Reasons why not to rely on a cloud service for running your smart home #23487834208: yesterday Wink announced a new subscription service. This subscription takes effect in just 7 days and will be required in order to “access your Wink devices from the app, with voice control or through the API, and [operate] your automations.” Or….you know, the entire point of a smart home hub. So if you don’t pay your device turns into a useless paperweight.

I’m not going to pull out the pitchfork too much to go after Wink for this. I totally understand they need to make money and I think they’re trying to keep the lights on so they don’t have to completely fold. But that doesn’t justify giving folks only 7 days notice of such a significant change. They should have grandfathered existing users in for a month of free service before requiring payment. And to all the armchair attorneys out there talking about claims of criminal fraud or class action lawsuits, all I’ll say is good luck going after a company that’s for all intents and purposes bankrupt.

Sometimes you just can’t avoid the cloud and I totally get that. But for all those Wink users out there who are thinking of jumping over to SmartThings you should think hard on that one whether you want to jump into bed with another cloud provider that could do the same thing a year or two from now. Not saying that Samsung will but they could and as this Wink experience shows, there’s pretty much not a thing you can do about it.