Vendor ledger
A device's tier describes the hardware. This describes the company behind it — because the most common way a good device goes bad is not wear, it is a decision made in an office after you have already paid. Only dated, sourced incidents are recorded here. Reputation is not evidence, and a vendor with a documented incident is never scored 0 no matter how good its current products are.
The scale
| 0 / 3 | No documented incident of a shipped device losing function after purchase. |
|---|---|
| 1 / 3 | One disputed or narrow incident, or a pattern alleged but not established. |
| 2 / 3 | At least one established incident of shipped devices losing function. |
| 3 / 3 | Repeated, established, cross-jurisdiction pattern of removing function from devices already sold. |
| _note_on_misrepresentation / 3 | Loss of function is the primary axis, but it is not the only one that matters to this catalog. A vendor caught misrepresenting whether its device operates locally has attacked the exact claim this site exists to check, and scores here on the same scale — a device that was never doing what the box said is not meaningfully different, to a reader, from one that stopped. |
Chamberlain Group (myQ, LiftMaster) — 3 / 3
Systematically closed a previously open ecosystem on hardware already installed in customers' garages: dropped HomeKit, then Google Assistant, then shut off third-party API access entirely.
| 2022 | Discontinued the official Apple HomeKit integration for myQ. B source |
|---|---|
| 2023 | Ended support for Google Assistant. B source |
| 2023-11 | Blocked all third-party API access to myQ, breaking working integrations on devices customers already owned. Home Assistant removed its myQ integration in the 2023.12 release. Chamberlain's stated reason was preventing 'unauthorized usage' of its ecosystem. B source |
What to do: Assume any myQ feature that depends on Chamberlain's servers can be withdrawn without notice, because it has been, three times. The openers themselves remain fine offline. If you want local control, plan on ratgdo from the start rather than hoping the app stays useful.
1 device from this vendor listed.
HP Inc. — 3 / 3
Repeatedly shipped firmware that disabled third-party cartridges on printers customers already owned, across multiple jurisdictions and more than a decade. Settled repeatedly without admitting wrongdoing.
| 2020-11 | A firmware update enabled Dynamic Security on some already-sold printer models, blocking non-HP cartridges. Customers were not notified the update would impede function and had no way to opt out. B source |
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| 2025-03 | Class action settled with court approval. No customer payout and no admission of wrongdoing; owners of 21 named models gained the option to decline Dynamic Security firmware, and to downgrade firmware on those models only. B source |
| 2018-2022 | Earlier Dynamic Security settlements: $1.5M in California (2018), AUD$50 per affected customer in Australia (2018), EUR10M in Italy (2020), $1.35M in Europe (2022). B source |
What to do: Assume any networked HP printer may lose third-party cartridge support via an update you cannot decline. Only models explicitly covered by the 2025 settlement have a documented opt-out.
Sonos — 3 / 3
Twice removed function from speakers already in customers' homes, five years apart, and in between split its own installed base into supported and legacy halves. Scored alongside Chamberlain rather than Ring because this is a repeated pattern across separate mechanisms — a deliberate bricking feature, an end-of-support split, and a software rewrite — not one recurring commercial decision.
| 2019-12 | The Trade Up programme's 'Recycle Mode' permanently deactivated working speakers in exchange for 30% off a new one: confirming it in the app started a 21-day countdown after which the unit was bricked with no way to recover it, and recyclers could not resell or reuse the hardware. Eligible units included the Connect, Connect:Amp, ZP80/90/100/120 and Play:5 (Gen 1). Opt-in rather than forced — which is the honest qualification — but it destroyed functioning hardware by design. Withdrawn in March 2020 after sustained criticism; the discount now validates a serial number instead, and units already set to recycle could not be reversed. B source |
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| 2020-01 | Announced that a set of 'legacy' products would stop receiving software updates and new features from May 2020. The units kept playing, so this is the weakest of the three on the loss-of-function axis — but it partitioned existing systems, because a legacy device sharing a household system constrained what the rest of that system could do. B source |
| 2024-05 | The 7 May app rewrite shipped without features that worked on already-sold speakers the day before: alarms and sleep timers, local music library search and management, playlist editing, SonosNet Wi-Fi settings, and much of the accessibility support blind users relied on. The old app could not be kept. The CEO apologised, put the fixes on a public Trello board, and estimated $20-30M to repair; annual revenue fell 4% and he left the company in January 2025. B source |
What to do: The speakers are well made and the hardware is not the problem — the control layer is, and Sonos owns it entirely. There is no local-only mode: setup requires a Sonos account, so every unit is bound to a company that has twice decided what your existing hardware would stop doing. Buy it for what it does today, not for what it will still do in ten years, and prefer a bar that speaks HDMI-ARC or optical if longevity matters more than multi-room.
