Goodby SmartThings, goodbye Samsung

General Discussion
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In the early 70s, when I was a kid, my dad bought an aluminum block Chevy Vega. Within 16 months, having blown the engine twice, he sold it for scrap. He’s now 85 years old and has not only never bought another GM product, he’s never owned an American car of any make since, and neither have any of his 3 children.

That’s what tarnishing your brand with shitty, short sighted engineering looks like Samsung, and that’s how its going to go down between you and me, over this half-baked turd heap you call SmartThings.

This product is capriciously unstable in ways that are so arbitrary and unforeseeable, that I’ve completely lost confidence in it. The last straw? The smart lighting app which, for unknown reasons has not let me rename new automations for sometime.

“Whatevs” I thought, “I’ll just live with the dumb long name.”

But now, the “Turn off when…” slider has stopped working. An “After this number of minutes” field is supposed to pop up but it doesn’t anymore.

It seems that a similar behavior has begun infecting CoRE too. In a “Then…” action, if I select the slider for “Control location mode, Smart Home Monitor, routines, pistons, variables, and more…” nothing happens, I just go back to the previous “Add an action” screen. When I click back in the slider has mysteriously been un-selected.

This is where I have to call it. I’m just not willing to invest any more time in this. The tool no longer even allows me to create the basic operational logic for you guys to drop on the floor and evaluate incorrectly! I’m done.

Perhaps if you work with Microsoft products you’re accustomed to being jacked around and humiliated like this, but I cut that company out of my life 15 years ago and there hasn’t been a day since that I’ve regretted it. I haven’t had any trouble making money as an engineer since then either. Life’s too short to be this angry and affronted all the time.

So goodbye Samsung, I’ll never look at one of your products again without hearing alarm bells and seething a little bit, and I can’t imagine ever buying one. I hope the $149 or whatever that you got out of me was worth it.

Control4 here I come…

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Ummm… Can you say champagne vs. beer?

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Be prepared to add a zero or 2 to the end of that number with Control 4…

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Why don’t you try Wink 2 before jumping to Control4? I haven’t tried it myself, but reviews are pretty good. You should be able to use at least some of your devices with Wink.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KW8WGZQ/

It’s sold at HomeDepot too. With 90 days return policy, it’s plenty of time to evaluate if you like it or not. :slight_smile:

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I have the Wink 2 and I have been trying to switch to Smartthings. But like all things it is never greener on the other side. Most of my product work fine with Wink 2. But it would appear every time I put in a ticket with support from Smartthing they refer me here, not the best support. But the folks on here are great!

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In the defense of Control4 you can now get an EA1 and 260 remote for under 600 retail, that is enough to control a ton of IR devices in one room and add unlimited IP devices. Assuming you have a dealer to do it for you… :slight_smile: That doesn’t charge by the hour…

If you want cheap and local and no dealer, try vera plus.

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Make sure you do a quick search before you cash into Control4…the grass is not any greener even if you pay 10 times more.

Last two comments on Google Play are these…

1440×2560 318 KB

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Oh **** Jet Skier? Well, if he said it… then yea…

:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Hey before you go… You should sell all of your turd accessories to us for peanuts and corn!

I’m buyin!

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Lol. I may yet sell all this stuff off. I was hoping I could still use my z-wave switches and zigbee devices.

I have a friend who’s a control4 dealer. He told me he’s willing to sell me the hardware at cost and let me into his dealer portal for programming if I agree to help him out with some of his high end customers occasionally. I kind of put him off because I believed in SmartThings, but I just hit him up with an email last night.

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lol, remember, nothing is free in life - it’s included some way, shape, or form. Sounds like you’re going from the frying pan to the fryer if you’re not careful. Just my 2 cents.

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I soon also will make a similar decision within no more than two to three months if they don’t get their act together. If Samsung was not the name behind this I probably would be more patient, but I was mislead into buying tis product on the basis that it was Smartthings by Samsung. I am now very disappointed and discouraged. I use to come on here at least once a day but now it is only when I need to get update on the product’s stability. I have called it a toy before and it has lived up to that description pretty well.

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The slider thing doesn’t work for some by sliding it. Just double tab and it will stay.

I was in the same boat as you.

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Gotta suck to pay all that money… And find out my 20.00 Minimotes work great all of the time!

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I’m not sure why some people feel the need to let the world know of their every move with a product? Starting with a story about your dad? How is that relevant? Feels like you want attention, I haven’t had issues with the product, the couple of hiccups were solved very quickly, by calling customer support and doing some reading.

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And what, pray tell, motivates you to let the world know your feelings on this thread and the OP’s willingness to share? How is your post relevant or topical? Feels like you want attention.

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Sometimes the only thing you can do is bitch about it and that usually feels good, at least for a few minutes.

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Granted I only use ST to control some lights, control my TV (Harmony), and turn on some lights when a door opens, but I haven’t had any issues. I tell Alexa to turn on a light and the light turns on. I click the button in the app and it does what it’s supposed to.
Sorry but not sorry that you’re leaving. Good luck with Control4.

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The post wasn’t about my dad, it was about how releasing poorly engineered products damages your global brand, sometimes for generations.

Sorry you didn’t get it, but it was really directed at Samsung.

For my part, I often wonder about fan boys who feel the need to defend mega-corporations. Do you really have so much identity tied up in the products you buy that you take any criticism of them personally?

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mine works pretty good these days, I never really had any of the issues, not as severe at least, as some people on this forum. Good luck with your venture. I thought I would mention that I dont get the impression samsung put much development into smartthings. I think they bought it to get a seat at the table. I havent actually researched it, but this is the impression I get. Microsoft and GM arent so bad these days either :slight_smile:

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