Pssst, hey customers... It'd be a shame if something happened to make your Wink stop working, ya know? I mean that would be a sad thing. So let's say we protect you from any sort of service interruptions, we'll just charge you $5 measly bucks a month and we promise your stuff won't get broke. Really, it'd be a shame to waste all that time and money you've already spent on our stuff. Whadda ya say, huh? Does that sound like an offer you can't refuse?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Smart Home Company Wink Gives Users an Extra Week Before Surprise Subscription Fees Are Required
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I knew you could do it old school with hard drives saving the footage but I wasn't sure about how to access it remotely and get notifications. If someone walks into the camera range it gives you a notification and you can click on it to see what the video shows? To me that's one most important feature of the camera. It's great to see bad guys but also when your mailman sets a $2000 laptop in plain view right by your door so you can rush home to get it. The second best feature would be having the video saved so they can catch the burglar if you didn't make it home in time 😂
I think it's important for people in the forums to explain stuff like this because it does a great service to everyone. It's good we have smart people when it comes to stuff like this! I know computers but I'm dumb when it comes to this LOL
This is how it should’ve been dealt with. Existing users are frozen in time. Functionality they had when they purchased the product is maintained but excluded from “exciting new updates exclusive to subscribers”.
Breaking existing devices with a demand for a ransom is going to get them sued.
But Wink doesn’t care because they know that they’re out of business and this is a last ditch attempt at rising from the grave. If it doesn’t work, they can’t pay the class action lawsuit anyway. If it does, then they’ve bought themselves some time and can start a buyback program.
But if they do in fact know that they’re shutting down and are selling subscriptions, knowing that they can’t deliver, then this is criminal fraud and someone is going to prison.
still using office 2013. Perfectly fine. Why pay. To me office hasn’t really changed. Microsoft had a monopoly on it. They don’t need to. Now they want everyone to pay for their security office patches.
Last edited:
That gives people an extra week to toss this junk in the trash and buy something else.
$99 a year...
Was it worth the upgrade from every single release since 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016 and 2019?
Even so, it was way cheaper buying the SW outright.
Out of all the smart home companies, they are definitely the... boldest... to try and charge a subscription fee.
Wink has undoubtedly given me the worst smartphone experience. Whether it was constant disconnecting hubs, lights that would suddenly not respond and have to be reset and re-setup, the setup process that just straight up didn’t work half the time, or the app that sometimes wouldn’t reflect the actual state of the lights.
Not to mention that my Wink hub completely died TWICE and I ended up throwing them out and just pairing them bulbs to my Hue hub.
Out of all the smart home companies, Wink is the absolute last one I would ever consider paying a subscription fee for.
Wink has undoubtedly given me the worst smartphone experience. Whether it was constant disconnecting hubs, lights that would suddenly not respond and have to be reset and re-setup, the setup process that just straight up didn’t work half the time, or the app that sometimes wouldn’t reflect the actual state of the lights.
Not to mention that my Wink hub completely died TWICE and I ended up throwing them out and just pairing them bulbs to my Hue hub.
Out of all the smart home companies, Wink is the absolute last one I would ever consider paying a subscription fee for.
For most people, getting 30 emails a day from their camera is not an attractive option. I find the Balkanized experience of notifications coming from umpteen apps during the day quite obtrusive, and have thus confined my smart home purchases to fully HomeKit-compatible hardware. As stated in previous replies by others on this thread on an Apple-centric forum, having the clean and slick continuity and consistency of a HomeKit notification is much more reliable in the long term. There’s nothing inherently wrong with WiFi infrastructure, when done right. As for folks defending the costs of maintaining cloud services for the Iot, there’s no excuse for false advertising and bait & switch activity. Any parallel drawn to software application developers should concede that when done properly, those apps continue to function as is, with any future feature updates requiring the new subscription. I know folks still using ancient versions of MS Office to avoid 365 subscriptions. Bottom line folks...use the apple home app and forget the proprietary apps. When (often promised...I’m looking at you Nest and Ring) HomeKit compatibility is lacking, use Homebridge on a raspberry pi 4 or greater.
I agree, I don't use camera notifications either, I'd go insane. I have my system record 24/7, capable of holding over a month of 9 camera recordings, and i can always expand the capacity. When something happens (or doesn't happen, like a missed delivery), I review.
HomeKit hasn't been around long enough to see how the hardware support will carry on forward for those devices. Though because it is a cloud based service, I'm sure at some point the security of existing products will be deemed inadequate to continue to function with newer OS and HomeKit versions. I think it's always gonna be a struggle with cloud based services.
