Lockitron Sells Over 9000 Units in First Week, Opens Up Orders for Batch 2 | Hacker News Reader

Lockitron Sells Over 9000 Units in First Week, Opens Up Orders for Batch 2

blog.lockitron.com

42 pointspaulgerhardt12 comments

Buyer beware. The original Lockitrons were OEMed from a Chinese company (they only really built the software) and damaged quite a few locks to the point keys no longer worked.

Far from an isolated case unfortunately. I replaced at least 4 of them myself.

Very early in our history - before we launched publicly last year - we made a number of custom installations in the Bay Area where we ourselves hacked together solutions using off-the-shelf components. In some cases the quality of the locks we used didn’t live up to the standards we expected - in all cases where our early customers notified us, we repaired and replaced the early Lockitrons for free, without question with upgraded models or traditional replacement locks. Sorry that you had a poor experience, we are always here to help if you reach out to us.

We are still happy to replace any failed Lockitron components. We learned that using another supplier's components meant that we were beholden to their quality and ultimately that responsibility falls on our shoulders. During our pre-launch period we learnt that there are no magic shortcuts and no silver bullets to make all styles of locks compatible with Lockitron.

For the new Lockitron's mechanical design we worked with a firm with experience in creating millions of high quality products for Fortune 500 companies. We are leveraging their sourcing capabilities to ensure we deliver a high quality product in the same way that their current products end up in the homes of millions of consumers while living up to the expectations that they perform through years of wear and tear.

Call me old fashion, but I'll save $150 and leave a key under the mat.

Why is this modded down?

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Probably because it adds nothing to the discussion. Your comment would probably be modded down too as a result.

I'd like to think this guy's question wouldn't be actively modded down for not adding to the discussion. Yes, people are supposed to read the rules and such, but I don't find anything wrong about legitimately asking the community for clarifications about standards and expectations, especially when things are border-line. Indeed, the case of the original commenter seems a little border-line to me - while his point is valid, he comes across as needlessly flippant, and is probably being down-modded more for perceived attitude than actual lack of content. That's a subtle point, and it wouldn't happen on every forum.

That said, I recognize that such meta discussions can be a little derailing, and I don't want to derail this discussion any further - so I'll just leave it at "let's not be a place that discourages new people from asking questions".

Google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

Tumblr is currently undergoing maintenance, so this is an unfortunate time to reach the frontpage of HN.

(The full post has been reprinted here, though: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4620163.)

Site currently unavailable

From the Bing cache[1], this is a very short post with some information about the 2nd batch available probably in May:

--8<---

Production Updates

Thanks to all of our backers for pushing Lockitron beyond $1 million in reservations! We’ve been working hard to get back to everyone and we thank you for your patience – we’re bringing in some help so we may answer your questions more quickly.

As we noted yesterday, we have gone far past the original 1,000 Lockitrons we intended to make in the first run. We have been very careful to hold off from selling Lockitron in bulk or wholesale quantity to ensure that individual backers have a chance to get in.

We’ve been in touch with our manufacturing partner, and to ensure that we satisfy all the backers who have supported us already in a timely fashion, we are going to restrict the first batch of Lockitrons to 9,000 units. We’re planning to start shipping batch 1 in March. Once batch 1 fills up, we will open up pre-orders for batch 2. (Edit: batch 1 is now full. We have just opened pre-orders for batch 2.)

It will take us a few days to get a more accurate quote for the new production times, however we don’t anticipate batch 2 to begin shipping before May.

In the coming weeks we will be posting new pictures and videos of the Lockitron mechanism in action. We’ve had a lot of questions about compatibility - of course, if you discover that your door is unfortunately incompatible with Lockitron you can cancel your reservation.

--8<---

[1] http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=blog.lockitron.com%2fpost%2...

OVER NINE THOUSAND!!!

http://i.imgur.com/gVbiw.jpg

Reply on news.ycombinator.com