OctoPrint's anonymous usage stats were manipulated | Hacker News Reader

OctoPrint's anonymous usage stats were manipulated

octoprint.org

43 pointsh2odragon11 comments

I distrust OctoEverywhere after they gave me the runaround for three months of trying to cancel my paid account. They kept charging me, telling me they were sending me a refund, but never did. It didn't stop until I replaced the credit card. They were always polite and apologetic ... and then did nothing.

This isn't evidence that they messed with usage stats, just that from me they get a little less benefit of the doubt.

Chargeback! Dispute the charges with your credit card issuer; the merchant will stop charging you real quick.

What does that have to do with OctoPrint?

Edit: Whoops. I'm stupid. Nevermind.

You did not read the article?

Did you read the article? The stats appear to have been manipulated to increase popularity of that plugin.

The way I understood it is the project used their plug-in to report fake octoprint instances. This was done in order to inflate their installs by claiming to be installed on these fake instances with the goal being to game the leaderboard.

Out of curiosity, what exactly does OctoEverywhere do? It seems to advertise itself as a remote access solution for OctoPrint, but I assume there must be more to it than that -- I can't quite wrap my head around having a proprietary remote access tool that's exclusive to a single application, rather than using something standard and general-purpose like a VPN.

Hey! I’m the developer behind OctoEverywhere! I’m sorry about your refund experience. I’m a one man shop for the whole website, so sometimes I fall behind on support tickets. Usually when I do respond I can do the refund right away, so I’m not sure what happened in your case. If you would like to follow up about it, I’m happy to look into it, just open a support ticket or DM me on Discord.

Sorry, I forgot the link to the support page: https://octoeverywhere.com/support

Have you an explanation for the faked stats?

Yes, I did get the impression of incompetence rather than cheating so I didn't chargeback. There was no cancellation button at the time. That made me email you a request, which got fumbled repeatedly.

I left because OctoPrint is redundant with Bambu Studio/Handy. Your service was working fine. But for me discovering that a subscription service doesn't have an automated cancellation process is enough for me to leave.

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