Recently Shipped Icon Devices May Need Replacement

For those of you who have recently purchased Insteon Icon switches and dimmers in the past few months there appears to a known issue with a diode failure. Smarthome has posted on their forum in this thread Icon 50% Failure Rate that they have identified the problem and changed the type of diode being used. They also stated that their Customer Service Department will be contacting customers who recently purchased these products so they can be replaced (I assume once they are available).

While I am glad that they have found and corrected the problem and agreed to do the right thing (replace everyones devices that are affected) it is sad that they first insisted the products were fine and the customers house wiring was to blame when many people tried to tell them it was the hardware.

Same old story, slightly different outcome this time - so you do have to give SH some credit. But they still have a long uphill PR battle IMHO.

Yes they deserve some credit. They should not need the amount of pressure that is being put on them to do the right thing though (read the thread).

Part of the problem is they try and discredit the people who bring these problems to their attention rather than use the information to minimize the problem (insisting miswire or bad wiring and stating "its only one customer" which was not true). Had they reacted sooner there losses would have been less and they would have pissed off less customers.

Its great they are replacing the products but they say they are steering more to the Pro market. What Pro wants to go back and replace these devices on their own dime?

It if really is 50% or even close to it then NOTHING has changed...

Smart home products really had a lot of potential. Now I frimly believe smarthome is nothing but a joke.

The fact that Steve L posted that Customer Service will contact people who bought Icons recently is pretty much an admission on their part that a large percentage if not all of the recently shipped devices are affected.

SH needs to get real QC practices in place if they want to clean up their act. They also have to stop the denial all of the time. It appears that once they realized the products were defective they did tell a certain person to stop blaming the customers (in fact he has not posted to that thread since). That is a good sign that things are improving over there because it took much longer to get them to stop blaming the customers for the paddle problems.

I dont think SH is dead yet (just a lot of their products LOL)

I noticed that. The whole" Maybe you wired it wrong, it's your fault" attitude. Definitely not helping the situation at all. I used to champion their products. I even was on the list to become a beta tester. After some deep thought about my level of commitment, I felt it was a waste of time.

gatchel said:

I noticed that. The whole" Maybe you wired it wrong, it's your fault" attitude. Definitely not helping the situation at all. I used to champion their products. I even was on the list to become a beta tester. After some deep thought about my level of commitment, I felt it was a waste of time.

Click to expand...

Sort of like them telling people they put the paddle on wrong and then the customer says that the paddle came on the switch from the factory and wasnt changed. So then they said you put the coverplate on wrong etc. Anything but their product is the problem attitude has to go until they know for sure.

I think SH was much better at admitting to the problem then in the past. Also that they are calling customers to replace teh devices is a good sign to. Still it sucks to have to pull out switches you just installed.

While QC has definitely not gotten any better at SH at least their management is addressing the problem after the fact better. A sign of improvement in my opinion (many will probably disagree and that is their right).