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Comment by lolinder | Hacker News Reader

I can't even imagine spending $1700 on a bassinet in the first place. As the article notes, this thing gets used for ~5 months (6 if you're really pushing it) at which point the kid is done. If you're going to have another kid then you put it into storage for a few years before it gets a second round of 5 months of use (assuming the company you bought your smart bassinet from doesn't brick it in the interim).

At its simplest, it's a tiny bed on wheels and you can pick one up for free from a local parent. If you want to get really fancy you can get a self-rocking bassinet for <$400.

Who are these people who are willing to spend $1700 on a bassinet but then get outraged when the clearly-exploitative company decides to exploit them for another $100?

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The aftermarket for these things means that the cost winds up being split between multiple parties in a lot of cases.

Anecdotally, most parents within my circle bought their Snoo used and sold it after use. I bought an unopened snoo from facebook marketplace for $X and sold it after 6 months for $X-200.

I was a little annoyed that Happiest Baby is meddling with the resale value (because I was expecting to be able to sell it on after a few months of use)

IMO even though the product is overpriced, I'd have happily paid 5k for the extra sleep I believe it gave me.

It would be an interesting case study on pricing and transaction costs to look at how much the resale value changes.

Does it go down by the $100 people will have to pay in subscriptions? will it go down by more than that because people dont want to bother with the subscription as an extra cost?

Used it for both of my kids. Both times we bought a used one for $800 and sold for the same price after it was no longer needed.

I question even using it past 2 months. That's around when babies begin to learn to roll over. Swaddling past 2 months has resulted in deaths. I know that you Velcro the baby down with the Snoo, but I wouldn't feel comfortable putting off that milestone for long. As babies learn to roll, they strengthen their neck muscles. This allows them to safely sleep on their stomachs eventually.

My wife's employer got us a rental for all of our kids. We had twins and it was amazing for them but around 3-4 months they were out of it and we returned it early. With our singleton, it didn't work at all. Kid hated it from day 1. We returned it after 3 weeks so that it wasn't eating up space in our bedroom.

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