Snoo ‘Smart’ Baby Bassinet Sees Key Features Paywalled, Loses Functionality If Bought Used
from the your-product-is-now-worse.-you're-welcome. dept
For many many years now we’ve noted how internet-connectivity (and greed) have changed the consumer equation sometimes for the worse, resulting in people no longer truly owning the things they buy. Expensive gadgets can become less useful (or bricked completely) in an instant due to an inconveniently timed merger, company closure, greed, or just rank executive incompetence.
Case in point: owners of the $1700 Snoo “smart” baby bassinet (a crib with speakers that can rock and play soothing sounds for your baby) weren’t keen to find out that over the summer the company paywalled many of the Snoo’s “premium features” behind a $20 monthly subscription fee tethered to the device’s smartphone app.
Customers who bought a Snoo from an “authorized” outlet before July 15, 2024, were able to get the premium features free for nine months. But if you bought the speaker used, your only option to get the device’s full array of features is to shell out an additional $20 each month — on top of the $600 to $1000 the devices sell for used.
Ars Technica notes that users are, needless to say, not enthused about the changes:
“Just saying. This is bullshit. The current owners and users of Snoo should have been grandfathered in and continue to have access to basic feature like motion lock (the one I use most) and future new accounts should get a clear notification that without paying $20/mo they’re just buying a $2,000 basket.
Time to review bomb their app.”
As a result, the company’s app has been receiving a beating on app stores, with users noting that not only are the changes terrible for customers, they weren’t communicated clearly. The Snoo parent company Happiest Baby Inc. is also taking a steady beating over at the Better Business Bureau.
Companies think they’re cleverly boosting revenues by paywalling features or penalizing used owners, but they’re just taking an axe to the foundations of previously popular brands, especially if they’re too greedy with monetization or don’t explain the changes with any coherence.
Of course it’s a problem that’s soaring among small and big companies alike; Amazon is also taking heat this week for removing a key feature of its Echo Show 8 — the ability to display digital photos — and replacing them with ads. “Smart” sous-vide machine maker Mellow has also been taking a beating the last month for suddenly making its device useless unless users downloaded an app and paid a monthly fee.
I suppose executives making these kinds of decisions think they’re cleverly monetizing existing sales in creative new ways, but they’re really just burning consumer trust to the ground. And it’s not clear how many stories like these you’ll have to see before execs figure out its a pointlessly destructive affair.
Filed Under: automation, baby bassinet, consumers, don't own what you buy, hardware, ownership, smart home, subscriptions
Companies: snoo
Comments on “Snoo ‘Smart’ Baby Bassinet Sees Key Features Paywalled, Loses Functionality If Bought Used”
Bold of you to suggest the C-suite brunchlord crowd has enough brain cells between them to muster up a thought.
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Way to attack children with anencephaly. 😩
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Careful. Most commenters here tend not to like it when people defend minorities.
Soon you will need an app for the Smart Water you buy and once you buy the water, there will be a sip membership fee for each sip of water. Don’t try and chug it though, they will call the police to arrest you for stealing.
Make sense. As long as second hand markets is not totally banned, companies loose a lot of money from not selling brand new models.
It’s not greed at all, it’s another capitalism innovation.
Re: I'm sure that's what they think
But in truth a lot of high end sales to new parents are made with the original purchaser expecting to be able to resell the item and get some of their money back out. If you kill the used market, you will also kill some of your new sales.
Fail-Upward Moron: “‘intangible assets?'”
Accountant: “right; things like customer trust, brand loyalty,–”
Fail-Upward Moron: “pssh. whatever!”
[Channeling the ghost of Johnnie Cochran]
Remember, folks:
“If it depends on an APP,
DON’T BUY THAT CRAP!”
Pretty soon you’re gonna have to download what should be called an ‘overlord app’, just to be able to download subscription apps like the one in the article. And yeah, it’ll cost you a monthly fee as well, which will be separate from, and not applicable to, any of the ‘lackey’ apps.
If “truth in naming” were a real law, it’d have to be called ‘GreedMaster’.
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I feel like this is the endgame of Elon Musk’s desire to transform the social media service he bought into an “everything app”.
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Let me just sign up right quick to have all my subs managed by a Nazi bar lmao.
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I’m having trouble determining whether the original poster in this thread was referring to the Google Play app as the “overlord”.
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Seeing as how I’ve never signed up for, let alone used, Google Play Store, I hadn’t realized just how far my intent could be broadened. Good one, AC.
(BTW, I’ve used F-droid exclusively since 3G was shut down and I had to replace my flip-phone with an actual smart phone.)
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Flip-phones still exist, and are being sold for use on modern networks. For example, I saw a ZTE Cymbal 2 for sale an hour ago, for $84 at a Canadian telco’s mall kiosk (it claims to support “4G LTE” and VoLTE). Another kiosk had a TCL model, for a little more money.
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Funny, I’m still using 3G on the phone that became fully unsupported in 2021, and Jelly Bean was definitely released on smartphones. Perhaps you meant 2G rather than 3G.
When I was buying a sous-vide heater for home, I was considering several options until my brother recommended I buy something that can be operated without an app in case the company eventually stops supporting it. Now I think about that advice when buying all my gadgets. I don’t want to rely on a company maintaining my ability to use their device.
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In this case, Karl probably should’ve quoted the text “a bassinet is used only for those first few months”. I doubt very many people without children would know that.
Which means that the company is pissing off its entire customer base, ostensibly to make an extra $60; but really to kill the second-hand market. Of course there’s gonna be a second-hand market when it’s an $1800 device needed for such a short time (and expensive time).
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Slightly wrong – it’s not their device, it’s yours. Phrasing like your sentence only strengthens the corporate position that you don’t own whatever ‘thing’ your hard-earned cash paid for, and that’s just not right.
Like others here, I believe the reason we’ve not yet seen a massive lawsuit over this subscription crap is because lawyers have priced themselves out of the market. Hmmm, just like a lot of other professions I can think of….
But the point is, someone, somewhere, at sometime, is going to have a straw-meets-camel’s-back moment, and hire a big-time lawyer and make a real stink over this nonsense. I can’t say when, but I’m dead sure that it will happen. It’s simple contract law – neither side gets to change the terms after the signatures hit the dotted line, and the money has changed hands.
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Buying such devices also strengthens this position. I suspect Chris phrased it that way deliberately, to highlight it (and the comment seems to agree with you that it’s not right).
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In theory the “First Sale” doctrine applies to the physical equipment. But any “Smart” services that come with it, not so much.
So, the device may be yours, but your ability to use it depends on their good will.
It’s one after the other.
I avoid stuff that have mandatory connectivity/account registration like the plague nowadays.
Future feature: Text alerts.
Yur baby iz dying. Swipe credit card to dial an ambulance.
Price goes up by $50 for each minute you wait!
You, my friend, are like an angle of 113 degrees.
Deliberately obtuse.
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And yet another commenter lacks reading comprehension, and thus fails to realize that AC may simply be stating Happiest Baby Inc.’s position in a sarcastic manner.
More and more companies hammer home the idea that you have to be really stupid to want a ‘smart’ device.
Echo Show 8
I feel sorry for anyone buying one of their picture frames, or smart TVs.