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Petnet's Smart Pet Feeder Goes Offline For a Week, Can't Answer Customers At All (arstechnica.com) 102

Posted by BeauHD from the app-based-services dept.
The app-driven, cloud-connected "smart" pet feeder from Petnet recently suffered an outage that knocked units offline for a week, leaving pets hungry and customers angry. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from Ars Technica: Petnet began posting messages on Twitter on February 14 advising customers that some of its SmartFeeders "will appear offline," although they still would nominally work to dispense food. Of course, when something doesn't work, most people will try to turn it off and back on again, as that's the first-line repair for basically everything with a power switch. That, alas, was not the solution here, and Petnet explicitly advised against turning feeders off or on, adding, "We will continue to provide updates on this matter." The next update to the company's Twitter feed came four days later, on February 18, when it said it was working with a third-party service provider and would "release more information as we learn more." Finally on February 21, a full week after users began to notice something was amiss, Petnet said it had resolved the problem and would be pushing a reset and an update to affected customers.

Users were distinctly unhappy, not only with the outage but also with the company's lack of response and a clear lack of avenues for contacting them. "Does that same third party pick up your phones, answer your emails, pay your lease (property address is available for rent) and support your customers?" one customer tweeted on February 18. Another, on February 21, said, "Why were your emails not delivering? Why isnt anyone answering the phone or returning calls? Your website still claims support Mon-Sat by phone email and twitter. You've been silent for a week." Customers aren't the only ones unable to reach the company. Ars' request for comment sent to the press contact Petnet lists on its company website bounced back with an error indicating the email address does not exist.
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Petnet's Smart Pet Feeder Goes Offline For a Week, Can't Answer Customers At All More

Petnet's Smart Pet Feeder Goes Offline For a Week, Can't Answer Customers At All

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  • You dont need an app for that (Score:5, Insightful)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Monday February 24, 2020 @08:05PM (#59763072)

    If you need an app and special contraption to feed your pets then something is wrong with you.

    • Amen brother. Fucking world is turning into Wall-E....

    • Fucking millennials cant even take care of their damn pet without using the cloud.

      It would be bad enough to have a remote device you direct connect to, but dependency on a server farm to dispense food is absurd. Dogs are the only pets prone to over eating and not all dogs consume everything in their bowls. Some dogs can eat and leave food for later.

      Cats? Shit you can go on vacation for a week or more without even a sitter. For up to 2 cats just rip open a bag of food, and leave the toilet seats up. Your lit

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Holi ( 250190 )
        That is a good way to give your cats a bladder infection. Not cleaning their litter regularly stresses cats out and can cause them serious health issues.
      • There is the real risk of a pet starving to death while it suffers and tries to eat anything just to stay alive. Sue Petnet? Ha! The ambulance chaser gets most of the windfall, and you get a $5 coupon for your next Petsmart purchase.

    • The irony is to thick to pass up. So, the owner isn't there for their dog, so the owner passes off responsibility of feeding the pet, to a third party. Then the third party passes off the responsibility to yet another third party.

      I'm just picturing this from the standpoint of the dog, who's like, "Yo, where's my food?" Then the owner points to someone else. Then that person points to someone else, etc... dog walks to the neighbor's house for cat food.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hawk ( 1151 )

      Cats can develop a pattern of rapidly gorging themselves and promptly regurgitating--even with people around full time.

      We got a multi-level Federicos to deal with this when two cats had the problem. They have to knock food from one level to the next, until it falls out the bottom. The primary purpose is to slow down the feeding speed, but it also engages the cat (which is quite important for some breeds).

      The siamese mix (which is a breed that needs to be kept engaged) loved it, and would happily battle h

    • Automated or otherwise mechanized pet feeders aren't particularly new; you can find analog models dating back to 1939 at least. But the 21st century being what it is, of course there are now app-driven, cloud-connected "smart" feeders that you control from your phone. And when some mysterious outage takes out that system for a full week, you and your furry friend may end up deeply annoyed. The Petnet smartfeeder is one such system, and it did indeed recently suffer one such outage, as spotted by TechCrunch
    • We are sorry your pet died, allow us to send you a replaceable part but year i whole-heartedly agree . Maybe the kind of people who should be sterilized so they don't have to buy a smart-feeder to dispense crack to their babies and certainly no license to pet.
      why dafuk can every fuk with enough money get a pet (or some human spawn) without a license but not drive a moped that runs more than 10mph ?
      never mind ... Einstein was still right : its boundless
      no time to feed your pet, i feel like someone need

  • IOST (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Brett Buck ( 811747 ) on Monday February 24, 2020 @08:06PM (#59763078)

    Internet of Stupid Things. They'e made 7-day pet feeders for 40-50 years before there was an internet, why in holy hell do you need a cat feeder that starves the cat when the internet goes down?

