Important Safety Notice from WakeMate

[tptacek]

From my email just now.

Imporant Safety Notice

Hello WakeMate Customer,

We have just been alerted to a safety issue with our product. The black USB charger bricks that have been included with the product are defective. Do not use them.

The USB chargers were sourced through a Chinese vendor. We paid to have the proper certification and safety tests performed here in the U.S. for the chargers. However, tonight we were informed by a customer of a safety incident with the black USB chargers. Therefore, effective immediately we are recalling ALL USB charger bricks and informing our customers that it is not safe to use these USB chargers to charge your WakeMate.

We will continue to look into the situation but needed to email you immediately to ensure that you stop using and unplug the included Black USB Power Bricks.

We are extremely sorry that we sent a product containing defective components. However, we also want to stress that this issue is with the chargers only, and not with the WakeMate itself. It is still safe to use the included USB cable to charge the WakeMate, and it is safe to wear the WakeMate while sleeping.

I sincerely apologize for this mishap on our part. We are doing everything we can to prevent any further incidents with the USB charger bricks.

[bilbo0s]

"...The USB chargers were sourced through a Chinese vendor. We paid to have the proper certification and safety tests performed here in the U.S. for the chargers. However, tonight we were informed by a customer of a safety incident with the black USB chargers..."

You think it is appropriate to say this in a recall notice...

and this is why you fail.

Sony has problems with their products, so does Apple. Neither of them blame their sourcing in communication to customers. Why? Because your problem is not Chinese manufacturers, or Stateside testing companies, your problem is YOU and YOUR PROCESSES. Take ownership and move forward.

I am reminded of how you handled getting a bad review, here -> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2029052

I think there is an attitude at your company that is incompatible with the relentless pursuit of perfection that is required to pull off a successful hardware startup. What you guys need is a 'Come To Jesus' talk, not more clumsy attempts at deflecting culpability.

[avner]

I tried to start a hardware startup last year and actually made it to the interview with PG & co. At the end of the meeting, while the idea was good, it came down to the obvious question of assembling and sourcing the hardware. At that stage, after a lot of research and thinking, I decided to cut my losses and shelf the idea for the time being.

Why? Because hardware is hard. I may be an engineer, but scaling production of a hardware unit from a prototype to shippable products en masse is an extremely hard challenge if you're trying to source your hardware from somewhere like China. Its harder if you're not Apple or HP..or Sony for that matter. I think its unfair to judge wakemate to Sony or Apple standards.

Coincidentally, I met the Wakemate guys when I crashed at the SF hacker house during that time. While they're brilliant and dextrous folks, I certainly felt the vibe that they were finding it extremely challenging to design, produce and ship this thing. The idea of wakemate sounded great, but I wasn't convinced that being non-tech founders, they were entirely aware of the technical and logistical challenges of producing and scaling a hardware unit from scratch to the production line.

I wish them luck though. While they could learn a lesson or two about PR, they've been at it for over an year and have persisted. Customer patience may be running thin after these series of setbacks, but I still believe that they will eventually pull it off.

[kenjackson]

I didn't think they were deflecting or blaming their source. Sounds like they were just saying that they did the proper due diligence, but there is still a problem.

Apple did the same thing when they were giving tours of their radio-frequency test lab. It's a way of saying, "Yes, there's a problem, but it wasn't sheer negligence."

[mrchess]

I agree with this. The way they single out "Chinese" is very immature. They even said they paid to have proper certification in the U.S., well who did you pay because while your manufacturer may have shipped a bad product, your QC dept clearly failed their job too.

All you needed to say is that they were defective and they needed a recall, no reason to try and blame someone else for your problem.

I bought from you guys to support you, but please take some responsibility.

[mrerrormessage]

Perhaps they could take more responsibility, but they certainly aren't worse than Apple. Remember how Apple was very hush-hush about the exploding/fire-catching Macbook batteries? That seems a more apples-to-apples comparison to a product that was sourced upstream. Notice how Apple didn't do a full recall, they just hoped people wouldn't notice. Points to wakemate for a courageous recall on one report!

[cdmoyer]

I feel like your prejudice is coloring your reading of that email. "This is what we did, these are the precautions we took," seems like a perfectly reasonable message. (Admittedly, it may be a cheap tactic, but Chinese manufacturers are the butt of many jokes in the US market, so I suspect most people would just shrug and say, "that sucks, glad they warned me.")

If they fail, it's not because of that messaging... it's because the product works poorly (based on some reviews) and now has defective parts.

[noonespecial]

It's likely that the chargers that were tested and the chargers that actually ended up shipping are quite different inside.

This seems to be a constant battle when going the Chinese route. You have to cut open a few from every shipment and check to see if inferior components have been subbed in since last time.

[bugsy]

At a place I worked a few years ago we had to individually retest every single unit of our products. This involved opening up packaging and repacking and reshrinkwrapping afterwards. In between unpacking and repacking there was testing and finding about 1/3 of them always had problems. Some boards could be fixed by diagnosing to the component level, replacing components and even resoldering incorrectly wired interboard connects. This work was done by asian immigrants of uncertain immigration status. This rework quadrupled the cost of the products but somehow it was still cheaper than just manufacturing locally to begin with, something like the exact same product was costing $20 per unit from asia, but $200 per unit to build in the US. Apparently the big cost difference was due to the effect of environmental laws regarding not being able to dump toxic waste in a river in the US.

