SmartThings "support" is rude!

I have a ticket number in case anyone from Samsung asks.

I have a lot of problems with 2 Z-Wave locks. Batteries door fast, fails authorization and then the locks fall off the Z-Wave network. It’s a 24-72 hour ‘reprogram’ my pistons. It is so bad, I just made a simulated lock and another piston to lock and unlock each of the locks on the for garage door entry and the front door lock.

Long story short, after I went through a huge amount of trouble-shooting took the Z-Wave chip out and the front door mostly functions ok, exclude/include to once a week

It’s a Kwikset 910 and, at a certain point where it loses connection between the hub and the lock, it has a yellow light under the card

Fast forward: I called customer service and they had another person email me, I told her what I discovered but, she passed me off to kwikset.

I asked for a supervisor or their senior, she said "I will not pass your information to the senior team.

Quote:

-Secondly, I would like to say that I do understand everything that you are saying and do sincerely apologize that you do not agree with the information that I am giving; but I am giving you the product knowledge that is given to us and at this moment in time, I cannot escalate this issue because it would seem as invalid."

She has no idea about the locks being unable to reauthorize

SmartThings used to have the best techs in any business, now they are cut rate customer service reps. They probably don’t know what should be escalated and what doesn’t need to be. I gave very specific information that could only be answered by an advanced technician.

Not to mention, she flat out rude.

So, I’m guessing that the Harmon-Kardon takeover of SmartThings comes with the worst tech support in the world. Not only can I not encourage people to buy SmartThings, now I can’t even encourage them to buy Samsung or Harmon-Kardon.

It’s quite amazing that this girl that has not done the troubleshooting I’ve done since LAST OCTOBER can say that this isn’t an issue thay needs to be escalated.

They must have fired all the good techs. So sad.

I predict that they don’t have anyone on these forums either and, Samsung will sell off ST or shut it down because of a lack of interest, but it will really be the fact they pissed all their customers off by hiring peons to do a tech job.

Calling ST tech support has become as bad as calling Google tech support. They both know nothing about the inner workings of the products and don’t know how to take bug reports.

The sad reality is that this is becoming a market trend. In all honesty though, I appreciate her position in telling you that the issue will not be escalated. Wouldn’t you rather know up front that nothing is being done for your problem, than having her say “an engineer is looking into it” but you never get a response back, and your ticket gets closed? That has happened to me way too many times.

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That must be frustrating.

As a counter point I have had nothing but good experiences with SmartThings tech support, and they have solved any issue I have given them. Usually but not always in a timely manner. This can’t be an easy product to support, and it isn’t a job I’d want.

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Yes same here but I regret the IM support seems no longer available. IM support is to me the best support brarer: reactive, focused and quicker than email. Additionally for nnon native speakers, IM avoids the frustration of having to repeating things.

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They were hell bent on blaming someone else and my custom DTH; which added two words to the locked by keypad condition.

After I said that the locks are de-authenticating no matter what DTH I was using, they still said it was my DTH.

I seriously doubt that adding ‘by keypad’ to a value that SmartThings reports for logging only would trigger this crap.

Also said that I tried several others (@rboy, @ethayer , etc) they all did the same thing. The lock that was great for almost a year now goes to sh+t after they mess with the Z-Wave radio in October (when my problems began) and told her this as well.

It’s not like BOTH of my locks went bad on the same month. The chances of that happening are less than a Powerball winner getting stuck by lightning.

I’m sure that was super frustrating. :scream: Sometimes it’s a language issue, I don’t know if that was true in this case.

I personally don’t have a problem with their not escalating things when you are using a custom DTH. They don’t support custom code, they say they don’t support custom code, and if you want official support, particularly if you want something escalated, you need to take custom code out of the equation.

So if it was me, I would run the locks with the stock DTH for a Few days and no Webcore pistons, and if you are still having the problem, then I would start a new support ticket and not mention custom coat at all.

As for whether two locks might fail in the same way at the same time, if they’re the same brand and model and have been in the same environmental conditions, all I can tell you as a former field tech is that that happens all the time. I’ve walked into a building where seven GE light switches all went out in the same week. It does happen.

There’s no question that smartthings support for hub-connected Devices now is vastly inferior to what it was a year ago. It’s making a lot of people crazy. And it’s even worse than that for power users. I don’t expect that to change ever so it becomes a question of whether that’s a critical part of your system for you or not.

By the way, I’m not telling you to run without custom code for a couple of days because I think it’s bad to run with custom code. I just think that’s the practical next step if you want to get help from Samsung support.

A different alternative would be to get in touch with Rboy Support and see what they say. The odds are if this is something platform related that they’ve seen a lot of it and they might have some more ideas. And they will definitely treat you as a power user talking to power users.

@RBoy

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There has been an uptick of reports in the 9 series having issues recently. But as far as I can remember, the reports of issues with 910/912/916 have been reported for years now. Usually after a year or two the MB/modules tend to develop issues. @lflorack has some experience with this as well:

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Unfortunately, I did all that. Ran the lock without any automation for about 1 month on the stock DTH, and that didn’t resolve anything. Like I said, I have had plenty of time to rule out mostly everything except an authentication problem. Also, as soon as the garage lock is paired with the front door lock already paired, then the front door lock really goes to crap FAST. Like in MINUTES it will fall off the Z-Wave network

Tell me this isn’t a problem that shouldn’t be escalated.

Considering I told this all to the rep, they failed miserably to provide me with adequate support.

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I had a Kwikset 912 that eventually not only fell off the network every 1 to 1.5 hours, it would also drive everything else on the Z-Wave mesh off too. A week ago, I finally removed that lock from my HA setup after 1.5 years or so of fighting with it - even changing the Z-Wave module at one point. In another thread, another user found that he, like me, was getting a yellow light next to the ‘A’ button on his 912 lock (my 910). After speaking with Kwikset Support, he was informed that the yellow light indicates a potential of a bad motherboard. Causing a cascade failure with the rest of the Z-Wave devices on our SmartThings mesh was more prevalent once the yellow light was present - probably because the failing motherboard was causing the lock to flood the Z-Wave mesh with junk. In my case at least, all of this is not a recent thing and it is therefore unlikely to have been caused by a recent ST Hub firmware update. As I said, my lock has been steadily degrading for about 1.5 years.

Since changing the lock out a week ago today for a Schlage FE599, the lock - in the same, unchanged environment - with both locks being Z-Wave (not Z-Wave Plus), has been rock sold without any drops by it or anything else on the mesh. The 912 was dropping every 1 to 1.5 hours when I yanked it out.

Other discussions that might shed light one this one:

…and this one

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Not to mention that this is standard troubleshooting procedure. You have to take the variables out of the equation.

That said, I share the lament about helpdesks. My own work environment has moved more in this direction, and it’s awful. I have to tell the responders exactly what to do and how to do it, else issues end up in an entirely different area of the company. And it’s strange. I mean, back in 1994 we had intelligent helpdesk software that, as you typed in the case notes, would do keyword and phrase searches and the right-hand side of the screen would often call up a previous case that was identical so the responder could help you get fixed immediately or within minutes.

Now? Now I’ve called in the exact same issue more than thirty times on behalf of managers - and each and every time, the responder has no clue what I’m talking about. And each and every time, it gets mis-assigned. And if you try to guide these people, they get defensive.

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Yup. it’s SOP.

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