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.
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.
One could argue that Tado should have had more certainty about their business model before they started selling promises they couldn’t keep, but that’s business I suppose.
Presumably Tado anticipated they could capture customers on a free tier and upsell later, but it turns out that when customers have a fully functional basic tier, they generally don’t want to pay money for extras they don’t care about.
And so now, Tado are left with an online service that costs them money to run, but no ongoing revenue. So of course they will try to monetise the subscription.
Of course, part of the problem is that customers have almost been conditioned to expect cloud stuff to be free. And so that’s the price Tado tried to aim for, and now that is causing problems.
Either way though, what they are doing now represents “changing the deal” Darth Vader style - the product previously was a one time purchase and then free after, and they are now trying to make it paid after selling it as free. And that is bad.
If they brought out new features and charged for those I think most would understand. However since the V2 they basically done nothing in R&D. That’s 6-7 years ago.
We can helpfully answer that for them by making sure they get sued.