Smarthome auctions - beware, misleading ordering system
Written: Nov 14 '06 (Updated Nov 14 '06)
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***This actually contains two reviews: a negative review of Smarthome's auctions, which somehow overwrote a very positive review of Smarthome's INSTEON products. The positive review has been attached to the end of this, scroll about halfway down.
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I've installed a some of Smarthome's INSTEON lighting automation products, and I really like them. So, I thought I'd try out the Smarthome auctions to get better prices to automate some of the rest of my house. The auctions show starting bids $10 or more lower than the regular price on dimmers and switches, which looked very attractive.
But the auctions are for a quantity of one, and shipping is $10, so in the end this is no deal unless you are bundling the auction with some other stuff that you already wanted to buy. They do claim to allow you to order more merchandise and ship it with the auction items. And if you win several auctions with a period of a couple of days, you can combine shipping on all of those items.
But perhaps, I thought, if I win an auction I can order more of the same item at the winning price, in which case the auction suddenly becomes a really great deal.
So I participated in a trial auction to test this out, by bidding $1 on a color change kit that is regularly $5. I wanted to order a couple more dimmers and the computer interface, so I knew I was going to be getting these anyway, and that would total to a price that would also get free shipping.
I won the auction, and went to the web site that showed my winnings. The order page did let me change the quantity of my auction item! So I changed the quantity of color change kits to 10, added the rest of my order at regular prices, got the free shipping, and submitted the order. The order summary page on the web and the order summary sent in the mail showed the increased quantity at the auction price, the free shipping and everything. Eureka! Am I clever, or what?!
This was great, so I jumped into an auction on some more ICON dimmer switches, and did the same thing, ordering 6 of them at a great winning price.
The next day, when I got the shipping notification on the first order, the quantity of the auction item had been changed back to 1. My bank charge also showed the price had been adjusted accordingly, but I still made the free shipping limit.
Then the shipping notice on the second order came through the email, and the quantity on that was also adjusted back to one. This would drop me below the free shipping level, but I have not seen the bill come through to my credit card to check if I still got the free shipping or not.
I called customer service, and the guy there basically said that I only won the auction for one item, so the system corrected this. And he did not know why the system even allows ordering additional quantities at this price.
Nothing in the auction terms or FAQ say anything about this. If I get the bill for the second order showing that I got charged for shipping, I'm going to go back to customer service again and escalate. I think the auction ordering system is misleading and should be fixed, or Smarthome should be held to what they allowed me to order.
Bottom line: In quantity of one, the auctions are no deal, unless you already know you are ordering enough other stuff to spread shipping costs. Even worse, the ordering system for auction winners is at best misleading, at worst deceptive.
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Late addition: Looks like my auction review replaced my previous review. For non-auction purchases, I've been very happy with Smarthome, and I am extremely pleased with the Insteon products. For direct non-auction ordering of Insteon lighting automation, I gave them 5 stars across the board. Text of that review is below:
I'm finishing a basement and putting in a combination rec room / theater, so I wanted some nice automated and scene lighting to support this. I use X10 elsewhere in my house, and have been unhappy with the unreliability of signaling, and the fact that my neighbors security system sends all-lights-on on channels A-H (!) in the middle of the night, turning on my lights. Ugh.
Smarthome's INSTEON technology promises to fix all of these problems and more, so I gave it a go. I ordered a few hundred dollars worth of INSTEON products from Smarthome.com.
Bottom Line:
I love it. The stuff works great, responds instantly, is reliable, looks nice, and gives me the lighting flexibility that I wanted. I'm extremely pleased.
Details:
I ordered the KeyPad starter kit, which comes with the Keypad dimmer, two Switchlinc V2 dimmers, and the receivers used to bridge the phases. I also ordered 6 more Switchlinc V2 dimmers, three of the budget ICON dimmers, and color change kits for everything.
The ICON budget dimmers are much cheaper, and do everything the Switchlincs do except programmable ramp-up and ramp-down and X10 scenes (but they can be programmed with one X10 address and do support INSTEON scenes), and they only have one status LED rather than the nifty row of LEDs. I used these in bedrooms because I didn't need the ramp feature for bedrooms, and also because the LED on these is not as bright (I thought the Switchlinc V2 LEDs were a bit bright for a bedroom at night, so I'm very happy with this choice). Also, the catalog advertised the ICON dimmers as 300W compared to the Switchlinc 600W, but the ICON dimmers that arrived were labeled for 600W. In fact, the circuit boards looked identical to the Switchlinc's, except for missing the extra LEDs. I'm guessing the difference between the ICON and Switchlinc comes from how they are programmed.
All the INSTEON dimmers can be programmed to respond to an X10 address, so my existing X10 controllers, especially the wireless and keychain ones, remain useful. Even when programmed with an X10 address, the dimmers do NOT respond to X10 all-lights-on, which solves my problem with my neighbors turning on lights, unless they start using my exact X10 address.
Negatives:
If I had to nitpick and find something negative to say, I only can think of two things:
1) The dimmers emit a slight buzz when on. You have to be right near the switch to in a very quiet room to hear it, so it's not bad enough to lower my opinion of the dimmers.
2) The color change kits are tedious to install on any significant quantity of switches, involving lots of tiny screws and snapping the LED light pipes out and back into the new trim.
Smarthome experience:
I'm very familiar with SmartHome's web site, so navigating and ordering was no problem. Everything was in stock, the order with through just fine, and I had the products in my house just a few days later, a good month before I was ready to use most of it! I ordered enough switches to replace some of my existing in-wall X10 switches to get rid of the problem with my neighbors turning my lights on, so I installed those promptly. They worked great! The basement lighting is also installed now, and I've partly programmed the scenes, and I'm really pleased with the results.
I actually split the order into two orders to take advantage of two discount offers I had received. Both orders went in on the same day, and both arrived on the same day, total time from order to receipt was less than one week, with regular shipping.
I've already ordered more INSTEON parts to automate some existing lights elsewhere in the house.
Recommended:
No
What product did you purchase or try to purchase? Smarthome auction on INSTEON dimmers
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jreuter
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