I've stopped trusting reviews altogether. They're to easily gamed - dishonest competition and clients posts fakes. Dishonest businesses dispute all negative reviews(and most disappointed customers don't have the time to fight it).

Reviews just don't work when the user pool goes below a certain "average honesty level"

I'm on holiday at the moment so reopened the app to transfer photos from my camera directly to my phone again after a while of not using it (at home I just use the microsd card readers in my computers). Anyway, I discovered Canon now has a mandatory account requirement. There wasn't even an account option when I bought the camera. Luckily the old apk from APK mirror still works on my phone.

Tricking the customer into an exploitative subscription is more profitable than earning loyalty by providing good value.

A $100 scale isn't really that captive, especially if continuing to use it costs that much per year. There's no shortage of scales for tracking weight loss and the Apple health integration in my Withings is pretty useless from experience.

At first I was think of the people who signed an agreement for their solar roof (which was entangled with solar credits, etc)

nowadays selling your tesla involves the new owner identifying themselves and uploading their identity documents to tesla.

I agree, that's a great use for AI.

As for the timing... If you BOUGHT the product before October 13th and simply didn't activate an account yet - then it might still be worthy of a complaint. I'm not saying they are actively false advertising, I haven't checked every one of their store fronts after all. But it is a valid path for someone who did get swindled.

> Honestly one of my new favourite uses for AI. Little things I wouldn't ordinarily complain about I can now engage the regulatory state on.

And public service is getting swamped with petty little BS in return. Even if the substance has merits (and most doesn't, because AI systems are yes-men that don't push back like an actually trained lawyer would), they have to spend sooooo much time reading and digesting all the AI written fluff plus checking if stuff like cited court cases actually exists.

If you bought from a big-box retailer and you’re considering ditching ecobee because of this, you should try to return them. Even if you’re outside the return policy, if you’re pleasant to the customer service staff they might be able to help you.

Amazon reviews are essentially meaningless at this point, the important un-fakeable stat is return rates. Brands care, and retailers track it and will drop products with high return rates.

this isn't Apple though?