Wink’s Crappy move to force a Subscription Plan on its existing users

Last week, Wink sent an email to all of its users to inform them that if they did not pay up $5 a month, Wink would render their purchased devices useless. In essence, that is what is happening. They are calling it a subscription but if you do not subscribe, your Wink Hub is basically a paperweight.

The deadline is May 13th. This gives users less than 1 week to decide if they want to submit to Wink’s demands.

The initial promise of the device was an easy to use Hub to connect all of your IOT devices together with no monthly fees or subscriptions. For that, you would pay upwards of $100 to purchase the device but it would be a one time purchase. Now, facing increased financial pressures, Wink has decided to change the Terms of Service and institute a 5 buck a month fee in order to keep the Hub and all of it’s connected devices functioning. #Ransomware

There is no way I am paying 5 bucks to this company. And it’s not about the money. It’s about the blatant changing of the rules on the people that have bought into your vision and supported your company through the purchase of the hub. Want to add a subscription fee to any NEWLY PURCHASED hubs, where the buyer understands what they are getting into? Fine. I wouldn’t have an issue with that. This is completely different and I don’t think the company will survive.

Here is the other reason I am not going to pay the extortion fee. The company is grasping at straws.. It’s squeezing at the last remaining opportunity to siphon money from its user base and it gives me no confidence that it will be used to keep the service running. Ultimately, the subscription dollars will come in and the infrastructure will be at best a skeleton operation and further deteriorate from there. I don’t see any circumstance where they would do anything other than the bare minimum to maintain functionality and subscriptions.

No thank you. Hard pass on that offer.

My Wink hub is going in the garbage and I’m going to start working on putting this USB ZWave stick back in production with my Home Assistant.

Sorry if you got hoodwinked by Wink.
Carlo

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