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Nest to brick Revolv smart hubs on Sunday, and there's nothing owners can do about it

If you own a Revolv smart hub, then Sunday is the day that Nest will pull the plug on it, and you can kiss your $300 gadget goodbye.
Written by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, Contributing Writer

[UPDATE: Actually, there may be something you can do. Nest appears to be offering some users - many seem to be people who hve approached tech or customer support - refunds. If you've not been offered a refund, contact help@revolv.com and request yours.]

This Sunday sees Nest, a home automation firm owned by Google's holding company Alphabet, pull the plug on smart hubs from Revolv, a firm it acquired in October 2014, effectively bricking these devices for their owners.

From that point on the app will no longer work, and the device will be dead.

Now you might think that this is no big deal, but it's a pretty big deal to anyone who was suckered in by the promise of a "lifetime subscription" to the service.

I guess it's come to the end of its life.

"If you own a Revolv, your home will shut off," writes Kyle Wiens, CEO of repair firm iFixit. "Your lights will turn off. Your doors will stay locked--or unlocked. Your sprinkler system will stop working. All that automation that you painstakingly set up? It's quitting."

My colleague Jason Perlow calls it "unconscionable" that these devices are being bricked when they are only two years old.

"Imagine, for example," writes Perlow, "if Nest itself went out of business, and the cloud service to control and integrate the thermostats and smoke detectors stopped working."

Remember, Revolv didn't go bust, the company was bought by Google.

A lot has happened over at Nest since it was initially announced back in April that these Revolv devices were going to be bricked. Specifically, Tony Fadell, the founder of Nest Labs, stepped down as CEO of the company. Things at Nest haven't been going too well in recent years, with stalled releases, and product recalls.

If there's anything that's going to put a damper on people buying home automation devices, it's the fear that their purchases will be bricked remotely at the whim of a big, faceless multibillion-dollar corporation.

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