[acgourley]

As someone working on a hardware startup I feel like I can only create a competitive price by sourcing and assembling overseas, and yet it seems like once you do that every turn is fraught with peril and counterfeit.

It would be awesome to hear more advice or stories, if you have them.

[rringler]

Not criticizing WM here, but as a hardware-oriented engineer, I'd love to hear a post-mortem on this issue. Perhaps it's as you say and the promised PSUs are different then the prototypes; but either way, as someone who has a myriad of different design requirements (including electrical safety) I'd love to hear where WM thinks things broke down.

EDIT: The particular reason I'd love to hear a post-mortem on this is because I work for a mega-corp that is supposed to have the process to prevent such a mistake. Although all of our hardware undergoes both design testing and factory acceptance testing, we still manage to miss our share of mistakes. I would love to hear what WM thinks they missed.

[noodle]

> This seems to be a constant battle when going the Chinese route.

is the savings really worth it? and how can one tell that they aren't getting scammed? seems like win-win for chinese companies to cut all possible corners. either they'll save a buck or they'll get caught and just have to get paid to make more.

[code_duck]

Several from every shipment. Who knowshowmany is enough. They'll mix different qualities, too, however much they think they can get away with. Ofcourse, there are reputable companies. It's just a lot of work to find them.

[callmevlad]

I stopped using mine the day I got it because it emitted a annoying loud whiny noise the second I plugged it in. I immediately thought "cheap Chinese manufacturing" and started using my white iPhone charger instead. Glad I did.

What makes this more serious is that the WakeMate seems to be really power hungry and needs almost constant charging - I've noticed that it usually can't go 2 straight nights without a recharge. Since that's the case, I imagine most people just plug it into the defective charger each morning, so it's plugged in for about 16 hours per day. But maybe my battery is also defective ...

Not sure how these two are different technically (both probably have similar accelerometers), but I also have a FitBit that I wear all day long - yet I only need to charge that guy maybe once a week.

Hoping the WakeMate guys get through this, though ...

[catch23]

The fitbit tech is pretty primitive -- it looks like it only has a pedometer inside the device. It's probably why it isn't very accurate at tracking sleep. I've been using my fitbit for a few weeks, but it doesn't seem very accurate at all in general.

[Ein2015]

I think your battery might be defective. My WakeMate loses about 19-20% battery life each night. I was using the original black charger... looks like I'll be using the real brick from Apple now.

[tlrobinson]

Man these guys can't catch a break. I really want to love WakeMate but they're making it hard.

[gommm]

Well doing a hardware startup is hard and they've had a string of bad luck but at least, in this particular case, they are responsive about it and immediately started a recall instead of trying to hide the issues under the rug...

[cookiecaper]

This is the first issue I've read about. What else happened?

[eitally]

For everyone bashing Chinese manufacturers, it's really unfair unless you qualify the statement. All of the big EMS companies have a significant presence in China (Celestica, Jabil, Flextronics, Sanmina-SCI) and Foxconn is part of a Taiwanese holding company. They, and many smaller EMS providers, will build exactly to spec and many of them are happy to do ODM/JDM work, too (ref: Quanta & Compal, the two biggest laptop ODMs and manufacturers in the world).

Where people get burned is when these don't perform a risk analysis while deciding on a hardware partner and end up going with some back room company that probably builds their stuff using components sourced from Shenzhen electronics malls. This isn't necessarily bad, but you get out what you put in, and if you're minimizing the time & money parts of the equation, the quality is likely to suffer.

[delackner]

I know this reply is late, but before I threw away the affected chargers I looked at the incredibly tiny text written on it and noticed a few odd things.

They have the UL logo certification logo. They also say they are manufactured by one of the big vendors you name, I think it was Flextronics. The text is nearly illegible and smudged, leading me to think it is fake.

[jrockway]

Dear electronics companies. I am willing to pay more money if you build your products in the US / Europe / Japan and actually do QA.

(Actually, I have nothing against making stuff in China. But it seems that people outsource to China only to save money, and you get what you pay for. In this case, your house nearly burning down because someone wanted to save a fraction of a penny on capacitors, or something.)

Example: I have a Soekris router instead of a random Netgear or Linksys. It cost $300 instead of $25 that a WRT-54G would cost, and it doesn't even have wireless. But, it actually works. The VPN works. The firewall works. It doesn't drop packets. It doesn't overheat. It doesn't burn down my house. Is this worth a 12x price premium? Yes.

[bmastenbrook]

"I am willing to pay more money if you build your products in the US / Europe / Japan"

No, you aren't. Well, you might be; I don't know what your means are, but you probably aren't.

Here's the problem: it's not just the extra 20% in cost of the product. Once you raise the product's price, fewer people will buy it. Hardware is a game of economies of scale. When you fall off the volume curve, the price goes up exponentially. Soon enough your 20% additional cost starts looking like 200% additional cost.