    • Re:IOST (Score:5, Insightful)

      by green1 ( 322787 ) on Monday February 24, 2020 @08:14PM (#59763112)

      Because if I sell you a non-connected device, I only get paid once. If I sell you a connected one, you pay me, advertisers pay, analytics companies pay me. And if that's not all enough, whenever I want I can just brick the old one to force you to buy a new one all over again. What's not to like?

      • Re:IOST (Score:5, Funny)

        by Brett Buck ( 811747 ) on Monday February 24, 2020 @08:19PM (#59763134)

        Stop the pet overpopulation problem! Spay, Neuter, or feed your cat or dog with Petnet.

        • Re:IOST (Score:4, Insightful)

          by mattyj ( 18900 ) on Monday February 24, 2020 @08:21PM (#59763142)

          Stop the pet overpopulation problem! Spay, Neuter, or feed your cat or dog with Petnet.

          As a pet owner, I'm disgusted by this comment.

          As a fan of a well time punchline, I have to give this slow clap. Bravo, sir.

          • PETA member I see.

          • "As a pet owner, I'm disgusted by this comment."

            If you find that joke offensive I would suggest you leave the internet to the adults and disconnect immediately, there's some seriously unfunny stuff out there especially inolving animals. I've been around pets since I could walk well over 50 years, my late mum used to take in rescue dogs animals that had had horrendous mental and physical abuse. She also had a wicked sense of humour and she needed it to be able to keep going and ignore the abuse the animals h

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by Calydor ( 739835 )

              Did you ... read the rest of his comment? The one where he admitted it was a good joke?

              Many good jokes are all about causing a moment of offense, disgust or the like. A joke that elicits no emotional response is a bad, uninspired joke.

      • And with a non-connected device none of that happens. Plus the feeder would still work even if the company goes out of business. Which makes me wonder why people keep falling for this crap. I understand why companies like this, but I don't understand why consumers still think it's a great idea.

        I guess P. T. Barnum, Michael McDonald, or who ever said it was correct: "Don't worry about that, there's a sucker born every minute."

        • Re:IOST (Score:5, Insightful)

          by green1 ( 322787 ) on Monday February 24, 2020 @08:27PM (#59763172)

          The sales pitch is pretty simple for something like this. Not only is your pet fed automatically, you can check from anywhere to be sure it's happened. Who needs someone to look after your cat when you're gone for the weekend if you can monitor everything over the internet?

          What people don't realize is that all of this IOT stuff could have been made to work just as well without a proprietary cloud dependency, mostly because no big company is marketing such a thing.

          People wouldn't tolerate this stuff if there was full disclosure up front, and obvious alternatives, but in the real world neither of these is the case. Hopefully with enough of these stories hitting the media people will start to wake up, but considering how many times we've seen it so far, and how little impact it's had on these companies, I'm not holding my breath.

          • You can check from anywhere that it happened. And you can also check from anywhere that it didn't happen! That's twice the advertised functionality!

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Hizonner ( 38491 )

            You can check from anywhere to be sure the machine THINKS it happened.

            These scumbags sure aren't providing anything that would really VERIFY that it happened.

        • Do we know yet what caused it? Was it the usual expiry of a certificate?

      • This sadly, is the only correct answer. :(

      • Why does your cat need a feeding schedule? Every cat I have owned has had no problem with 2 weeks worth of food being dispensed into a 6 cup sized storage container. They eat a little and leave the rest. Before we had dogs, vacations consisted of cutting open a bag of cat food, making sure there was a large yet clean litter box, and leaving toilet seats up in case they needed more water.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Holi ( 250190 )
          I wish my cats were like that. I have one cat that will eat all the available food until she gets sick.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

        And that's exactly why Internet of Stupid Things shouldn't exist. There's no reliability in being dependent on an external server and the availability of the internet.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mattyj ( 18900 )

      Even worse, this doesn't seem like a 'internet down' problem, it seems like a 'shoddy fly-by-night company' problem.

    • You need an IoT cat feeder because you live in a proverbial bubble and don't know what to do with your money. These technologies and products are so fragile, that even people unfamiliar with technology can tell right away.

      • These products are so fragile because companies making them get away with them being fragile. Why should I invest more time and energy into designing the product if the crap some high school dropout MacGyvered together in a weekend is selling just as well?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by rossdee ( 243626 )

      Pet feeders have been around for hundreds of years. They're called neighbours.
      They also walk the animals.

  • Somethings are not meant for the cloud... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ... that includes feeding your pets. Geez feed your pets yourselves!!!

