Open letter to Eye-Fi | Hacker News Reader

Open letter to Eye-Fi

48 pointsbb10116 comments

Hello.

I have been a happy Eye-Fi X2 Pro user for a couple of years now, in fact I have two of your cards and on the whole they’ve worked well.

Receiving your email about removing support for X2 cards this morning has made me furious. That your company would have the gall to sell cards that would be obsolete within a few years is preposterous. Weasel words about “encryption technologies changing” etc are meaningless, as SSL has not changed fundamentally over this time and all the Wifi protocols are still supported by today’s routers.

I suspect you are cutting costs by not having to maintain older systems to support the older cards, which would be fine if your service was software only. By selling hardware, your company has an obligation to your customers to make sure the cards work without your involvement beyond your support period, or to keep supporting the cards. If you were offering an 80% discount on upgraded cards then I could stomach the transition, but a 20% discount is miserly and clearly designed to grow your bottom line.

I would have updated to the Mobi cards in time anyway, but out of principle I will avoid Eye-Fi products in the future and advise my photographing friends to do the same.

Shame on your company.

Background: Eye-Fi have sent all their customers an email to inform them that all of their cards older than their latest Mobi series will be made obsolete beyond September 16. Services required for the cards to function properly will be turned off by the company, with no support offered. Their X2 cards (amongst the affected) were offered for sale as late as March 2015.

http://x2migration.eyefi.com/hc/en-us/articles/216741158

I have one of these. I'm guessing Ricoh is to blame for this, they recently bought eye-fi[1].

I use my Eye-Fi x2 pro card with my trusty old Pentax DSLR. Pentax is owned by Ricoh, meaning I was actually stabbed in the back by my own camera brand :/

[1] http://www.digitaltrends.com/photography/ricoh-eyefi-acquisi...

I'm pretty annoyed too. It's outrageous - and they way they wrote the letter too. The attitude was along the lines of "We've decided your investment in EyeFi products is void. The products will stop working on the 16th September. Bye."

If they can think I'll buy another EyeFi (or for that matter Ricoh) product again - wow. I did recommend it to a few friends, I'm going to have to apologise to them now.

The last time I recall something like this happening was when Logitech bought Squeezebox and rendered that ecosystem dead. At least they kept mysqueezebox.com alive for all the legacy customers, but only after the shit storm it created as people had invested thousands in the platform.

Goodbye to the Eye Fi company for good. When my Sandisk EyeFI stops working, I will find a solution from another company. They sold hardware. Now, they are trying to force customers into a costly subscription model. I will never be one of their customers. BTW, 20% rebate for becoming one of their new milking cows is ridiculous. They may see a declining market because wifi is getting built into gadgets, but the message they sent to me yesterday is like shooting themselves in the foot, and killing their own market by alienating possible future customers.

Hallgeir Lied

Looks like a class action lawsuit might happen pretty soon. I'd join for sure!

https://www.change.org/p/sales-eyefi-com-keep-eye-fi-x2-wifi...

The Mobi line doesn't even offer feature parity... AND the Mobi Pro actually uses the same hardware as the X2.

So, perhaps someone can find a way to hack the X2 and flash the Mobi firmware onto it?

Or, the outsource python X2 private server needs to be updated and enhanced :)

Seems like they aren't even going to be helpful....

From: XXXX (X2 Migration) <support@x2migration.zendesk.com> Date: Fri, Jul 1, 2016 at 2:32 PM Subject: Re: X2 and 3rd party support To: Ralatalo <ralatalo@gmail.com>

##- Please type your reply above this line -##

We have added the following information to your support ticket #3644)

If you have additional comments, please reply to this email.

XXXX

XXXX (X2 Migration)

Jul 1, 11:32 PDT Hello Robert,

Thank you for for your email.

I apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused you.

There are no plans to provide any third party developers anything.

We will not be releasing a final version of software that is not already available, this means you will not be able to upload to a computer using your Eyefi card or Eyefi Center.

We currently have no plans to make our software open source for the Eyefi cards.

We cannot make any pledge that you've requested.

Again, I do apologize for the inconvenience. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Thank you, Jonathon Eyefi Customer Care

Ralatalo

Ralatalo

Jul 1, 11:25 PDT

Questions for your FAQ: 1) Will you provide any documentation required to allow 3rd party developers to provide support for the products you are obsoleting? 2) Will you release a final version of software which allows your 'obsolete' cards to function independent of your network services, such as just a allows eyefi cards to upload to the computer running the service? 3) Will you open source your software that you are no longer offering which supports the cards you are obsoleting? 4) Will you maintain a list of other software which will allow continued use of the cards you're abandoning? 5) will you at least pledge to not threaten, harass or obstruct others for attempting to work with and use the perfectly good hardware which you are purposely invalidating?

I fully support your letter and hope massive outrage will force Eye-Fi to give a sustansial discount on a new device. 20% is a bit of and insult.

Laurent Egli Professional Photographer President of the USPP Swiss Professional Photographers Association

Everyday I read these type of messages I get more worried about buying stuff that needs to 'phone-home' or connect to some remote service to function.

And the sad thing is that this is becoming more and more common.

To all who are unsatisfied about eye-fi

please google eyefi (or whatever search engine you use), find the first negative link you find that is not on the eye-fi site and click it, this should (slowly) move the negative information to the top results!

and help to distribute the news to more people

I do not pay for subscription models. I am happy to buy a standalone product every few years, but not subscriptions which can go badly wrong if you have dodgy connections

I vaguely remember contemplating if I should get one. Where they not supposed to "just sync via Wifi"?

I would have thought so too. It appears all card settings - such as destinations for your photos - need to made through their Eye-Fi Center software and to do so requires a functioning user account.

From their FAQ: "Will I still be able to create an Eye-Fi Center account after September 16th?"

"No, you will not be able to create an Eye-Fi Center account or log in to an existing Eye-Fi Center account."

Looks like the old Linux Eye-Fi server hack may need to be dusted off.

https://github.com/dgrant/eyefiserver2/releases

They are trying to move to a subscription model, so they can continuously screw their customers.

I am an X2 user.

Is there grounds here for a class-action lawsuit?

I doubt it, as their right to terminate the service is most probably included in the fine print next to the "I agree" button we click when we install their software.

Legalities aside, it's a terrible way to run a company but a great way to alienate all your oldest customers (who were probably going to upgrade at some point anyway).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com