The Philips Hue hub that convinced me smart homes are a gimmick

I bought into the whole smart home thing about 8 months ago. Started with a Philips Hue starter kit, then added more bulbs, a motion sensor, the works. Last Wednesday the hub just stopped connecting. No reason. Rebooted the router, power cycled the hub, did the whole dance. Three hours of my evening gone. Called support, they said it's probably a hardware failure and the warranty ran out 2 weeks before. So now I have $250 worth of paperweights because a $60 hub died. I'm starting to think the conspiracy is that these companies make the hubs fail on purpose so you buy the new version. Anyone else have a smart home product just quit on them for no good reason?

3 comments

3 Comments

alicew681mo ago

Totally get where you're coming from. It's like the whole "planned obsolescence" thing with printers, right? You buy a cheap printer and the ink costs more than the printer itself, or it just stops working after a year. @elizabethn56 has a point about catching the warranty window, but it's still frustrating that these companies design things to fail right after it expires. My mate had a smart thermostat stop connecting last winter, and it took him a week to get a replacement because the company was "upgrading their system." It's just a pattern now, everything feels like a rental that you paid full price for.

elizabethn561mo ago

Bet you didn't call support before the warranty ran out to ask for an RMA though, did you. They pretty much always replace it if you catch it in time.

james_kim9d ago

Ask if they offered you any kind of discount or trade-in at least. Because if they didn't, that REALLY proves it's planned obsolescence. I get that warranties expire, but TWO WEEKS man, that's insanely bad luck and they KNOW that hub has a weak power supply or something. They could have at least given you a 50% off coupon for the new hub and saved some face. It's like they want you to feel burned so you just quit the whole smart home thing instead of buying more of their stuff. What did support actually say when you pushed them on it?