Wink Slaps Its Smart Home Customers With Pay Up Or Get Lost Subscription Ultimatum
This entry was posted on May 7, 2020.
"Wink has taken many steps in an effort to keep your Hub’s blue light on, however, long term costs and recent economic events have caused additional strain on our business. Unlike companies that sell user data to offset costs associated with offering free services, we do not. Data privacy is one of Wink’s core values, and we believe that user data should never be sold for marketing or any purpose," Wink stated in a blog post.
"Should you choose not to sign up for a subscription you will no longer be able to access your Wink devices from the app, with voice control or through the API, and your automations will be disabled on May 13. Your device connections, settings and automations can be reactivated if you decide to subscribe at a later date," Wink said.
Wink sells a variety of smart products, including hubs that work with third-party smart devices. The company says it has grown to support more than 4 million connected gadgets since 2014, and has relied solely on hardware sales to pay the bills, including recurring cloud costs, development, and customer support.
Apparently hardware sales have not been sufficient. Pile on the Coronavirus pandemic and Wink finds itself in a financial pickle. It's not clear what other alternatives it may have considered, only that the one it's running with amounts to sour grapes for its customers.