    • Feed a man to his dogs, dogs eat once
      Teach a man to feed his dogs kibble, out of a bowl, like a normal person; and the dogs eat for the rest of their lives.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • If email wasn't working, perhaps their domain was hacked and DNS changed?

      Per WHOIS

      Registrant Organization: Charming Wedding

      Probably. Either that or the hosting company fucked up.
      I used to work at a hosting company, and believe me we fucked up all the time.

  • I feel like ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by mattyj ( 18900 ) on Monday February 24, 2020 @08:22PM (#59763152)

    We're slowly but surely easing into the WALL-E timeline.

    • We're slowly but surely easing into the WALL-E timeline.

      I wish. But we can't move the population into space, have warp drive, sentient robots, etc. We're moving into the Idiocracy timeline.

    • We're slowly but surely easing into the WALL-E timeline.

      The really sad part is that I feel that people would cling to their floaty chairs and ad-laden video chat screens rather than look in amazement at the fact that there's a pool.

  • Elvis has left the building (Score:5, Informative)

    by ISayWeOnlyToBePolite ( 721679 ) on Monday February 24, 2020 @08:47PM (#59763222)

    They stopped updating their social media in july 2019 https://twitter.com/Petnetio [twitter.com] https://www.instagram.com/petn... [instagram.com] their youtube account hasn't had any posts since december 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] their office space is posted at https://www.loopnet.com/Listin... [loopnet.com]
    Apart from the https://twitter.com/petnetiosu... [twitter.com] support channel tweets, there's very little to support they are still in business although https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/br... [sec.gov] doesn't list them as having filed for bankruptcy.

  • A cattle dog doesn't need such a machine (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Darkling-MHCN ( 222524 ) on Monday February 24, 2020 @09:58PM (#59763428)

    Farm dogs don't need such a thing. Whenever a mate needed to go away on for a few days, he would leave enough food out for the dog to last three or four days. The dog was smart enough to know that when he received this amount of food that he needed to ration himself. He'd never return to find the dog without food, the first thing that the dog would do when he'd arrive back from his trip was to run over and eat the remainder of the food. Farm dogs are smart animals.

    • I don't know why this was moderated as "Troll", but it rings true to me. The dog I love knows to go drink water when he sees that I'm preparing to take him out for a walk.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      Depends on what kind of dog. A hound would never ration his food, their primary instinct, evolved over a couple thousand years of surviving on leftovers, scraps and garbage, would snarf every bit that he could cram in, and as soon as he had crapped enough to make room eat some more. Feed a hound as much as they want and you'll kill them,

    • Ordinary dogs. cats and chickens don't need it either. I've fed mine that way for decades and because they don't have to compete for food they do not gorge themselves.

  • Sounds like they forgot to pay their hosting bill and are frantically moving things.

  • 1. Put food in your pet's bowl and allow them to eat it when they like - sufficient until you return to feed them again. 2. Use a bowl with a lid that opens on a timer. 3. Don't get a pet if you're away from it that much.

    It's not rocket science. It's also a lot cheaper and more reliable than entrusting the task to some fly by night i-device manufacturer and their overpriced feeder.

    Seriously, what the hell is wrong with people who buy into all this "smart" shit?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Holi ( 250190 )
      #3. Pets are social animals, especially dogs but even cats suffer stress when left alone. Leaving them alone for long stretches of time is cruel.

  • You let someone else control something in your house that has no real reason to control it in the way you want them to, because, hey, you bought it already, so why the fuck should I keep playing nice?

    Seriously, what did you expect?

    What's beyond me is that there are people who don't just have pet feeders like this but garage doors. Why the fuck would you hand the control to your home to a stranger who you barely know?

  • Nothing to see here people, business as usual. Move along.

  • Hopefully this will teach people that they don't need their appliances online.

    • Even if Petnet never had this outage, some piece of shit sick fuck might think it's funny to disable the feeder so Foo-Foo does not get her meals. If it's anything like I(di)oT cameras, these pet feeders are discoverable on line, and the security a joke. Maybe a little harder to hack than an I(di)oT camera, but i'm sure the software has more security holes than Swiss cheese.

      OTOH, if somebody is going to leave Foo-Foo in the house for a whole fucking WEEK, with nobody to check on her, then than tha

  • You probably don't have the appropriate lifestyle that is compatible with pet ownership. It probably also means you think of your pets a property and not companions.

    If you have to regularly leave your pet alone for days at a time, you should not have a pet. Get a goldfish, it's like a pet but without all the pesky responsibility.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hawk ( 1151 )

      that, and when you screw up and replaces, it, no-one notices that it's not Fishy, but Fishy XIV . . .

      hawk

  • Petnets' CEO is flying to a nice tropical island with shitloads of cash, while dogs and cats starve in front of the bricked, non functional pet feeders.

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