eufy (Anker Innovations) — 2 / 3
Marketed cameras as local-storage-only, then was shown to upload identifiable thumbnail images to its cloud with cloud storage disabled, and to serve camera streams that could be opened in VLC without encryption or authentication. Anker denied, then admitted, then re-architected.
| 2022-11 | Security researcher Paul Moore showed a eufy Doorbell Dual uploading face thumbnails and user information to eufy's cloud while the device was configured for local storage only. Anker initially denied the behaviour, then conceded images were uploaded 'for notification purposes'. B source |
|---|---|
| 2022-12 | Camera streams were shown to be retrievable in VLC with no encryption and no authentication, contradicting eufy's marketing. Anker admitted the streams were not encrypted as claimed and committed to moving all cameras to WebRTC with AES/RSA encryption. B source |
| 2023 | Class action filed alleging eufy security cameras secretly uploaded user images and live footage to the cloud contrary to its local-storage marketing. B source |
What to do: Treat any eufy local-storage claim as unverified until confirmed by packet capture rather than by the vendor's own description. The hardware may be fine; the vendor's account of it has been wrong before on precisely this point.
1 device from this vendor listed.
Ring (Amazon) — 2 / 3
Moved features that shipped free onto already-sold doorbells and cameras behind the paid Ring Protect plan, and raised the plan price sharply in the same period.
| 2024-03 | From 29 March 2024, Home and Away modes — and the Live View customisation tied to them — required a Ring Protect subscription on video doorbells and cameras, for existing owners as well as new buyers. Ring Alarm owners who bought before that date were grandfathered; doorbell and camera owners were not. B source |
|---|---|
| 2024 | The entry Ring plan rose to $4.99/month or $49.99/year, reported as a 43% increase over the pre-March-2024 price. B source |
What to do: Assume any Ring feature that is free today may require a subscription later, on hardware you already own. The March 2024 change did not grandfather camera and doorbell owners.
Brother Industries — 1 / 3
Accused in 2025 of degrading third-party toner behaviour via firmware and of pulling older firmware from support portals. Brother denies it. The allegation is credible enough to record and not established enough to score higher.
| 2025-03 | Right-to-repair advocates alleged firmware updates degraded third-party toner function, including colour registration on colour models. Brother denies its updates block third-party consumables and attributes the reports to variation in third-party toner quality. Not independently established either way. B source |
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| 2025-03 | Brother's public denial, reported alongside the user complaints. B source |
What to do: Prefer Brother models with no network interface, where the dispute is structurally moot — the printer cannot fetch an update on its own. On networked Brother models, decline firmware updates unless you need a specific fix.
2 devices from this vendor listed.
Withings — 1 / 3
Community reports of features disappearing from already-owned devices and of in-app lockouts pending acceptance of new terms. Not corroborated by independent reporting at the time of writing; scored as alleged-but-not-established.
| 2025-11 | An r/withings open letter (357 upvotes, 150+ comments) collects owner reports of a BPM Connect losing sync capability and a ScanWatch losing SpO2/heart features, and of users locked out of already-purchased devices until new in-app data-sharing terms were accepted. A targeted search for independent reporting of a specific, dated removal found none — coverage in the same period describes features being ADDED by firmware update. The allegation is consistent and multi-user but rests on one community source. B source |
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What to do: Watch, do not yet condemn. If a dated, independently-reported removal surfaces, this becomes a 2. Recheck on the next refresh pass.
VIOFO — 0 / 3
No incident found. Operates no cloud service for its dashcams at all, sells radio-free and radio-equipped models side by side, and distributes firmware as SD-card files rather than over the air.
No incident on record. This means nothing was found, not that nothing happened.
What to do: Structurally low risk: with no cloud and no OTA channel, there is no mechanism by which a shipped VIOFO camera could be changed after purchase.
2 devices from this vendor listed.