaud your efforts (professional with a bit of humour). I suppose many of us in this Community didn’t think we would get an early adopter experience because of the Samsung name. I have a simple LightwaveRF solution in place. I bought the ST starter kit and an extra plug adapter to replace my LightwaveRF solution and to use Amazon Echo to improve my whole automation experience; alas, it’s just not ready!
I purchased all of the kit in Currys - will prob drop it back with a view to purchasing again when all of the teething problems get sorted out. I don’t want to, but £200+ is just too much mone to spend on an automation toy! I’d be happy to participate in a beta group if the kit was free - spend my own money to help others develop a robust, reliable, scaleable, secure solution - just doesn’t sit well with me.
I’ve had my V2 Hub for a couple of weeks now and have got Wemo working, Philips Hue integrated and so far my experience has been good. I’ve had a few issues with adding a device where the ios app never seems to find the device but it actually has. Yes the lack of IFTTT integration was a major annoyance but it will be fixed so we have been told and of course it will.
There seems to be much vitriol and anger being spouted about how disastrous this is as if its the most important thing about home automation. Correct me if i am wrong but i don’t see ANY integration to IFTTT with any other home automation systems. A preliminary search finds no direct channel for Fibaro, Zipato, Micasa Verde? Maybe i’m wrong and should have searched harder but really? If this is what people are upset about and not the actual control of ZWAVE or ZIGBEE devices then why did they buy it in the first place??
This is where you are wrong… you are fortunate that Support is the face because theirs are the prettiest in the whole company!
(^meaningless bonus points if you can name this show)
Echo is really cool, but because it is not sold in the UK, there are no promises that it will be a classified as an official Compatible Device once OAuth is up and running. However, the community has a bunch of badass devs!
I’m quadriparetic (use a wheelchair and have limited hand function). Voice control is essential to me in considering any system.
Before echo was available in the US, I used IFTTT with Siri for voice control of smartthings, as detailed in the voice command solution thread in the forum. It’s much clunkier than echo, but it works. There are other voice command options, but I think all of them require oauth to access a third-party service.
I had already discussed the IFTTT option with some people in one of my online wheelchair groups who are in the UK. It definitely would be a significant factor in their choice of a SmartThings purchase.
As the old saying goes, “your use case is not my use case.”
Something that seems trivial to one person may be essential to someone else. One of the strengths of SmartThings is its openness and the fact that different people do use it differently. I, too, am surprised that the system launched with the OAuth problem. But it did, and they’re working on it, so it’s up to each individual person whether they want to return the system and try again later, or move on to something else, or use the other features for now. There isn’t going to be any one right answer, it just depends on each individual’s particular needs.
for those interested in voice command options other than echo, see the following topic. This is a clickable link. Again, though, I think all these options will require that the oauth issue be fixed before you can use them.
@JDRoberts, I have to admit that echo is very high on my list of wants too. Also I have to appologise, I hadn’t considered how important oauth could be, especially for someone who faces challenges that can easily be surmounted with a working oauth solution.
I really hope the dev team resolve it soon
Well, I just checked my order status and I can still return it. But I’m not going to.
The platform has promise. I’m sure the support and dev are working as hard as they can.
It’s frustrating though, and I hope support can see that.
The glossy brochure that tempted me to buy this doesn’t represent the reality and a lot of people will be put off by it.
I really really want to see a coherent picture of known issues and a roadmap. Please?
A ha…So, you truly believe that Indigogo is trustworthy and this product is not a scam? Do you still think Easter bunny is real? Might as well get ALEXA from AMAZON! She is REAL! LOL! No need to Pre-Order:
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
#13
Ditto.
But don’t hold your breath… SmartThings has these types of execution failures over and over and over again. I don’t think these are “mistakes” anymore: SmartThings is taking calculated risks, and the explanations we receive from ST staff corroborate this… i.e., they state that they knew it was going to be a problem and chose each particular course of action anyway.
One obvious example is the unavailability of migration tool(s) at the time of Hub V2 release. Clearly a deliberate decision. Not horrendous, though, because Customers have the choice to defer upgrading.
But why was App V2 released the same day as Hub V2, thus swamping Support with “several day” delays? Even Hub V1 users are automatically upgraded to App V2 and cannot rollback unless they are exceptional users who keep personal backups…
So much useful (if imperfect) functionality of mobile App V1 was just yanked out for the release of App V2, before providing planned replacements. Is this a Customer focused strategy?
I can’t get behind the “okay” wake word. What is with the industry going this way? Glad Amazon chose a different path, and the ability to rename can’t get here soon enough.
Amazon is fantastic, but this is a topic in the UK category, and the echo is not yet available for the UK. (I’m also concerned about what will happen when smartthings does fixed Oauth for the UK accounts and some people happen to have an echo with the US account and I don’t know what happen.)
I agree, though, that now is probably not the time to choose a pre-release product. The options are changing too quickly.
Anyway, for right now, for someone in UK assuming that they fix the OAuth problem you have several decent voice options. None are as great as echo but they’re all workable. These are all detailed in the voice command solution topic that I linked to a few posts up.
One) send voice text to IFTTT. I used this with hey Siri on my Apple Watch before echo was available. You can also do it with any phone, tablet, or smart watch that can send a voice text, including android or Windows.
Two) you can get an android tablet or phone and leave it plugged in and always on and combine it with Tasker and sharptools. These are both paid apps, but the total cost for the whole solution, tablet plus the two apps, is still much less then an echo would be. Or an ivee for that matter.
Three) I think Ubi works in the UK. This is a plug-in device. Expensive, now that Echo is out. And the voice recognition technology is nowhere near as good as echo’s. But there are definitely people who have it and like it. And it is hands-free. My biggest concern with this is that it requires the cloud service to work, and if the company dies because of the competition from echo, the device isn’t going to be usable.
Like I said, before echo was available, I used the IFTTT method with my smart watch. My mobile plan includes unlimited texting, so it actually didn’t cost me anything. It was very reliable. The only problem was that the phrases had to be exact, and they were not natural sounding: “Hey, Siri, tell House hashtag television underscore on.” But as someone who is quadriparetic I definitely appreciated having this option.
Many people really like the tasker/sharp tools option. If you already have an android device, it’s going to cost you very little, maybe €25 or less. And you can use more natural sounding language.
We even have one community member in Spain who is looking into SharpTools because although the set up screens are all in English, since it uses Google, he can set it up for Spanish language Voice command so the rest of his household can use it.
So there are some options other than echo for those in Europe. And options are always good.
I’ve also employed an alternative voice solution via Android Smartwatch (rooted) using Xposed framework to call a 3rd party app that used Google Now and tasker. There was some lag in the switch action, but it worked well. I have limited time to ‘tinker’ so I like the idea of plug & play - without too much configuration.
To all UK customers, you can use the Consumers Rights Act (which was updated on the 1st of October) - specifically the ‘not fit for purpose’ part which the SmartThings is at the moment. Samsung took something which worked and broke it - thus not fit for purpose. If you want further info on this go to https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/consumer-rights-act-2015.
I’ve only had my Smartthings Kit a week and seriously considering returning it as the Lifx light build stopped working and has now disappeared as a supported device on the iOS app. Come on Samsung how can you roll out a product that is not fit for consumers to use.
