Amazing. Let’s truly take it from their point of view.
The only people who care about this plugin are HomeAssistant users, so a very small subset. Those users then either
A) Already own the product, and thus are not going to cost them anything because they already bought it or B) Home Assistant users who are in the market for their product, and from experience will only buy a product if there’s an HA plugin.
In what way are they losing “millions” to these 2 groups again?
I have literally made decisions on purchases like vehicles on if they have a home assistant plugin or not. For HomeAssitant users it’s one of the largest factors.
Those users don’t send usage data back to Haier that they can then sell to other companies
Yes, but without the plug in, they wouldn’t buy the product to give the data. It’s circulat logic on their part.
I bet they’re using data sales to subsidize the cost of the devices.
Subsidize? Oh sweetheart, that’s not happening - that’s just more profit! Silly goose!
that, and I can imagine they fear a giant wave of support tickets from people using HA and having problems
If they have a good support team they already have a form letter for “you are using this product in an unsupported way” and it takes about 30 seconds to process them.
And let’s be honest, someone with the tech knowhow to set up home assistant isn’t going to ask Haier for help
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It depends. My HVAC controller is a similar story to this one, and a dev has put together a plugin for HA that achieves the same thing. But it makes the exact same calls to the cloud service the OEM uses, so I’m certain they’re getting the same usage data from me, regardless of the software means I use to make those calls.
It is insanely petty. Perhaps they don’t want people reverse engineering their APIs, but all their competitors and threat actors likely do it, just not on a public repo.
I’m in nearly B as I usually only buy things with proper protocols, e.g Zigbee, that might not need a dedicated plugin. So obviously Haier is now a company I won’t buy anything from and will actively not recommend to anything who cares about my opinion on IoT.
TIL General Electric Appliances, Hoover, Fisher & Paykel, Aqua, Hotpoint, Leader, and Candy are all owned by the same company.
Sad, isn’t it? For fun, look up Whirlpool, Albertsons, and Kroger on Wikipedia to see all the brands they own. No wonder prices are high when so much competition has been eliminated.
Oh no. At least there’s no way for everyone in the world to make a backup before it goes dark…
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Right… they claim hosting it is a violation of their TOS, but I’m not one of their customers. How can I violate their TOS if I don’t even use their product.
Well, they just lost some customers…
“Specifically, the plug-ins are using our services in an unauthorized manner, which is causing significant economic harm to our Company.”
Presumably, they don’t charge customers extra for hOn, so surely the only people using it via HA are the same people that would otherwise have used their (presumably) shitty app that isn’t meeting the customers’ needs in the first place?
Not clear on how this causes them “significant” economic harm. Dick move.
Loss of 3rd party data sales from the tracking embedded in their apps would be my guess.
Yeah - in an ideal world, the dev would have the means (and legal standing) to challenge this, just to force the fuckers to admit it in court.
Not that it isn’t written into their ToS somewhere - just would love them to admit exactly how that harms them so much, financially speaking. Shine a light on the whole thing.
The only way I see a company like this having “significant economic harm” from you not using their free app is if 1) they eventually plan to charge a fee to use the app or 2) they profit from data their app collects about you (third party data sales, for example).
Not something I’m interested in either way, so they’ve lost a potential customer.
Same.
Looking at the brands they already own, it’s not hard to picture a future where they’ll own a brand I want to buy.
Although, I’m really interested (and haven’t done reading up on hOn yet) - just what level of automation are people looking for on their appliances? I used smart plugs with current measurements, so I can easily get HA to just tell me when my washing machine or dishwasher are finished.
What else are people doing with hOn in HA?
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Im expecting that HA provides a better experience because it might be hitting their services more than their own app, and they haven’t costed the resources for hosting their service to include those extra requests coming from HA?
Possibly, but we’re talking about appliances here. I know for a fact that my HVAC controller polls their cloud service just as much as my HA does (using a similarly-developed plugin to what we’re talking about here).
Of course, that could mean it’s doubling the number of times they’re being hit, but I somehow doubt there’s millions of customers doing that - the forks and stars on the repos are only in the hundreds.
I’m guessing it’s what others here have already said - loss of usage data that they’ve been able to sell.
Yeah, that does seem like the case
I just used their Feedback form to tell them what a shitty practice that is and that I will never use their products again.
Special shout-out to LiftMaster/Chamberlain who did the same rug-pull on their customers last year.
Never trust free cloud services attached to a paid product.
You know what that means, soldiers. Clone, clone, clone the repo, far and wide, online and offline. Fuck 'em. Give them the PirateBay whackamole treatment.
eh, another one for the blacklist… it’s getting difficult.
There’s clearly a lot of negative towards the company, which I agree with, but I’m not reading enough positive support for the dev…
It must be a bit daunting being on the frontline going through this
I’d guess that anyone using the plugin could help them feel supported in these situations by contributing on their “Buy me a coffee” link…
Genuine link as verified from https://github.com/Andre0512/hon#support
When will companies learn that you don’t fuck with developers.
Some enterprising engineer should start selling replacement control boards for these units. Like, drop-in, solder-on clones with 100% open source control firmware, linked with an ESP32. Zigbee/Zwave/Wifi+MQTT. I don’t mind, I’ll buy their unit and throw out their shitty controller. They’re not gonna DRM the compressor, are they?
Hell, if someone does that I’d consider opening a shop where I flip “refurbished” units with the open source board in em.
It’s what was done for Panasonic ACs: https://www.espthings.io/index.php/2023/09/02/esphome-panasonic-climate-interface/
I’m sure somebody will take a really close look at Haier ACs now.
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Never considered buying Haier anyway, but i am looking specifically for appliances that have HAOS support. So them pulling this shit will put them on my black list for ever. I get why Mazda did it, but the car doesn’t need the app to be useful, i can just ignore that part. But this is an home appliance that looses a big part of it’s usefulness…
Not that it likely matters much but I sent them an email saying I would never purchase one of their products based on this anti-consumerism.
I’m lazy, can you share your email so I can send a copy?
