A couple of years ago, Google got vilified for running an add on their smart speakers. Everyone fell over them for abusing something their customers payed good money for.
Now Homey is doing the same… using the alert system of our home to push adds for their products. Not just an EMail anymore but an alert! You know, the stuff that is supposed to warn us that something is wrong.
Is this a thing now? Adds yelled throughout the house? 'cause if so then I’m out of here. It’s by far the worst idea ever for this platform.
I use flows to point me to actionable issues in the house. Those flows then send me a message telling me to open the window or the door or switch on the waterpump in the cellar.
This message behaves exactly the same. Except instead of calling me to action, it’s an ad… To me, that’s an alert notification. I don’t really care about the correct idiom, I care about what actually happens and this is an invasive message. If it were sent by EMail we would call it SPAM and notify the privacy bureau. They would then impose a fine since SPAM isn’t allowed without explicit consent. I definitely didn’t give homey explicit consent to send me unsolicited bulk commercial messages.
I just remembered from a previous ‘not amused about spam’ post, it’s probably the “URL notifications” category.
I never enabled ir allowed it btw!!
A while ago there were only 3 or 4 categories…
iPhone users should be able to “unsubscribe” from these particular annoying kind of notifications as well imho
I totally agree with you, that it should be possible to unsubscribe such advertisement push notifications. But I don’t agree with the description you used for this. That’s the reason why I wrote “It was just a push notification.”.
Maybe you use this as “alert system”, but does it everyone? I guess not.
Have you ever heard when Apple Home(Kit) sends an alert push notification (critical notifications/warnings") because, for example, a smoke detector has been activated? That is an alarm message for me. And I would also like to see something like this for Homey so that you can clearly identify such alerts from normal push notifications.
But maybe you should submit a complaint because this type of advertising is not mentioned in the terms and conditions:
No, it should not be possible to unsubscribe. It should be an opt-IN system, not opt-OUT. You know, like Dutch law (the country this company is from) requires.
And no, I’m not going to jump through hoops to file a complaint. I’m going to set up a different system and drop Homey. This kind of nonsense is just unacceptable.
If any Athom employee is reading here… this is a thing. The spam notification does not, in any way differ from a regular notification. At least next time mark it as “add” or “promotion” or something so that it can be filtered.
OP is right, this is at least annoying. And to add insult to injury, to us, European owners of a Homey, the contents is not even applicable for a year or so. Just don’t…
Well, it’s about ways of running a bussiness I guess: they hope for lots of pre-orders = lots of cash in advance. You never know how many folks will pre-order;
F.e. 50.000 pre-orders * €200 = €10 mil to invest.
