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Comment by walid | Hacker News Reader

I think it should be illegal. Frame it in terms of a burger. If McDonald's says "since you say our food is bad we're messing with your burger after you bought it and we'll give you your money back if you return it" that would be illegal and probably, not sure though, a form of discrimination.

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McDonalds is well within their rights to deny service to a customer (assuming it's not discrimination).

In fact I've seen them (and other restaurants) do this first hand.

A customer is being abusive, or giving the poor checkout person a hard time - if they get abusive or threatening, the manager will often intercede and tell them to leave the store.

Likewise, I used to work in a electronics store - if a customer is a being a jerk, you're well within rights to ask them to leave (politely). Obviously it's the nuclear option - but there's definitely precedent for it.

Fine to deny future service, denying past service is the problem here.

"Denying service" in those cases is not conducting any further sales/etc with them.

It's not remotely disabling things they've previously bought from you.

That's quite a different kettle of fish.

To be clear, the Garadget was _not_ remotely disabled (or bricked).

Here's a direct quote from the manufacturer to the customer:

"At this time your only option is to return Garadget to Amazon for refund. Your unit ID 210036...will be denied server connection."

How is that not being bricked?

You probably can't go to their house and pour water in their electronics and tell them they'll get a full refund if they ship it back to you.

He didn't mess with the customer's garage door opener, so it's not like messing with a customer's burger. It's more like cutting the customer off from the unlimited coffee refills when they get 86'd from the restaurant.

(But the coffee cup is useless without coffee!)

However, linking the action to a bad Amazon review and publicizing the device ID both demonstrate very poor impulse control.

"(But the coffee cup is useless without coffee!)"

Here, I disagree (or agree with you, depending on whether your italics indicate e-sarcasm).

You could fill it with water or tea or make your own coffee or even sell it to somebody else at nearly full value! (I'm sure the restaurant support would be happy to welcome a new customer back to the fountain of coffee).

You get my analogy.

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