There’s good news and bad news for folks using Logitech’s Harmony Link universal remote control devices. The bad news is that even after receiving a lot of bad press for a decision to shut down a cloud service that lets the device, Logitech plans to go ahead and do that… which means anyone still holding onto a Harmony Link won’t be able to use it after March 16th, 2018.
The good news is that anyone who owns one should be able to get a free upgrade to the newer Harmony Hub from Logitech.
The Logitech Harmony Link was sold between 2011 and 2015, and it’s a device that lets you control your TV and set-top-boxes including cable boxes and DVD players from your phone or tablet.
When the company first announced that it was essentially taking steps that would disable the Harmony Link, Logitech told users that if their products were under warranty they could get a free Harmony Hub. If their Link was out of warranty, then they qualified for a 35-percent discount on a Hub.
Now Logitech is responding to criticism by offering free upgrades for everyone… and if you did take advantage of the 35-percent off deal, Logitech promises to refund you the rest of the purchase price.
Logitech says that the company “made the business decision to end the support and services of the Harmony Link when the encryption certificate expires in the spring of 2018 – we would be acting irresponsibly by continuing the service knowing its potential/future vulnerability,” but you’d think a simpler solution would be to just renew the certificate and/or roll out a software update that would allow you to use the device via a local connection without needing to contact a remote server.
Anyway, it’s good to see the company reacting to criticism. But we probably wouldn’t be talking about this at all if Logitech had done things a little differently in the first place.
Logitech says it’s reaching out to affected customers, but if you haven’t heard anything yet you can try contacting Logitech via email.
via Gizmodo
The termination of service for devices that depend on a vendor’s servers will eventually need to be addressed legally. Right now I believe it is up to the vendors to decide (with help from customer backlash). I think clear rules need to be made. How long will a vendor have to support a product after the product is no longer for sale? What level of support? What penalties are there for companies that fail to meet these rules?
What happens when a company goes out of business? We don’t want small companies selling devices then immediately “going out of business” to get out of supporting a product, then creating a new company a few months later. This might make the products more expensive, but it would be nice to know how long to expect your device will work BEFORE you buy it. Just my $0.02
To be honest I think a good amount of the backlash was due to people mistaking this being about their Harmony Hubs.