Furthermore, there are precious few companies doing high volume electronics manufacturing in the US. There's no guarantee that the quality you get is going to be any better than what you can find for less in China. That's not to say that you can't find something unbelievably crappy in China, but even good services in China cost much less than they do here in the US. It's not like you can buy better capacitors in here than you can in China. The ones you can get in China have the advantage of actually being available too, whereas buying even passives in the US can result in ridiculous lead times of 6 months or more.

Yes, you bought a Soekris router and you're very happy with it. I'm glad for you. It's also a completely different class of product. There's no lesson that can be drawn from the comparison between a Soekris board and a WRT54GL.

[dotBen]

I am willing to pay more money if you build your products in the US / Europe / Japan and actually do QA.

Most people won't. I'm not sure I would. I don't inherently see anything wrong with buying goods made in China or Taiwan - there are plenty of companies (eg Apple) who manufacture high quality goods there.

US labor has massive issues too - I wouldn't want to own a car made in the US.

As for your router, my Chinese-made Buffalo does everything yours does (plus wifi and runs dd-WRT) and cost me $30. Your argument would only stand up if everything made in China was poorer quality to US made, and that isn't the case.

[blhack]

+1 for soekris (I have a 5501 sitting on the counter with me right now, one of 5 that I own [I use them as both VPN endpoints, and firewalls at work]).

I remember when I got my first one and had a problem with it. I literally just called the company and heard "Hello, Soekris engineering...oh, hold on, let me get one of the engineers for you."

Absolutely worth the money. Awesome in every single way (and they look badass too :-D).

[dwynings]

Video: http://www.twitvid.com/UBBWC

[cma]

wow, I was only half serious when I made this comment a while back: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2030226

[tlrobinson]

That looks like the wristband itself caught fire, not the charger? Perhaps the charger put out too much power, causing the wristband to catch fire?

[koichi]

Wow... Seriously? Is this the issue WakeMate emailed about (I'm guessing it is) or is this another?

[koichi]

I'd worry about this more if my WakeMate would actually arrive... :(

This is pretty sad, though... I've been cheering for WakeMate since the beginning, but it's getting harder and harder... Are they at least sending new charger bricks at some point, perhaps a year or so from now (har har har)?

[mmaunder]

Way to handle this WakeMate. While this may cost a lot in the short term, history has shown that companies can bounce back from costly recalls like this and dominate the market down the road with the increase in credibility and trust they gain:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders

[delackner]

So the logical next question is are the battery paks in the band safe? What sort of safety cert was done on them?

[rman666]

I've been a lurker on WakeMate, thinking I'd like one, but not yet taking the action to buy one.

However, because of their honesty and quick action on this issue, I will buy one now as soon as the charger issue is resolved.

@WakeMate: You will recover fine from this issue ... in fact I think you will end up in a better position because of how you are handling it. Good job!

[donniefitz2]

Man, this is big. What a bummer for Wakemate. I admire your honesty though. Thanks for not keeping quiet.

[tlrobinson]

Thanks for not keeping quiet.

If they kept quiet and someone were injured or killed due to a known defective product wouldn't they be open to lawsuits?

[jpcx01]

Not like they really had a choice here. It's spreading like wild on twitter already. If they ignored it, it would have been a huge problem for them.

At least they aren't crazy and are doing the right thing. I'm guessing someone really regrets trying to save a few pennies on the charger.

It's a tough business no doubt. I think they'll make it through just fine though.

[flip]

Does anyone else feel like a complete fool for having thought these guys were capable of pulling this off?

[HeyLaughingBoy]

You shouldn't. Although I'm in software now, I've done enough hardware design to know that sometimes shit just happens no matter how well you jump through all the hoops.

It's a pity that it happened so soon after the product was released, but things like this are not at all unusual. In fact, they're lucky that they found out about it right away. I've known of suppliers changing the component they sell you without informing anyone or changing the part number, causing problems that go undetected for years.

Like an earlier poster said: hardware is hard.

[btipling]

Honestly though, can you imagine recovering from a video of your product smoldering and smoking, a product that people attach to their arms while sleeping?

After having seen that video that's all I'm ever going to think about when someone mentions the product. And can you imagine recommending it now to anyone? How do you think WakeMate has spread? Probably word of mouth, which if that channel hasn't closed forever will now come with a big bold asterisk.

I wish you guys the best. It's going to be hard work to not only improve your product, deal with the financials but recover consumer trust. A good idea might be some new awesome, but some what gimmicky feature, that will wow everyone.

[btipling]

Right downvote me for speaking the cold hard truth.

[matthew-wegner]

I could actually hear my charger audibly buzzing when I plugged it in for the first time today. Glad to hear it will be replaced!

[Ein2015]

I love my WakeMate and the Wakelytics web app. It's super cool.

My only complaint is that it seems the wristband can be a bit tight, but I suppose this is necessary to provide accurate movement calculations.

Good job WakeMate team. I know it's been tough, but I'm proud of you! Thank you for handling this situation in such an appropriate manner.

[natch]

What exactly is the safety issue?