$99 a year...
Even so, it was way cheaper buying the SW outright.
If you're talking about a boxed copy of MS Office that you can pay for once and use forever... sure. But remember that it's only for one machine.
With Microsoft 365 you're getting all the Office apps that you can legally install on up to five machines. You also get 1TB of OneDrive storage. (for comparison Dropbox charges $99/year for just storage)
And you can "share" your Microsoft subscription with a total of six different people if you wanted to. Friends, family, etc. And each one of them gets 1TB of storage and all the Office apps.
I know some people hate the idea of subscriptions... but Microsoft actually provides a lot of value for that $99/year.
Cannot disagree more! Just because they bundled cloud storage doesn't make this a value. I have been and am still using Office 2007 (on my PC), I don't remember but I believe I paid $100 for it so lets do the math.... $7.69/year. The Office suite does not require daily development or have fixed costs (they added cloud storage that users cannot opt out of cost wise), all Microsoft needs to do is issue security updates for their own buggy software and work on the next version. When was the last time you sat around on pins and needles waiting for the next version of Office because it had a new feature you needed? My guess is never, they don't truly innovate, they add templates and fonts.
What value? Cloud storage you may or may not want? The ability to install on 5 systems when you only have 2?
Let's face it, our jobs tie us to Office, mine does and that's why they pay for my version (on my MBP) but outside of the professional/working world I would be using the Apple suite or OpenOffice in a heartbeat. Using and paying for MSOffice for home use is throwing money away.
Last edited:
Well... I listed a bunch of stuff you get with the subscription.
But if you don't want any of it... no one is forcing your to pay for it.
I still maintain that you do get a lot for that money... whether you think so or not.
Good news! Most home users don't pay for it. You can use TextEdit or Wordpad or Pages for free! Problem solved!
It's just classic marketing by MS. They "show" you it has "value".Well... I listed a bunch of stuff you get with the subscription.
But if you don't want any of it... no one is forcing your to pay for it.
I still maintain that you do get a lot for that money... whether you think so or not.
Good news! Most home users don't pay for it. You can use TextEdit or Wordpad or Pages for free! Problem solved!
Do you not understand that fraud carries criminal charges?
And again, I’ll repeat what I said so you don’t take me out of context. Some people on this forum seem to have trouble reading a post before responding to it.
It can suck when you buy a device and it's cloud goes away, so why not say, "Help us save your devices and wink community by signing up for a subscription to cover on going cloud costs", instead of making it seem like a shake down.
Also you've got to start Lower. $1 a month is the place to start and then if it's not covered step up from there. Are these people really using more than $1 each of cloud computing a month, if so how didn't they go out of business sooner.
Also you've got to start Lower. $1 a month is the place to start and then if it's not covered step up from there. Are these people really using more than $1 each of cloud computing a month, if so how didn't they go out of business sooner.
Anything that is accessed over the internet is a service and may change its fees if there is no contract to the end users.
For example, if Google Calendar wanted to charge users or you couldn't access your calendars anymore, that would be 100% legal. Would it help Google as a company? Probably not.
I still maintain that you do get a lot for that money... whether you think so or not.
Look, to each their own, but I fail to see why you would find value in renting software like office versus buying. What does MS release in new versions that you find that much value in? Office 2019, the standalone version should be way less expensive, they charge $149 for the single license, minus several pieces included in 365, why? Because they want to "force" you into the way more profitable subscription model under the guise of value. I imagine that very few home users need/use/want: Access, Outlook, OneNote. Skype is free to download anyway so why is it listed as a "service included"?
I have no problem with subscription service for things that either have fixed monthly costs like bandwidth or storage, hence I have no problem with my iCloud or NordVPN subs. I also have no problem with subs for software that requires constant attention like security patches etc, think anti-virus or anti-malware where development can take place hourly.
Microsoft does nothing to Office, outside of security patches or fixes that they should be responsible for anyway. They need the subscription model because they do not innovate inside Office, which is why a large number of people hold on to older versions, there is no reason to upgrade.
Last edited:
I know this may not sound like a good move from a new (or not so old) customers perspective but wink cannot survive without subscription. I have been wink customer forever and I have seen them struggle through bad phase. I really love the integration they have through their APIs.
I am glad they are having a subscription model and it is at $5 a month.
I am glad they are having a subscription model and it is at $5 a month.
They're probably only giving an extra week b/c their billing system isn't ready yet lol
The first wave of lawsuits will see them quietly close. By Wink. Sell your patents quick!