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The Wink home automation thread

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Wow, just read the Facebook group and Brian Knopf's comments. What an arrogant, out-of-touch ass - belittling others and bragging about his qualifications while stating that an expired certificate is the root cause. REALLY? That is one of the biggest rookie mistakes possible.

Brian, if you read this - be thankful that you aren't my employee, because if you were, you'd be gone in about two minutes with that attitude.
 
More from Ben on the Facebook group.
Folks, I'm here now. Our outage started at 12:40 ET. The entire wink team immediately sprung into emergency mode. It was very quickly clear we weren't dealing with a routine server outage. We are going to be emailing all users within an hour. I'm sick over this, as is the entire team at wink. We know it takes a lot to earn your trust, especially as it relates to your home. We hope we can regain that trust, and are really sorry for everything you've experienced today.
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Not looking good.
More from Ben...
we'll make a statement shortly. Long story short, we were not able to recover all hubs, and will not be able to recover all hubs. We will have to institute a replacement program for some. This was a pretty bad situation. We're working really hard.
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I don't buy their story for one bit....

i started having the solid yellow problem Friday night around 9 PM......
I ended up deleting everything in the Wink app and then using the official Reset paperclip 10-15 times.......every time it was blinking yellow then solid yellow...... the last time it was flashing amber or whatever color and I was able to re-add the Wink Hub on my iphone.
re-paired all the lights and everything was working again.....

early this afternoon the Hub was blue but the lights stopped responding....
powercycled Hub and all I get now is solid Yellow
i have firmware 0.82 FWIW

they should convert to a hardware only company and open their platform to the open source community..... stuff would work correctly.....

now i am reading on Facebook that some Hubs will have to physically be sent it.....




aosmer said:
More from Ben on the Facebook group.
Click to expand...
 
Ya, the entire Facebook thread has been deleted.
So Ben is saying now that some/most hubs wont be able to be recovered and will need to be replaced, at their expense? I would like to see a statement from Brian Knopf how their "expired certificate" caused this!
Something over at Wink stinks!!!!
 
aosmer said:
Heh, so looks like Brians entire post has been deleted, good thing for screen shots.
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Yeah, noticed it was gone.

I told Ben in his current post that I hoped they would offer us full refunds rather than replacement hubs. He didn't get my meaning and said "Yes we will replace all hubs that need to be replaced." I was like "I read your post the first time, Ben. I don't think I made myself clear - I don't want to continue with Wink."
 
FreddieT said:
Ya, the entire Facebook thread has been deleted.
So Ben is saying now that some/most hubs wont be able to be recovered and will need to be replaced, at their expense? I would like to see a statement from Brian Knopf how their "expired certificate" caused this!
Something over at Wink stinks!!!!
Click to expand...

For a "security researcher," Brian was saying some really dumb things. No way that an expired cert caused this. Some people are reporting that they got an update to 0.86 and I wonder if that ties into this issue, like maybe it killed older hub revisions.
 
IndyColtsFan said:
For a "security researcher," Brian was saying some really dumb things.
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Ya, way out of line. He was touting his credentials as the security guru at Wink, then essentially threw his co-workers under the bus saying that he only starting on the problem later on in the evening. Then he followed it all up by saying that he won't have to answer to anybody come Monday morning. Pretty arrogant!
 
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IndyColtsFan said:
Yeah, noticed it was gone.

I told Ben in his current post that I hoped they would offer us full refunds rather than replacement hubs. He didn't get my meaning and said "Yes we will replace all hubs that need to be replaced." I was like "I read your post the first time, Ben. I don't think I made myself clear - I don't want to continue with Wink."
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Like, I'll take a check instead, you can keep your refurbished hub, thank you.
 
FreddieT said:
Ya, way out of line. He was touting his credentials as the security guru at Wink, then essentially threw his co-workers under the bus saying that he only starting on the problem later on in the evening. Then he followed it all up by saying that he won't have to answer to anybody come Monday morning. Pretty arrogant!
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The sad thing is, he is probably right.
 
FreddieT said:
Like, I'll take a check instead, you can keep your refurbished hub, thank you.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Wink isn't life or death to me. The only interactive stuff I have are the lights in my office; the rest are just Trippers I use to monitor doors. There was no way I EVER seriously considered deploying Wink stuff all over my house given the many issues I've seen the last 5 months.

With that being said, enough is enough and seeing Brian Knopf's behavior sealed the deal. I've worked in IT my whole career and when I've dealt with major outages, the LAST thing I ever thought about doing was posting on Facebook. Just more evidence how out-of-touch Wink and some of their employees are.
 
Someone else asked about refunds... Ben's reply...
impossible to do a refund here. If the retailer you bought the unit from will accept the return, i would suggest heading that way. Otherwise we are happy to replace or repair as per our warranty.
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IndyColtsFan said:
Exactly. Wink isn't life or death to me. The only interactive stuff I have are the lights in my office; the rest are just Trippers I use to monitor doors. There was no way I EVER seriously considered deploying Wink stuff all over my house given the many issues I've seen the last 5 months.

With that being said, enough is enough and seeing Brian Knopf's behavior sealed the deal. I've worked in IT my whole career and when I've dealt with major outages, the LAST thing I ever thought about doing was posting on Facebook. Just more evidence how out-of-touch Wink and some of their employees are.
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I agree. I'm in IT as well (for a large college) and I know BS when I smell it. And Wink's (official and unofficial) response to this situation failed on so many levels, that it would be hypocritical of me to give them another chance.

Luckily for me they showed their incompetence early on so I didn't trust my door locks, smoke detectors, thermostat and garage door to them completely. So after the hub has been tossed in the recycle bin I still have options at the end of the day.

Anyone know where the SmartThings thread is? lol
 
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