A more detailed article on this issue can be found here.
Basically, the “Basic” app functions of this thermostat control were free until, a short while ago, users were greeted by a notification, telling them they would need to pay a 1€/month subscription from now on. Only once you had already entered your payment details and clicked through the payment process, would you be told “lol jk, it was just a social experiment”.
As a German who was taught all the dark times of our nation in school, I can confidently say that us causing the second War To End All Wars is almost as bad as this company’s behaviour.
Obvious hyperbole aside, this is despicable and practices like these must be stomped into extinction like a carelessly tossed cigarette, lest other companies pick up on it and make the world a worse place for everyone but themselves.
As a German who was taught all the dark times of our nation in school, I can confidently say that us causing the second War To End All Wars is almost as bad as this company’s behaviour.
Yikes friend… this reads like a different flavour of holocaust denial…
Sorry that it didn’t land as an obvious joke. With the
NSDAPNPDAfD on such a steep rise, I think I have transcended gallows humour and arrived at necromancer humour levels to be able to cope with this reality.
These shenanigans are likely illegal in the EU:
- All products have to offer a minimum of 2 years of warranty, including access to online services on the same terms as sold. If they can’t afford 2 years of servers, then they shouldn’t’ve made the basic service free from the beginning.
- Collecting excessive personal data (not personally identifiable, just personal) without prior approval by the user, like data about whether a user would pay or not, is a GDPR violation.
If people got serious, they’d be looking at some lawsuits and fines.
True, true. We literally omly have a wood furnace, so are absolutely not affected by this, but I’ll see how reporting potential GDPR violations in the name of someone else works.
Contact your data protection officer, they collected data that did not need.
And the experiment was to figure out if they can actually do it without getting sued?
It was to figure out if they /really did/ start charging for it, how many people would actually pay.
I hope Tado goes bust because they don’t deserve to survive, treating customers like that.
I’d rather they found a business model that made them stable, rather than exploiting their current customers. Fact is, if they go bust then there’s à bunch of people left high and dry.
We can helpfully answer that for them by making sure they get sued.
