ok i am now a few weeks into ownership of this extremely buggy platform to the point my wife is losing her patience.
so today i sat down to work on bug fixes and fix some of her complaints. so i started off disabling the LED on the Fibaro Dimmer in my Bedroom as it was a major annoyance. i followed instructions in these forums. this worked on the first device, then i started on the next but could not them choose the device in the IDE as it would not return the list of devices that worked on the first one.
i then tried to go to the devices list in the IDE and i get this
I was then forcibly signed out of my IOS App and cannot log back in with my details.
My android apps are reporting numerous errors and are unusable. i have lights in two rooms i am unable to turn on with the android smarttiles tablets.
its Saturday before Christmas. Support only works Mon to Friday…last time i emailed them with a support ticket, it took them four days to come back with a very vague response.
I’ve deleted all the Fibaro Motion sensors and the many many lighting automation rules (Why can i not export/import rules!!)
still hasn’t resolved, this looks to be a database corruption at their end.
i am fuming. the level of support here is garbage. I would be happy to pay for a proper yearly support contract for something that is a key component of my house. but of course that’s not available.
I am a totally unhappy customer. this is the the final straw…i sense a small claims petition being filed for Samsung UK for selling a product totally unfit for purpose as this will ruin my Christmas and possibly my marriage.
And i have just found out that to reset the device completely which was what i was going to do to get this back running today i need my Welcome code…which is the code that said i only needed once…its been thrown away. should have said this on the card itself to retain it. as a new user i didn’t realise there was an instance where this would be required again
I am losing patience with this awful system. Timed switches stop working, switches at sunset or sunrise suddenly do not work. Even if you add them again. I’m more reliable than this system, in fact I’ve started switching things manually because it’s the only way it works now.
they have got to sort this. i’m wondering if they should just drop and redevelop a new software platform to get this working, the existing one will just not work especially in the UK, they have really ballsed up the architecture in my opinion, there is no way they can fix without fundamental changes which would break a lot of existing integration.
maybe they should do this and run the two platforms in tandem and allow people to choose which platform they want to use. the buggy but more stuff, the reliable but little integration.
the support so far has been woeful in the UK with panned scripted vague responses. where are the advanced debugging tools, and support asking me to do these steps…it seems to me support are just suggesting long winded and pointless responses like reconfigure everything in smaller subsets, i would think, lets get traces of the issue and work through it… but as an ex Microsoft Premier Support Consultant, maybe that’s asking too much.
I just cant believe a product has been marketed so heavily here in the UK that blatantly is not fit for purpose. I’m into the automation route here at the moment a total of about 1300 pounds forget just the price of the smarthings branded items. they were all bought at the same time.
so for me its a larger investment than the couple of hundred pounds, so excuse me for wanting to tear
Smartthings/Samsung a new one. funny how http://status.smartthings.com/ is never updated with anything other than operational. even on days where after the fact they show there was issues
I guess it’s a cultural gap. In US, one can get away with selling all kinds of cr@p to consumers, unless its food or drugs, without any kind of regulatory oversight. Consumer protection is notoriously weak. Your only option here is returning product for a refund. Fortunately, most retailers offer fairly generous return policies, much better than in Europe, AFAIK.
the thing is my losses due to the products flaws are far larger than the cost of the goods. If proved in a court of law in the uk that the product is falsely advertised and unfit for purpose I can claim for recovery of additional expenses, namely my time. I have done it once before via the small claims court for a HP laptop which had a design flaw tendering the product unusable. It broke 4 times in 6 months and was repaired under warranty. But I claimed for my time and loss of earnings and was awarded the maximum value and a full refund.
However after I was awarded it took a further 8 months for HP to pay as per the courts decision. But that is beside the point
There was someone else on this forum who intended to do just that. I’m not sure I’d want to spend my time filing small claim against Samsung, but at very least you could send an e-mail to Samsung CEO and/or Executive team and let them know about your dissatisfaction with their product.
I’ve drawn a line under it for the time being…I spent a long time replacing the rules and devices i was forced to delete. i took me nearly 8 hours to complete. a complete waste of my time, they really do need a way to export rules as a backup. but at least i have managed to get back to working lights in the house and restore some of the patience my wife was wearing out of.
my main gripes still stand, support are unresponsive. getting a turnaround of 4 days for each email response is one thing. i wouldn’t mind if i could collect traces in some way from the box and send them to examine, but the current logging just does not have enough detail to troubleshoot effectively. i am talking from experience as i was until recently a Support consultant for Microsoft. there usually is a lot more detail that can be collected…here though there does not seem to be and a 4 day turnaround just doesn’t work.
because of the issues i would pay for a premier support contract to work through issues as i just don’t think Smartthings support are working on individual cases, they are looking through support tickets and only working on trends of issues which closes the largest number of cases. i know as i have also worked for companies with the same approach to support as there just isn’t enough staff to cover the workload. it just does not cut it for customer satisfaction.
a tiered support platform is the only way to get customer satisfaction by customers paying for premier support, the benefits would filter down to all issues as smaller issues will be getting looked into.
but as for the time and effort to petition for the small claims court. its a very easy process, can be completed in less time than its taken me to write this response, its all done online now, and its ÂŁ10 cheaper than it used to be to create the petition.
but i have calmed down a lot from yesterday. they need to figure out how the database can get screwed up, the device which caused it had been added to the network for quite some time and hadn’t been edited, so the corruption has been introduced by an unrelated method.
This needs to be traced as i am not the only one affected. others have been affected as i have read on the forum, and support have resolved by deleting devices/apps like i have done. but for me, just bulbs i have over 40 and if you look at the number of rules and smart apps that also have to be deleted, this is hours/days of work. unless i am offered a way to back up so i can easily restore i have very little confidence that this will not happen again.
